Other times though, it just seems to make no sense, and indeed, the "solution" is invariably less logical or creative than the original title.
Here are three quick examples off the top of my noggin:
THE ROD STEWART ALBUM (1969) Rod Stewart
In Great Britian, Stewart's debut solo album was titled AN OLD RAINCOAT WON'T EVER LET YOU DOWN, after one of the songs on the LP. It's a great name, something that sounds both frivolous and profound at the same time, like the very best English aphorisms. The original even boasted a very nice cover. There's really no logical reason why Mercury Records made such a drastic change. It's not as if Stewart was already well known in America, so highlighting the fact that this was his first solo album would have meant anything to anyone. Stewart was known by some fans in the U.S. as the lead singer of the Jeff Beck Group, but as the name suggests, Beck was the real star of that assemblage.
So, between the uninspiring name and the blandly generic cover, it might have been easy to overlook this album altogether. And that would have been a shame, since it's a great record, containing such gems as "Handbags and Gladrags" and Rod's astounding cover of "Street Fighting Man".
PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE (1978) Nick Lowe
What does this title even mean? It sounds like something that would have been used for one of those late '60s choral groups like the Ray Coniff Singers or the Mike Curb Congregation (two of Richard Nixon's favorite "rock and roll" outfits...which tells you everything you need to know about them). The original UK title...JESUS OF COOL...captured the New Wave esthetic perfectly. However, Columbia Records feared that a rock album with the name of Jesus in the title would anger Bible Belters, thus the title change.
Of course, they feared backlash over the album's original name, but they left a song on it called "Little Hitler". Because who could find offense in that, right?
SECURITY (1982) Peter Gabriel
Following his departure from Genesis, Peter Gabriel released a solo album in 1977, and he called it PETER GABRIEL. He released his second album in 1978, and called it PETER GABRIEL. He put out a third album in 1980, and called it PETER GABRIEL.
Do you see a pattern emerging? Fans did, and it didn't seem to confuse them any...each album was met by better and better sales.
But for his fourth LP, called PETER GABRIEL in the UK, Geffen Records suddenly seemed to think that naming yet another album after the person who made that album would just be too perplexing for American audiences. Thus, they slapped a sticker on the sleeve that identified it as SECURITY.
Beyond the fact that fans up until then seemed to have had no problem differentiating between the various albums (particularly as they all had distinctly different covers), it's woefully clear that Geffen didn't understand what Gabriel had been doing. It's not as if he was so egomaniacal that he needed to name every record after himself so that when he spoke about them, he could refer to himself in the third person. Rather, Gabriel saw his solo records as something of an 'audio magazine'. And like a magazine (such as Time or Rolling Stone), the name stays the same with each issue, even though the interior material changes.
Faced with Geffen's action, Gabriel gave up the practice, and then proceeded to release albums with some of the shortest titles ever: SO, US, UP.
