OR: One Percussionist’s Mission to Uncover the True Meanings of Aphex Twin Track Titles.
I haven’t done it much myself, but I imagine that naming a piece of music must be insanely frustrating. There’s this delicate balance required in order to be taken seriously, and of course you can never please everyone. Don’t be to literal (or too vague). Don’t be too cold (or too sentimental). Don’t be too blunt (or too long-winded). The critic maybe thinks it’s clever, the fan maybe thinks it’s pretentious, or the other way around. Your family doesn’t get it (or possibly even worse: they get it way too clearly). You could always play it safe with the least offensive thing possible, but there are bound to be very few of those options left.
Maybe it’s all the babies the members of this band have brought into the world recently, but I can’t help compare it to the arduous process of picking a name for a baby. Don’t be too traditional (or too trendy). Don’t be too religious (or too hippie-dippy). Certainly don’t be naive enough to think that whatever name you choose is always going to invoke the same association it did the day you choose it: after all, there was a Roosevelt named Kermit, but of course there’s also a The Frog named Kermit. You could always just do what everyone else is doing, but does the world really need another Chloe?
When it comes to naming music and babies, I feel like it takes a brilliant linguist or a sort-of-crazy-person to do something truly original. I’ll start with the linguist:
