Quit titling yourself! Quit titling yourself!

I love albums. I own close to 500 of them on last count, and that's just my cds. I also appreciate a clever album title. Finally the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid, Bad Music For Bad People, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, Stripper Christmas Summer Weekend, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (get it?), etc. But "self titled" albums bother me. For starters, aren't all albums technically self titled? I mean, if the band themselves aren't naming their own albums, who is? It's not like someone just burst through the recording studio doors and said, "Right! Your album shall be called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!" and the Beatles just had to roll with it. "Oi! Pink Floyd! This album shall be called The Wall! Better start building a concept around that, mates!"

Self titled just seems lazy. I mean really... Albums have an average of around 13 songs. Each of those songs have a title. You really can't pull out one more title from your magic hat of creativity? Your creativity is completely tapped out after 13 titles? Why not just name the album after one of the songs? Thriller was one of the bast selling albums of all time, and it's just named after one of the songs on the album. Or go meta with it and actually name your album Self Titled? That's at least kind of funny. Or call it Album Number 2, or Album Number 3, etc. No, instead they just leave the title blank, so fans have to assign nicknames to the album when they want to talk about it. Thus "Metallica" becomes "The Black Album."

And "Weezer" becomes "The Red Album."

                                                      And "Weezer" becomes "The Green Album."

                                                     And "Weezer" becomes "The Blue Album."

Yes, Weezer has THREE self titled albums to date. "What's your favorite Weezer album?" "Well, I like Weezer, but it's not as good as Weezer... Still, they'll never top Weezer."
Why not just actually name the album "The Red Album," "The Green Album", and "The Blue Album"? That idea worked for Primus:

                                                             
Why "The Brown Album"? Because forcing your fans to assign nicknames to your album because you're too lazy to name it yourself is a bunch of crap.

And then there's this album:

                                                    
It has no official title. Some fans call it Zoso, because the "word" Zoso appears in the album booklet artwork. Some fans call it symbols, because of the symbols in the album booklet artwork. Some fans call it Zeppelin IV, because it's their 4th album, and it was preceeded by Zeppelin II and Zeppelin III. But there's no Zeppelin V or Zeppelin VI. In fact, the original record didn't have the bands name anywhere on it. And the whole "nickname the album based on the cover color" idea doesn't work here. The cracked drywall album? Also, Led Zeppelin already had a self titled album before this one:

                                            
So do you call that album "Horrific Photograph of the Hindenburg Tragedy," and the other album "Old Man With a Bundle of Sticks On His Back"? Catchy titles there.

And then there's The Breeders. Their album ended up being called Title TK.

                                                 
Title TK is journalistic shorthand for "Title to come," as in this album is not yet titled. As in "The Breeders are recording a new album, (title TK), which will hit stores..." But somewhere along the line, someone thought the album was actually called Title TK, so it stuck. And the band just rolled with. Moral of the story: name your own albums, or someone else will.