Bad Company topped the album charts with its self-titled record on this date 40 years ago. The lack of an original title for the album was no big deal: Bands have often released their first album under their own title to establish the name, and had been doing so for a long time before Bad Company came around.
Something was different about Bad Company however: It also featured a track titled "Bad Company," meaning there was a song named after the band on the album named after the band. It seems like too much to handle but it went on to be the group's biggest hit. The group weren't the first nor would it be the last to try the same stunt. Music Times assembled a list of other groups that have liked a title just too much not to paste it on everything.
"Kool & The Gang" by Kool & The Gang from Kool & The Gang (1969)
"Kool & The Gang" served as the first song on Kool & The Gang's first album, as is common with self-titled-self-titled tracks. It's an instrumental track that pretty much sums up the band experience: plenty of horns, funky guitars traded by Claydes Smith and Woody Sparrow, plus a whole lot of banter going on in between. So although the track is titled "Kool & The Gang," it essentially serves the purpose of "Hey Guys, This Is Kool & The Gang and What They Sound Like." It served as a sales pitch as well, as it was the first single off the album.
"Black Sabbath" by Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath (1970)
Black Sabbath is one of the rare cases on this list where the progression seems to flow backwards. The actual inspiration for the song is muddled: Maybe it was a weird paranormal occurrence at Geezer Butler's house, maybe it was just copped from a Boris Karloff movie. Either way, the bassist wrote the song and soon after the band had changed its name from Earth (not metal) to Black Sabbath (metal) and kept the title for the album as well. Heavy metal will appear more than any other genre on this list, including Bad Company to some degree.
"Motorhead" by Motörhead from Motörhead (1977)
Motörhead wasn't supposed to be the heavy metal band's first album (its first recordings, On Parole, would be released a few years later) and "Motorhead" was a song before Motörhead was a band. Band leader Lemmy Kilmister had written and recorded the song "Motorhead" (note the lack of umlauts) with his previous group Hawkwind. Owning the rights, he recorded it again with his new band and released it as the first single, just to make sure the name stuck. Leaving the band's signature grammatical mark off the single was probably his gift to music writers everywhere in the typewriter era.
"Iron Maiden" by Iron Maiden from Iron Maiden (1980)
Iron Maiden was still figuring out the guitar dynamics thing on its self-titled debut album (Dave Murray and Adrian Smith would have it down by Number of The Beast) and it still featured the less-talented-than-Bruce-Dickinson vocalist Paul Di'Anno. For all the band didn't know how to do yet, it did know that an iron maiden was an awesome piece of medieval torture equipment that needed to be featured on its album, as well as in its title. Although the line "Iron Maiden can't be fought" certainly applies to the torture device, it seems that "Iron Maiden's gonna get you, no matter how far" seems to refer to the band itself. Who knows?
"Bad Religion" by Bad Religion from Bad Religion (1981)
Before releasing its debut album How Could Hell Be Any Worse punk group Bad Religion released a self-titled EP featuring a self-titled track. It's not at all affiliated with the Godsmack single of the same name that would emerge 18 years later but the themes are pretty dead-on. We're of the mind that releasing a song with the same name as your band on a self-titled album somewhat of an eye roll-inducing move but it seems better in this case since it's just an EP.
"Body Count" by Body Count from Body Count (1992)
Body Count took trends from heavy metal and introduced them to hip-hop...and we're not just referring to over-the-top violence and brutality. The "Body Count" of the song refers to the mounting death toll from violence in poor neighborhoods. The problem is that the self-titled track comes almost immediately following the album's first single "Body Count's In The House," the second single from the album, so the "Body Count"-as-song theme gets played out pretty early in the record. Two good tracks however.
"Run The Jewels" by Run The Jewels from Run The Jewels
We can't be sure if El-P and Killer Mike already had the name "Run The Jewels" established when it recorded the song of the same title. Either way they ran with it and Mike has continued to use the phrase "run the jewels" in other songs such as Banana Clippers and new single "Blockbuster Night Pt. 1" (the saying itself means to commit theft, and sometimes literally to refer to jewelry). We can only hope that Run The Jewels 2 features a track titled "Run The Jewels 2" when it comes out later this year.
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