It was one of the many issues that probably had managers and marketing people tearing their hair out during the 1980s.

What to name your album? It might be a low-risk strategy to name it after the first single – even better if that song is a big hit – or, if you were feeling clever, after a ‘pivotal’ album track.

But oftentimes 1980s acts went out on a limb, looking for a ‘poetic’ title, something ‘novel’, something… You get the picture.

Here’s a selection (to be regularly updated) of 1980s album titles that went off-piste. Some are pretentious, some weird, some have needless word repetition (hello Sting), some fudge punctuation or foreign words in an infuriating way, some are rubbish puns, some are desperate to shock, some are way too high-falutin’, some throw concepts together in a seemingly random way. But the reaction to most is: eh?

Of course a bad title didn’t stop some of these being great albums, though, tellingly, very few were big hits…

Talking With The Taxman About Poetry (Billy Bragg)

Three Hearts In The Happy Ending Machine (Daryl Hall)

The Secret Value Of Daydreaming (Julian Lennon)

Steve McQueen (Prefab Sprout)

Shooting Rubberbands At The Stars (Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians)

The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Mother’s Milk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays)

Into The Dragon (Bomb The Bass)

Angst In My Pants (Sparks)

Tennis (Chris Rea)

Love Over Gold (Dire Straits)

North Of A Miracle (Nick Heyward)

Misplaced Childhood (Marillion)

Script For A Jester’s Tear (Marillion)

Boys & Girls (Bryan Ferry)

Journeys To Glory (Spandau Ballet)

Through The Barricades (Spandau Ballet)

Seven And The Ragged Tiger (Duran Duran)

Big Thing (Duran Duran)

Modern Romans (The Call)

The Secret Of Association (Paul Young)

Shabooh Shoobah (INXS)

Remain In Light (Talking Heads)

If This Bass Could Only Talk (Stanley Clarke)

Blood & Chocolate (Elvis Costello)

A Salt With A Deadly Pepa (Salt’n’Pepa)

Splendido Hotel (Al Di Meola)

Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun (Dead Can Dance)

The Moon Looked Down And Laughed (Virgin Prunes)

Architecture & Morality (OMD)

The Dream Of The Blue Turtles (Sting)

In-No-Sense? Nonsense! (Art Of Noise)

In Square Circle (Stevie Wonder)

Lawyers In Love (Jackson Browne)

The Story Of A Young Heart (A Flock Of Seagulls)

The One Giveth, The Count Taketh Away (Bootsy Collins)

You Shouldn’t-Nuf Bit Fish (George Clinton)

All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (Pete Townshend)

Difficult Shapes And Passive Rhythms Some People Think It’s Fun To Entertain (China Crisis)

Working With Fire And Steel (China Crisis)

Franks Wild Years (Tom Waits)

So Red The Rose (Arcadia)

Café Bleu (The Style Council)

The F**king C*nts Treat Us Like Pricks (Flux Of Pink)

Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm (Joni Mitchell)

I, Assassin (Gary Numan)

Civilised Evil (Jean-Luc Ponty)

Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D’Arby

Children (The Mission)

Casa Loco (Steve Khan)

The First Of A Million Kisses (Fairground Attraction)

Bebop Moptop (Danny Wilson)

 

More crap 1980s album titles? Of course. Let us know in the comments below (particularly looking for more in the metal, Goth and prog genres).