It's not easy to pick a band name. After 60 years of rock & roll, everything has been taken. There's the Eagles and the Eagles of Death Metal, the Who and the Guess Who. There's Asia, Europe, Chicago, Boston and Kansas. If you want to pick a color and an animal, there's already White Lion and Whitesnake. If you like the word "wolf," get in line behind Wolfmother, Wolf Parade, We Are Wolves and Howlin' Wolf.
All this said, there's simply no excuse for picking a truly horrid band name, and rock is littered with them. Here are 13 bands with horrible names. Please note we aren't saying these bands suck, just their names. That'll become abundantly clear when you see the last group on the list.
Natalie Portman's Shaved Head
The 2005 movie V for Vendetta wasn't quite the massive box office success the filmmakers were aiming for, but it did introduce the the world to the Guy Fawkes mask commonly used by the activist group Anonymous. It also gave a bunch of high school kids from Seattle a really, really bad idea for a band name. Natalie Portman has no hair in V for Vendetta, so they named their band Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. Against all odds, the band became pretty popular even though they were hobbled by this horrid name. In 2010, they came to their senses and changed their name to Brite Futures.
"We chose our band name on a whim when we were still in high school," they said in a statement. "And 'Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head' has seen us through an unexpectedly amazing four years . . . But now it is summer once again, and time for a change. Also, it has recently come to our attention that our muse Ms. Portman is not so keen on us using her name in ours . . . so we feel it is time to move forward with a new name. We are Brite Futures."
The band broke up two years later. Turns out their futures weren't so brite.
Panic! At the Disco
This Las Vegas emo band is on this list solely because of that oddly placed exclamation mark. It introduced the idea of creative punctuation into the music world. They hit right around the same time as Portugal. The Man, and they certainly paved the way for Fun. They dropped the exclamation mark in 2008 when they released the Beatles-inspired Pretty. Odd. The fans went absolutely bonkers, and the exclamation came back in 2009. Sadly, their large fan base didn't come back, though a faithful cult still remains.
Confrontation Camp
Here's a pro tip for everybody: when you're known for saying viciously anti-Semitic things, naming your band Confrontation Camp probably isn't a good idea. But that's exactly what Public Enemy's Professor Griff named his 2000 side project with Chuck D. For those who don't remember, Griff infamously told the Washington Times in 1989 that "Jews are responsible for the majority of the wickedness in the world." He said he learned about it in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax book (loved by the Nazis) that didn't exactly paint African-Americans in the best light, either. The uproar from his comments caused a huge scandal and (temporarily) got him kicked out of Public Enemy. The whole thing had largely blown over by 2000, and few people raised a fuss when he named his band something that sounds awfully similar to "concentration camp." Still, it probably wasn't the best idea.
Dave Matthews Band
There are probably people with less exciting names in the world than Dave Matthews, but we've yet to hear about them. When Matthews formed a band in 1991, he could have called it anything. He didn't have to name it Dave Matthews Band to let everyone know he was in charge. Trent Reznor (a much cooler name than Dave Matthews) went with Nine Inch Nails, yet everyone knew he was the mastermind behind that group. But Dave Matthews went with the Dave Matthews Band, and forever we're stuck with it. I guess he's smart, though. There's no way anyone can fire him, though we imagine John Geils felt that way once too – until the J. Geils Band fired him last year. Poor guy.
The Beatles
Before you start writing furious comments, stand back and think about this stupid band name. The Beatles is a dumb pun. That's all. They took the idea of naming themselves after an insect like the Crickets, but changed the spelling for a pun on musical beats. It's a simple as that. There's no deep hidden meaning. There's no wisdom here. Just a pun that might have provoked a very mild chuckle back in 1962. We accept it because we've heard it 50,000 times and they're the best group in history, but that doesn't mean they don't have a stupid name.
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All this said, there's simply no excuse for picking a truly horrid band name, and rock is littered with them. Here are 13 bands with horrible names. Please note we aren't saying these bands suck, just their names. That'll become abundantly clear when you see the last group on the list.
Natalie Portman's Shaved Head
The 2005 movie V for Vendetta wasn't quite the massive box office success the filmmakers were aiming for, but it did introduce the the world to the Guy Fawkes mask commonly used by the activist group Anonymous. It also gave a bunch of high school kids from Seattle a really, really bad idea for a band name. Natalie Portman has no hair in V for Vendetta, so they named their band Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. Against all odds, the band became pretty popular even though they were hobbled by this horrid name. In 2010, they came to their senses and changed their name to Brite Futures.
"We chose our band name on a whim when we were still in high school," they said in a statement. "And 'Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head' has seen us through an unexpectedly amazing four years . . . But now it is summer once again, and time for a change. Also, it has recently come to our attention that our muse Ms. Portman is not so keen on us using her name in ours . . . so we feel it is time to move forward with a new name. We are Brite Futures."
The band broke up two years later. Turns out their futures weren't so brite.
Panic! At the Disco
This Las Vegas emo band is on this list solely because of that oddly placed exclamation mark. It introduced the idea of creative punctuation into the music world. They hit right around the same time as Portugal. The Man, and they certainly paved the way for Fun. They dropped the exclamation mark in 2008 when they released the Beatles-inspired Pretty. Odd. The fans went absolutely bonkers, and the exclamation came back in 2009. Sadly, their large fan base didn't come back, though a faithful cult still remains.
Confrontation Camp
Here's a pro tip for everybody: when you're known for saying viciously anti-Semitic things, naming your band Confrontation Camp probably isn't a good idea. But that's exactly what Public Enemy's Professor Griff named his 2000 side project with Chuck D. For those who don't remember, Griff infamously told the Washington Times in 1989 that "Jews are responsible for the majority of the wickedness in the world." He said he learned about it in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax book (loved by the Nazis) that didn't exactly paint African-Americans in the best light, either. The uproar from his comments caused a huge scandal and (temporarily) got him kicked out of Public Enemy. The whole thing had largely blown over by 2000, and few people raised a fuss when he named his band something that sounds awfully similar to "concentration camp." Still, it probably wasn't the best idea.
Dave Matthews Band
There are probably people with less exciting names in the world than Dave Matthews, but we've yet to hear about them. When Matthews formed a band in 1991, he could have called it anything. He didn't have to name it Dave Matthews Band to let everyone know he was in charge. Trent Reznor (a much cooler name than Dave Matthews) went with Nine Inch Nails, yet everyone knew he was the mastermind behind that group. But Dave Matthews went with the Dave Matthews Band, and forever we're stuck with it. I guess he's smart, though. There's no way anyone can fire him, though we imagine John Geils felt that way once too – until the J. Geils Band fired him last year. Poor guy.
The Beatles
Before you start writing furious comments, stand back and think about this stupid band name. The Beatles is a dumb pun. That's all. They took the idea of naming themselves after an insect like the Crickets, but changed the spelling for a pun on musical beats. It's a simple as that. There's no deep hidden meaning. There's no wisdom here. Just a pun that might have provoked a very mild chuckle back in 1962. We accept it because we've heard it 50,000 times and they're the best group in history, but that doesn't mean they don't have a stupid name.
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