Titling

May 9, 2008

I don’t plan to do this with every song, but with Aries9, I’m making it a general policy to avoid titling a song based on a line in the song’s chorus.

Why?

Because that’s too easy.

I have this habit of noticing and questioning these assumptions. I’d say 99% of all songwriters just whip a song title out of the most prominent line from the chorus.  Even the best of them do that.  As if there’s a mathematical formula telling them that’s the natural law of the universe. Like animals needing a male and a female to procreate.

Yes, it’s obvious, yes, it can be argued that it’s natural. And I’m sure I’ll do that for my songs in other genres. But with Aries9, I want to create music where I’ve really thought out every detail. I don’t want to overwork the songs (and that can happen, I’m aware of the danger), but I want to make sure that I’m engaging creatively in every element.

And that includes titles of my songs.

Song titles are very important. It is the name of that song. It frames it, brands it, give it an identity.

Now, it’s hard to come up with a song title that’s so intriguing that it makes you want to listen to the song, just by hearing the title. A title is not a description. Some artists try to do that, and a few succeed occasionally, and I applaud their efforts. But I didn’t want my song titles to get too contrived, especially since I’m not trying to be overtly humorous or quarky with Aries9.

So the goal of my song titles, instead, is to look beyond the obvious, and to find a metaphor or a concept that truly summarizes what the song is about. And that encompasses more than just lyrics and covers how the music as a whole feels to me.

As with the lyrics, I sometimes don’t worry about making perfect sense — for example, I can’t tell you exactly why “Diamond Sleeps Tonight” came to be, except to say the lyrics does contain two of those three words. But that title just sounds right to me, for that song.

On the other hand, songs like “Shark,” “Tiny Toon,” and “Cult” are all taken from its lyrics — just not from the chorus.  I picked out a metaphor that nicely framed the song in my mind.  Again, they just felt right — the words/images just felt that it represented what the songs mean to me.

And really, that’s what I’m looking for. Something that feels right, and that includes avoiding being too obvious. Mystery is good in my book — tying up all the loose ends leaves little room for imagination.

So I hope you have fun pondering them, as I have myself. I’m proud of all the names I’ve given my songs.
Because great songs deserve great names, and I worked way too hard on them to let them out with easy titles.

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