When a band names a song after itself, it ought to mean something, right? It’s a sort of declaration. A statement of principles. This is who we are. This is what we sound like and this is what we sing about. Often, a homonymic song like that comes at the very outset. It isn’t unusual for it to be the first song on the first album. It serves as an announcement to the world.
But that doesn’t ensure that the song is any good. The very fact that it tends to come so early means that the band may not be fully mature yet. They may think they know who they are, but time and experience have a way of changing that perception. So what we are going to do today is try and figure out the ten greatest homonymic songs – or, songs that have the exact same name as the band that recorded them.
And I am a stickler when it comes to crucial matters like this. So, even though I think “Killer Queen” is just about the best glam rock song of all time, the band’s name is just Queen. There’s no “Killer,” and thus, “Killer Queen” does not qualify for my list. The same applies to “(Theme From) The Monkees.” And even though he strived mightily to sound just like them, Jonathan Richman’s “Velvet Underground” doesn’t count either.
10 homonymic tracks you should be listening to today
But there is still plenty to choose from. Some bands I like didn’t make the cut. There’s no They Might Be Giants. There’s no Icehouse. No Focus. I actually think their homonymic songs are not very good. There’s no Night Ranger and no Living in a Box, even though I think those songs are somewhat better. Most surprisingly – to me at least – no Black Sabbath. I mean, you figure if Ozzy and Tony and Geezer name a song “Black Sabbath,” it’s got to be pretty special. But metal on the whole is the genre that does this more than any other, and, quite frankly, there were several better songs from the genre. Sorry Black Sabbath.
What did make the list? Well, if you pose this question to a ‘70s kid like me, there is one obvious winner. “Bad Company,” by Bad Company, is the first song on side two of their debut album, entitled – you guessed it – Bad Company. That’s always the first one people from my generation think of. Is it number 1? Read on to find out.
Songs 10 through 8
10 – “Meat Puppets” (1982)
It was on their self-titled debut, released by SST in 1982. Greg Ginn didn’t really know what to make of these odd dudes from the desert out in Phoenix, but he knew he wanted to sign them. They rewarded him with this wild collection of songs drawing on punk and cowboy music, with some psychedelia and noise tossed into one great mosh pit of sound.
Singer Curt Kirkwood seems to be doing a low-rent Darby Crash imitation, but then again, nobody really listened to Meat Puppets to hear Curt sing. They listened for his guitar, and how it collided with brother Chris’s bass and Derrick Bostrom’s drums. On “Meat Puppets,” that guitar stabs out in a surprisingly listenable cacophony, which was to become the band’s hallmark as they improved their songwriting.
9 – “Green Day” (1991)
Three years before Dookie would rewrite the rules for punk music and make them one of the biggest bands in the world, Billy Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt were already blasting power chords over singable melody lines. I’m not quite sure why this song is called “Green Day,” but then again, I never quite understood why Sweet Children renamed themselves Green Day in the first place. This is from their debut – their only album with drummer John Kiffmeyer before Tre Cool joined Armstrong and Dirnt and began making history.
8 – “Kool & the Gang” (1969)
The song and the band use an ampersand. For some reason, the album cover spells out the word “and.” This is the first track from their first album and it spells out their attack perfectly. From Claydes Smith’s jangle-funk guitar intro, we go into a danceable toe tap that allows for Spike Mickens' horn and DT Thomas’ sax to trade riffs. All the while, Robert Bell and the rest of the Gang are adding chatter and generally just having a great time. There would barely be any signing on the debut album. They would add more later.
Tracks 7 through 5
7 – “Fairground Attraction” (1988)
No, they weren’t Fairport Convention, but you can be forgiven if you make that mistake. Fairground… was a different folky British band fronted by Scottish singer Eddi Reader. Though they released a second album after Reader left, this is their one true album of first-rate material. And this dreamlike, vaguely creepy tune is the best thing on the album.
The soft-pop single “Perfect” was the hit, but that song is professional and forgettable, whereas “Fairground Attraction,” with Kim Burton’s accordion providing a distant carnival echo, could have come straight out of the classic micro-budget horror Carnival of Souls. That’s high praise.
6 – “Bad Religion” (1981)
No, it’s not Bad Company. Not yet. You can take your pick of several versions of Bad Religion’s self-titled tune. I kind of prefer the original from their first EP, a muddy and messy version that suits the song a little better. On the remastered full album version, released a couple of decades later, you can hear a cleaner, slower version, with singer Gary Gaffin’s voice sounding much prettier. I’m not sure why you would want to though.
5 – “Motorhead (1977)
The history of this song is legendary. It was the final song bassist/vocalist Lemmy Kilmister wrote for his band Hawkwind before they dumped him. So Lemmy got a new band together, eventually settling on guitarist Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil Taylor. He named the band after that final Hawkwind song. It was the first track on the self-titled debut, and it pretty much instantly made people forget Hawkwind. It opens with Lemmy’s chugging bass, gives Clarke a wild scorcher of a solo in the middle, and follows that up with Lemmy’s iconic couplet – “Fourth day, five-day marathon – We’re moving like a parallelogram.”
The top 4
4 – “New Jeans” (2023)
OK – if you want to be technical, the Newjeans do not have a space in the name, and their song does. So maybe this is homophonic instead of homonymic. Suppose you want to get technical. But with all this testosterone-driven metal, I thought it would be a nice touch to include some all-girl K-pop.
This is a great dance tune that has a lot more going for it than just a beat. It almost sounds like a Dionne Warwick/Burt Bachrach concoction before morphing into something more modern. They play around with the beat a lot more creatively than most of their contemporaries.
3 – “Bad Company” (1974)
No – it’s not number 1. That doesn’t make it any less iconic. It’s still a bronze medal. From the moment you hear Paul Rodgers' brooding piano riff, you know you are somewhere out west, in the presence of dark forces. Simon Kirke, who co-wrote the track with Rodgers, crashes a few cymbals to add to the sense of menace, before Rodgers' equally brooding vocal picks up that vibe.
Maybe that’s why it has been used in movies and TV shows and video games galore over the years. The only reason I have dropped it to third is that I’m not sure this is really where the band ended up going on later releases. Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet proved to be the successor to this particular track. Well, that’s not the only reason it is number 3. There are also two kick-ass homonymic tracks that I think are even better.
2 – “Bo Diddley” (1958)
I remember the first time I ever looked at the songwriting credits for this track and saw Bo Diddley co-wrote it with some guy named Ellas McDaniel. This was pre-internet, so it would take me years to learn that Ellas McDaniel was in fact, Bo Diddley. Somehow, I guess I presumed that Mr. and Mrs. Diddley had named their son “Bo.”
This tune – again, the first track on the first album – established an entire wing of rock & roll. That Bo Diddley beat was instantly iconic. If I was allowing for songs that had titles that were close to the artist’s name, instead of exact matches, another track from that debut – “Hey! Bo Diddley” would also make the list.
1 – “Iron Maiden (1979)
Back in the late 1970s, Iron Maiden would often play “Phantom of the Opera” as the penultimate song on their pre-encore set. Ten years later, “Hallowed be Thy Name” was the standard second-to-last song. And fifteen years after that, you’d probably hear “Fear of the Dark” in that slot. Just last year, they were routinely playing “Number of the Beast” just before the final tune.
But no matter what they have played as their penultimate song, they always close the main set with their self-titled classic. It opened their first EP in ’79 and closed their first full studio album a year later. It doesn’t matter whether Bruce Dickinson is singing or whether Maiden’s original vocalist Paul Di’Anno is doing it (as he did on the original recording), I know of no song that declares who a band is any better than this one.