The perils of the pretentious album title

[vansmack]

The perils of the pretentious album title
 May 5, 2008 2:30 PM
 
 The new Coldplay album won't be out for another six weeks but I can already tell you that it's going to be a big disappointment, and possibly their lowest selling album ever. The reason? Not the music, the title: Viva la Vida, or Death and All His Friends.
 
 Previously known for snappy titles - Parachutes, X&Y, A Rush of Blood to the Head - this time they've opted for something grander. They may well look back and wish they'd called it X&Y&Z.
 
 It's a little-noted fact that many bands who have enjoyed great success with a landmark album are unable to resist giving the follow-up a name they feel hints at something more sophisticated. Thus, X&Y is followed by Viva la Vida, or Death and All His Friends, which, according to Chris Martin, was inspired by a Frida Kahlo painting.
 
 "It just felt right," he says. And, fair enough, you can see where he's coming from. On Planet Coldplay, where singers are married to Oscar-winning actresses and have the ear of politicians, everyday life must seem a long way away. They are a group of such commercial significance that when the release of X&Y was delayed, EMI Records had to issue a profit warning. When it finally arrived, it became the biggest selling album of 2005. So you can follow their thinking - why not give the new record a name that says something about the unfathomable place their success has taken them, however inscrutable and pretentious it might seem to others?
 
 Sadly there is a sizeable amount of evidence to suggest that such a decision shows a band folling introspection at the expense of commone sense and, it would seem fair to point out, record sales too.
 
 Just look at this list of bands who, having enjoyed great success with an album, made an introspective (ie, less commercial, less critically acclaimed) follow-up and saddled it with a name whose up-its-own-arseness will haunt them always.
 
 The Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.(reached No 7; followed Siamese Dream, No 4)
 
 Dandy Warhols: Odditorium or Warlords of Mars (67; followed Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, 20)
 
 Public Enemy: Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age ( 12; Apocalypse 91,
 
 Fiona Apple: read the entire 90-word title here (46; Fast as You Can, 33)
 
 Transvision Vamp: Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble (didn't chart; Velveteen, 1)
 
 This is why I urge Coldplay to change that Viva la Vida business while they can; it's for their own good.

[walkonby]

who sucks more?  coldplay or oasis?  let me think.

[Frank Gallagher]

Originally posted by walkonby:
  who sucks more?  coldplay or oasis?  let me think.

Let me ponder on that one a while.....a bunch of whiney arsed, pretentious wankers whose lead singer married some skinny bitch of a b-actress then proceeded named their child after fruit.
 
 OR
 
 A bunch of rock musicians in it's purest form with two brothers who just can't seem to get along. One who is extremely talented while the other is a talentless prick so they stick him up front as the lead singer, because when they were kids their mum obviously said, "Noel..if you want to start a band that's fine but you have to let little Liam join in as well".

[bearman🐻]

Oasis. For a little while they were great...one of the most boring shows you'd ever see, but I'll take them any day over Chris Martin.

[sweetcell]

the author came up with five examples to back his vapid assertion.  sounds like statistical rigor to me.
 
 seriously, of all the things one can attack coldplay for... i guess just limiting oneself to the pretentiousness of the title alone would have made for a very short article.  this way, the author made his word count (with the added bonus of not coming across like a petulant teenager repeating the same hypocritical empty drivel, AKA brian walalce).

[xneverwherex]

Earth to the Dandy Warhols comes out on May 19th    
 
 And their new song can be heard here
 http://bits-8.topspin.net/nin/TheWorldThePeopleTogether.mp3
 
 I just *love* it!

[Brian_Wallace]

Originally posted by 47 YEAR OLD VIRGIN:
   

Originally posted by walkonby:
  who sucks more?  coldplay or oasis?  let me think.

Let me ponder on that one a while.....A bunch of rock musicians in it's purest form with two brothers who just can't seem to get along. One who is extremely talented... [/b]

Who?  Paul?  Paul Gallagher?  Noel Gallagher is talented the way a Xerox copier is talented.  If you think rewriting "Dear Prudence" sixty times is talented...  Noel Gallagher is an unimaginative plagiarist.  All rock n roll is plagiarism in a sense but what does it say about a band whose every album was successively worse than the previous one?
 
 Actually, I don't think the pretentious album theory works.  I'd say "Mellon Collie" was more successful and had more hits than "Siamese Dream" did.  Maybe Jules can back me up on that.  It WAS pretentious but all Smashing Pumpkins albums are.
 
 Brian

[vansmack]

I still maintain that if Mellon Collie was a single disc instead of two, it would have been the album by which all other 90s albums were measured, but there's no need to rehash this.

[walkonby]

Originally posted by vansmack:
  I still maintain that if Mellon Collie was a single disc instead of two, it would have been the album by which all other 90s albums were measured, but there's no need to rehash this.

how about use your illusion?

[bearman🐻]

Vansmack, I would say that's a fair argument, but the funny thing is that if I narrowed it down to a single LP, it would probably include most of the songs that other people would have left off.

[Brian_Wallace]

If you've got it, flaunt it.  Sure, most albums are good at the forty minute mark and great at the thirty minute mark ("Is This It?"...ummm...The Lemonheads' "It's a Shame About Ray") but every band deserves to make a self-indulgent double record.  Every band deserves that much cocaine.
 
 Brian

[Julian, Alleged Computer F**kface]

Originally posted by vansmack:
 
 Just look at this list of bands who, having enjoyed great success with an album, made an introspective (ie, less commercial, less critically acclaimed) follow-up and saddled it with a name whose up-its-own-arseness will haunt them always.
 
 The Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.(reached No 7; followed Siamese Dream, No 4)
 

This marks the first time anyone has ever considered MCIS "less commercial" then Siamese Dream.
 
 First of all, MCIS reached (and debuted at) #1 in the US and #4 in the UK, not #7 as the author claims. Siamese Dream only reached #4 in the UK; it topped at #10 on the US charts. (Pisces Iscariot, incidentally, reached #4 in the US.)
 
 However, even using his inaccurate figures, his argument is absurd. That MCIS (supposedly) reached only #7, whereas Siamese (supposedly) reached #4 is super-ceded by the fact MCIS sold over 9.4 million copies compared to Siamese's 4.6 million (both figures US sales), which would make it MORE commercial. But hey, never let stats get in the way of your statistical analysis, huh?
 
 And I agree with Smackie: let me par down MCIS to a single disk so critics can't slag off the "filler" and it's the de facto album of the ninety's. Hell, I think it is already, but as he said, that's an issue for another thread.

[bearman🐻]

Hey, what am I thinking...wasn't "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog-Flavored Water" the most successful Limp Bizkit record? There goes the author's theory. Of course, that title is probably less pretentious and more full-blown moronic. But in Limp Bizkit language, I would say it's pretentious.

[Julian, Alleged Computer F**kface]

I would also argue that (What's The Story) Morning Glory is a more pretentious title then Definitely Maybe yet WTSMG proved to be an even bigger hit then DM.

[Relaxer]

I don't know how you beat "Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness" by the good sirs at Coheed & Cambria