Bands Named After Something Dumb

Every band needs a name by Friday, and it shows.

Entries
10
Category
Music
Updated
  1. A yellow radioactive-symbol lunchbox and a small kid's superhero cape on a club stage under a single spotlight.

    10. Fall Out Boy

    Fall Out Boy · 2001

    Radioactive Man's sidekick on The Simpsons. The band asked a crowd at an early show for name ideas and someone yelled it, with an expletive attached. They were huge Simpsons fans and took it. Democracy, briefly, worked.

  2. A spotted leopard sculpture wearing an old-fashioned ear trumpet, sitting on a school art table covered in poster paint.

    09. Def Leppard

    Def Leppard · 1976

    Joe Elliott dreamed up Deaf Leopard while designing posters for imaginary bands in art class. Drummer Tony Kenning had them misspell it so they'd seem less like a punk band. Hysteria sold over 15 million copies. The leopard can hear fine, apparently.

  3. A softball jersey hanging over a diner booth, a matchbox and a stack of twenty sugar packets on the table.

    08. Matchbox Twenty

    Matchbox Twenty · 1995

    Drummer Paul Doucette was waiting tables and saw a man in a softball shirt with two unrelated words on it. He combined them. They were Matchbox 20 until 2000, when they spelled out the number, which counts as growth.

  4. An empty furniture showroom with a sofa, lamp and armchair all arranged around a conspicuously empty spot.

    07. Everything but the Girl

    Everything but the Girl · 1982

    Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt took it from the slogan of Turner's, a furniture shop on Beverley Road in Hull. The Todd Terry remix of Missing hit No. 2 in the US in 1995. Somewhere in Hull, a sofa ad has a better chart record than most bands.

  5. A martini glass of gin with a red flower blooming out of it on a dim Hollywood bar counter.

    06. Gin Blossoms

    Gin Blossoms · 1987

    From a caption in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon under a photo of W.C. Fields, where gin blossoms means the red nose and cheeks of a heavy drinker. The Tempe band made jangly, sunny radio hits under a name that is technically a skin condition.

  6. A puffed-up blowfish and a small owl wearing huge round glasses perched together on a dorm room bookshelf.

    05. Hootie & the Blowfish

    Hootie & the Blowfish · 1986

    Named for two college friends: one with huge round glasses that made him look like an owl, one with puffy cheeks. Neither is Darius Rucker, who has spent thirty years being called Hootie anyway. Cracked Rear View went 22 times platinum. The owl never saw a cent.

  7. A vintage porcelain baby doll lying on an open pulp detective magazine beside a mail-order coupon envelope.

    04. Goo Goo Dolls

    Goo Goo Dolls · 1985

    Previously the Sex Maggots, they picked the new name from a toy ad in True Detective magazine because they had a gig and needed something. John Rzeznik has since called it kind of a stupid name. Their breakthrough single was titled Name, which feels pointed.

  8. A single nickel resting on a coffee shop counter beside a paper cup and a tip jar.

    03. Nickelback

    Nickelback · 1995

    Mike Kroeger worked at Starbucks and kept handing people their nickel back. That is the whole story. Before that they were a cover band called Village Idiot. Fifty million albums later, the change has been counted.

  9. A gym coach's whistle and clipboard on a bleacher next to a pair of hair clippers and a blank real estate yard sign.

    02. Lynyrd Skynyrd

    Lynyrd Skynyrd · 1964

    Named to mock Leonard Skinner, a Jacksonville gym teacher who enforced the school's ban on long hair. Years later they made peace: Skinner introduced them at a hometown concert and let them use his real estate sign on an album. Best revenge is a gold record.

  10. A small green toad sitting in a puddle beside a wet, glistening film sprocket wheel on a rehearsal room floor.

    01. Toad the Wet Sprocket

    Toad the Wet Sprocket · 1986

    Lifted from a Monty Python sketch in which Eric Idle invented a band name he later said was so silly nobody would ever use it. A Santa Barbara high school band took it as a joke. Glen Phillips calls it a joke that went on too long. Then it hit No. 1 on Modern Rock.

Honorable mentions

  • A pile of dozens of sneakers spilling out of a closet onto a cobblestone German street.

    Hoobastank

    Hoobastank · 1994

    Over the years the band has said it's a mispronounced German street, slang for someone who owns a lot of sneakers, or a word they made up joking around. The Reason spent 21 weeks at No. 1 in Canada. Nobody knows what the name means, and nobody needs to.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A single droopy biscuit wilting over the edge of a plate beside a backwards red baseball cap.

    Limp Bizkit

    Limp Bizkit · 1994

    Fred Durst picked it on purpose to make people assume the band was bad, and turned down labels who begged him to change it. The rejected options were worse and unprintable. Then they sold 40 million records. The filter did not work.

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