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Bands That Named Themselves After Songs

Bands That Named Themselves After Songs

March 23, 2016

You would think that more bands would name themselves after lines in songs that they like—after all, who’s a bigger fan of music than musicians?
Bands That Named Themselves After Songs

1.

Lady Gaga gets her name from the Queen hit “Radio Ga Ga.”

2.

The Australian alternative rock band Jet (“Are You Gonna Be My Girl”) named itself after the song “Jet” by Paul McCartney’s band Wings. (Paul McCartney wrote the song “Jet” about his jet-black Labrador retriever.)

3.

When she formed a band in the 1970s in Ohio, Chrissie Hynde named it the Pretenders, after the Platters classic “The Great Pretender.”

4.

There have been several successful rock bands all named after songs by the influential ‘80s British band the Smiths. Among them: Pretty Girls Make Graves (from “Pretty Girls Make Graves,” which Smiths singer Morrissey cribbed from Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums), Panic at the Disco (from “Panic”), and Shakespears Sister (from “Shakespeare’s Sister”).

5.

Once called On a Friday, the British band renamed itself Radiohead after the 1986 Talking Heads song “Radio Head.”

6.

The punk band Dum Dum Girls got its name from Iggy Pop’s “Dum Dum Boys.” Members changed the name, since they’re an all-female group.

7.

The heavy metal band Judas Priest has been together for 40 years, a career almost as long as its inspiration: Bob Dylan, and his song “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.”

8.

The 1980s band ABC has a pretty generic name, right? Actually, it’s from “ABC,” the hit by the Jackson 5.

9.

The English electronic music duo the Chemical Brothers named themselves…after one of its own songs. Originally called the Dust Brothers, they heard there was already a successful duo called that, so a name change was required. They took their own song, “Chemical Beat,” used the first word, and kept the “Brothers.”