HaederleZTake
Name That Tune
Column by Jim Haederle (8/15/22)
Some song titles are so obvious that you don’t even question where they came from. Rock and Roll All Night. Old Time Rock 'n' Roll. I Love Rock and Roll. You can’t imagine it took much creative energy for the composer to decide what the song should be called.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. The title speaks for itself, but I’ve always been intrigued by unusual song titles that pique the listener’s curiosity.
I love the 1979 Boomtown Rats’ single, I Don’t Like Mondays. A catchy title and beautiful melody, but initially, I had no clue what the song was about. It wasn’t until I read an interview with the song’s singer/composer, Bob Geldof, that I learned the lyrics describe a real-life shooting carried out by an unbalanced sixteen year-old girl, targeting elementary school students across the street from her home on a Monday morning in January of that year.
Rather grim subject matter for such a pretty song, but Geldof, having read a report of the crime soon after it occurred, was struck by the shooter’s dispassionate response to a reporter when asked what had prompted her violent rampage.
"I don’t like Mondays," she replied. "This livens up the day."
Canadian cult band Klaatu enjoyed minor airplay with their 1976 single, Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft. Much as I like that song, I found the title to be a little odd, to say the least. I eventually discovered that the title is taken from a 1953 bulletin sent to members of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, proposing an experimental "World Contact Day" whereby Earthlings could presumably communicate with aliens by sending the telepathic message: "Calling occupants of interplanetary craft."
The experiment yielded no tangible result, but that wacky mantra provided Klaatu with a decidedly interesting song title and, surprisingly, a hit for The Carpenters the following year.
The title and first line of a George Harrison ballad on The Beatles’ final album was shamelessly lifted from a James Taylor composition. Taylor was one of the first artists signed to The Beatles’ fledgling record label Apple, and Harrison was taken with a song on Taylor’s debut Apple album called Something In The Way She Moves.
Harrison stole the first line verbatim, shortened the title of his own composition to simply Something, and then informed Taylor without apology that he’d appropriated Taylor’s lyric as the starting point for his own song.
James Taylor forgave him.
Hey Jude, as many Beatles fans know, was composed by Paul McCartney whilst driving from London to Weybridge to pay a consolation visit to the wife and child John Lennon had recently abandoned in favor of Yoko Ono. Feeling particularly bad
for young Julian Lennon, Paul’s original lyric was "Hey Jules, don’t make it bad..." Later thinking that Hey Jude sounded better -- it was more "Country and Western," Paul said -- the retitled song went on to become the best-selling Beatles single up to that time.
Sometimes regional accents play a part in unique song titles. Stevie Nicks asked Tom Petty’s first wife, Jane, how old they were when she and Tom met. In her distinct Southern drawl, Jane replied that they’d met "at the age of seventeen." But a Southern-pronounced "age" can sound like "edge" to non-Southern ears. Nicks quickly saw that her misinterpretation made an ideal song title, which she ended up using with Jane’s blessing.
Of course, there are some song titles that defy explanation. Why did Led Zeppelin call their 1971 heavy metal romp Black Dog when that phrase does not appear anywhere in the lyrics? Why is The Champs’ quasi-instrumental song Tequila named that? I guess it’s because that's the only word that occurs in the entire song.
Sometimes a song title is simply a label to slap on a catchy tune, apropos of nothing. Everything has to be called something, but I’ll always be drawn to an unusual song title that comes with an interesting backstory.
Jim Haederle is a father, freelance writer, songwriter, singer/keyboardist with "The Force," actor, cartoonist, presidential history buff, and can name every James Bond movie in chronological order.
YouTube - "I Don't Like Mondays" - Boomtown Rats
YouTube - "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" - The Carpenters
YouTube - "Edge of Seventeen" - Stevie Nicks
©2022 Roger Zee
