(image from Discogs)
It's interesting to me that the original single for the very famous Stranglers song "(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)" (which is pictured above) listed the song title as "Grip." Technically, that's true - if there are words in parentheses in a song title, you don't have to say them - which begs the question, why put them there in the first place?
This article attempts to answer the question of why that is. It points out that the Simple Minds song "Don't You (Forget About Me)" can simply be referred to as "Don't You," which I think is just dumb. Someone did compile a list which they put in their subjective "order of parenthetical charm." I'm sure you have favorites.
What was the first song to do this? I couldn't find out but I suspect it first became common in the 1960s. Some theorize it was a way to draw attention to the song if the title wasn't repeated in the song. Or perhaps it made it easier to find on a seven-inch record sleeve economically - you could just write "Sweet Dreams" instead of "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These." A time saver of a sort. But what do I know?
One thing that has happened occasionally is that people act like some songs have parenthetical titles when they just don't. As someone who has looked at a lot of playlists over the years, I am a little surprised by this. To take two examples:
A person at one station who regularly played a certain Depeche Mode song always listed it as "(Your Own) Personal Jesus." It turns out they had downloaded the song with that title. They never bothered to check if that were the case.
A person at another station (& I've been told this is quite common) always referred to the Joy Division song as "Control." Apparently they thought the original title was "(She's Lost) Control." This is almost certainly because of the movie of the same name, which doesn't have that song on the soundtrack, but a quick look at the tracklisting of both the "Atmosphere" single (which has "She's Lost Control" as a b-side) & the album Unknown Pleasures (on which the original version exists) will note there are no parentheses in the title of that song. Still, on playlists, that person wrote that they played the Joy Division song "Control."
Personally, I just write the whole song name. Most of the time. I just noticed that last week I wrote the Rexy song as its title "(Don't) Turn Me Away." Probably just copying & pasting. I generally write "Don't You Forget About Me" or "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" without the parentheses. & when I play the Stranglers tomorrow, I won't be playing "Grip." I'll play "Get A Grip On Yourself."
This article attempts to answer the question of why that is. It points out that the Simple Minds song "Don't You (Forget About Me)" can simply be referred to as "Don't You," which I think is just dumb. Someone did compile a list which they put in their subjective "order of parenthetical charm." I'm sure you have favorites.
What was the first song to do this? I couldn't find out but I suspect it first became common in the 1960s. Some theorize it was a way to draw attention to the song if the title wasn't repeated in the song. Or perhaps it made it easier to find on a seven-inch record sleeve economically - you could just write "Sweet Dreams" instead of "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These." A time saver of a sort. But what do I know?
One thing that has happened occasionally is that people act like some songs have parenthetical titles when they just don't. As someone who has looked at a lot of playlists over the years, I am a little surprised by this. To take two examples:
A person at one station who regularly played a certain Depeche Mode song always listed it as "(Your Own) Personal Jesus." It turns out they had downloaded the song with that title. They never bothered to check if that were the case.
A person at another station (& I've been told this is quite common) always referred to the Joy Division song as "Control." Apparently they thought the original title was "(She's Lost) Control." This is almost certainly because of the movie of the same name, which doesn't have that song on the soundtrack, but a quick look at the tracklisting of both the "Atmosphere" single (which has "She's Lost Control" as a b-side) & the album Unknown Pleasures (on which the original version exists) will note there are no parentheses in the title of that song. Still, on playlists, that person wrote that they played the Joy Division song "Control."
Personally, I just write the whole song name. Most of the time. I just noticed that last week I wrote the Rexy song as its title "(Don't) Turn Me Away." Probably just copying & pasting. I generally write "Don't You Forget About Me" or "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" without the parentheses. & when I play the Stranglers tomorrow, I won't be playing "Grip." I'll play "Get A Grip On Yourself."
No comments:
Post a Comment