What! Is With Band Names These "Dayz"?

It may simply be, perhaps, that people are just running out of ideas - every name imaginable has been done before. Either way, odd combinations of words for a band name are becoming more memorable, albeit ridiculous.

There's no evidence, really, to suggest that the more original a name, the more successful a band. The largest, most successful and influential band in music history, after all, shared a name with an insect. The Beatles are such an important part of pop culture, even in this day and age.

The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Clash, The Buzzcocks, The Sex Pistols, The Jam, The Cure, The Ramones, The Birthday Party, The The, The Damned. The trend in using 'the' is obvious while looking at classic rock bands. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule - Led Zeppelin and AC/DC were hardly small names in the rock'n'roll world. They were almost a contrast to those other 'the band' type names.

As we progress forward from that era in music we can generally see the gradual shift in band names. Soon after this, as well as during the same period there was Generation X, Blondie, Television, Boomtown Rates, X-Ray Spex, Black Flag. Names were getting weirder, or maybe just more meaningful. There was also the trend of possession: Iggy and the Stooges; Siouxsie and the Banshees; Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; The Patti Smith Group.

Into the nineties and names were getting shorter (Nirvana, Rancid, Garbage, Blur, Chumbawamba, Jet, NOFX), more meaningful (Green Day being a term for a day spent smoking pot; Hoobastank being... well, of little meaning but still ridiculous) with an occasional flashback to old 'the' times (The Offspring, The Living End, The Hives, The Blood Brothers, The Matches). There was also the trend with numbers: Blink 182, Sum 41, D12, Eiffel 65 and later on +44 were names that were impossible. Who would ever put a number in a band name?! Well, U2 and the B52s did, long before the others...

Yet in modern times it was only going to get more extreme. Punctuation is the new 'the': while although they've dropped the exclamation mark now in favour of full stops in an album title, Panic at the Disco's name was truly memorable. The Academy Is...'s use of fullstops will never cease to confuse me; perhaps I'm just an outsider to the band's real motives. P!nk's use of exclamation marks is merely rational in comparison.

It appears that there is little explanation for such a debatable topic. Bands like The Beatles and The Who are unlikely to be forgotten despite their ordinary names. Maybe it is just a whim of bands to have a weird name for the simple sake of being weird. Either way, the future challenge will always be the same: "What on earth am I going to name my band?!"