Bands that are just starting out may change their name for many reasons: perhaps their style changed, they lost a musician and wanted to change the name to reflect the new band line-up, or they want to be more marketable.
But after a band reaches a certain point of success, changing their name becomes more and more of a risk.
Once you start to build up a fanbase, changing your name means changing a fundamental part of who the band is, and there is a chance that some fans may drop off.
It may seem trivial, but a band name is the most prominent and front-facing part of the band.
Some people can name members of the band, and more can name their more famous songs, but the most amount of people can remember the band name.
So why would a band ever change their name?
Well here’s 5 bands that changed their names for 5 very different reasons.
5. The Beat/The English beat
The Beat are an English second-wave ska band that were formed in the 1970s. The band received success with their first album, featuring some of their best and most well-known songs: “Hand off, she’s mine” and “Mirror in the bathroom”.
The bands logo of the dancing girl has become a very well-known image within the ska scene.
Fun Fact: the inspiration of the dancing girl was a trans woman, Brigitte Bond, who was a huge ska fan and artist. It’s always nice to know that Ska fans have been supporting Trans people since the 1970s, even if they didn’t realise it.
However, in America the band was known as The English Beat. This wasn’t because the band liked this better, but rather it was a legal distinction.
This is because there was already a successful American band called The Beat. This was a rock/power pop band formed by artist Paul Collins. Known for songs like “Rock ‘n’ Roll Girl” and “Let Me Into Your Life”.
So, the Ska band was called The Beat in Europe and The English Beat in America, since there was already a band called The Beat in America.
This means that the power pop band was known as The Beat in America, but was renamed to Paul Collins’ Beat in Europe because the ska band was already known as The Beat there.
Two bands each using multiple names depending on the continent!
4. Prince/The Artist Formerly Known As Prince
This may be the most unique band name on this list, and the name change is either the greatest name change in history, or monumentally stupid, depending on who you ask.
Prince was a pop artist who was hugely successful in the 1980s. A gay icon (who has a complicated history with the LGBTQIA+ community, to say the least…), Prince was a huge artist,
A chart topping, worldwide success, Prince is most well known for songs like ‘Little Red Corvette’ and ‘1999’.
However, in 1993 he suddenly fancied a change. A name change. One of the strangest name changes in history.
He changed his name to a symbol. The symbol has several elements, mainly combining the male and female symbols. This hinted at him being genderfluid, something that had come up in song lyrics in the past, but was never really commented on by the artist.
I’m not a woman
I Would Die 4 U, Prince
I’m not a man
I am something that you’ll never understand
I’ll never beat you
I’ll never lie
And if you’re evil, I’ll forgive you by and by
However, since the new name was a symbol, and therefore unpronounceable, Prince instead became known as ‘The Artist formerly known as Prince’.
Is that a move of artistic genius, or a very dumb, headline-grabbing publicity stunt?
Or, was it a secret thing thing?
Some people suggest that the name change, which was a legal name change, was actually a way for him to welch on his record contract, legally.
While he said in interviews that it was simply his way of starting fresh and separating who he is now compared to who he had been in the past, the name change did come just after his record company had signed a new deal with him.
His record company Warner Brothers allegedly asked him to stop putting out so much material, since they worried he was flooding the market and reducing the value of his own music.
So he got around this by changing his name and no longer releasing music under the name Prince. Allegedly. I really can’t state that this is a true story. But if it is, it was a pretty clever ploy!
3. Blink/Blink 182
Blink 182 is one of the best bands with a totally nonsense name.
The pop punk band was formed in the early 90s in California by Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Scott Raynor. They are best known for songs like ‘First date‘ and ‘What’s My Age Again?‘
As the band was starting out as a small garage band, they played under several names, including Duck Tape and Figure 8. Eventually however, they decided on a name: Blink.
They has finally chosen a name and they were going to stick with it!
For a while, anyway.
They actually ended up having to change their name to Blink 182 after the release of their debut album, Cheshire Cat, in 1995.
Like The Beat, the band had to change their name because another band was already going by the name Blink.
This was the Irish pop rock band, Blink, who had hits with ‘It’s Not My Fault‘ and ‘Going to Nepal‘.
After Cheshire Cat was released, the Irish band actually sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Californian band.
The American band then randomly chose to add the number ‘182’ to the end of the name to make it distinct, everyone was happy and they carried on.
There have been rumours and speculation around where the number ‘182’ came from.
Was it because that how many times the F word is said in the movie Scarface? (No, it’s 226)
Was it how many times Mark can blink in one minute (He CAN, as proved on Nevermind the Buzzcocks, but that’s not where it comes from)
Or, OR, was it simply a random number that sounded good? Yeah, it was probably that.
So what happened to the Irish band called Blink?
They have released 4 albums since their inception in 1991, with the latest being in 2021. This puts the average time between albums as 7.5 years.
That’s maybe not enough to get features in the Wikipedia article for the longest time between album releases (there really is a Wikipedia article for everything, isn’t there?) but it’s still pretty impressive!
2. Slaves/SOFT PLAY
In 2012, Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent started a punk rock band called Slaves. The band consisted of vocals, drums and guitar, performed by the two musicians.
The band saw a lot of success with songs like ‘Sockets’ and ‘Where’s Your Car Debbie’.
However, the band suddenly changed their name in 2015 to SOFT PLAY.
The change was not due to a copyright issue, but rather an ethical one.
The band had been receiving backlash from people who took issue with two white guys calling their band Slaves.
Laurie Vincent said that the band name was not chosen to be offensive or controversial, but because it was a word that was abrasive and got your attention.
However, eventually the band agreed that their name was problematic and they didn’t want to have to keep defending something that they now realised wasn’t really in line with their ethics.
So, in 2022 the band changed their name to SOFT PLAY, which seems to be the exact opposite on the spectrum of problematic names. Who can have an issue with soft play, even if it is written like its being shouted?
This mean that the band will have to start marketing themselves again and build up any brand recognition they had, but maybe now people can start talking about their music again instead of just their name.
1. Black Sabbath/The Polka Talk Blues Band
Black Sabbath invented heavy metal. They are pioneers of than entire music genre. Some of their biggest hits include ‘Paranoid‘ and ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath‘.
And yet, at one point in time they had maybe the least-metal name ever: The Polka Tulk Blues Band.
The thing is, there is. Perfectly good reason why they had a very non-metal name: they weren’t a metal band.
The band actually stated playing more blues and jazz music. This influence stayed with the band even through to their early songs. Several songs on paranoid have distinct jazz and blues influences.
There exists very little of their true musical roots, except for a live recording of ‘A song for Jim’. It is a lengthy instrumental piece with flute and a drum solo. The whole song is very hippie-vibes and very Woodstock.
If you have ever heard a Black Sabbath song, listen to this song and see if you would EVER guess it was recorded by the band that would become Black Sabbath.
The band quickly abandoned the name The Polka Talk Blues Band for the name Earth. This name didn’t last very long either however and they eventually landed on Black Sabbath, taken from an Italian horror film that was playing across the street from their recording studio.
So Black Sabbath changed their name from the The Polka Talk Blues Band for a very simple reason: they were no longer a blues band.
(And also it was a bad name.)
Wrap Up
Bands can change their name for many reasons: legal reasons, they thought of a better name or they’ve just out-grown the original name.
There’s a LOT of bands that have changed their names, as this Wikipedia page attests to.
(Seriously, there really is a wikipedia page for everything.)
Its always a risk when chasing your name that it will exclude or alienate your existing fans, but sometimes you just have to change the name to something that better suits the band.
