10 Different Types Of Bad Band Names That Suck

Picking a band name isn’t an exact science. Sometimes it’s a spur-of-the-moment type of thing, and sometimes it’s a deliberate and carefully crafted process. Ideally, bands would think of their names as a quick and concise examination of their music, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes, the need for attention and a desire to be ironic trumps logic. Bad band names come in all shapes and sizes, so we’ve separated them into 10 categories and singled out the worst of the worst.

Caveat: we’re only commenting on the band’s name, not the quality of their music.

10. Worst Band Name That’s Intentionally Misspelled

Winner: Limp Bizkit

Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst had a dog named Bizkit, who walked everywhere with a limp.

Durst, seeing the potential in this confluence of factors, decided Limp Bizkit was just random and perfect enough to convey rap-metal.

Honorable Mention: Phish, Y Kant Tori Read

9. Worst Band Name Involving Numbers

Winner: 808 State

Allegedly, 808 State took the 808 from the Roland TR-808 drum machine, and the State from God knows where.

Putting them together makes their band sound like a rhyming sector of a galaxy that’s too boring and too far away for Kirk and Spock to explore.

Honorable Mention: Blink 182, Matchbox 20

8. Worst Band Name That’s One Syllable

Winner: Crunt

Crunt was only around for a couple years in the mid-90s and never really made enough of a splash to make a decent Wikipedia profile.

We’ll just assume they thought it’d be hilariously grunge if they randomly took the word ‘cunt’ and put a letter in it to make it a different word with the same connotation.

Honorable Mention: Keane

7. Worst Band Name With An Exclamation Point

Winner: !!!

!!!, according to the band themselves, refers to the subtitles from the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy that pop up whenever a Kalahari bushman makes a ‘click’ sound with his throat. It’s pronounced by repeating any monosyllabic sound three times… and probably tapping your heels whereby you will be whisked away to a magical land where every band name is needlessly confusing.

Honorable Mention: Panic! At The Disco, Oh No!, Oh My! (Now known simply as Oh No Oh My), Wow, Owls!

6. Worst Band Name That Would Make A Four-Year Old Laugh

Winner: Kajagoogoo

As you might guess, ‘kajagoogoo’ is the phonetic spelling of the noise that usually comes out of a baby’s mouth when you dangle somthing shiny in front of it.

This is a bad name because simply saying it makes you sound like the stupidest person in the room.

Honorable Mention: Goo Goo Dolls, Showaddywaddy

5. Worst Band Name About Dogs Dying

Winner: Dogs Die In Hot Cars

If your name carries the possibility of making little kids cry and prematurely opening them up to the sad, lonely, twisted world that is being an adult, then you know you’ve done something wrong.

Was ‘Santa’s Just a Regular Fat Guy in a Suit’ taken?

Honorable Mention: Ken Dodds Dads Dogs Dead

4. Worst Band Name About Sex Organs

Winner: Anal Cunt

For commercial purposes, they’re also known as both AxCx and A.C.. Of all the bands listed here, A.C. probably took the biggest risk with their name, and couldn’t care any more less what kind of baggage it comes with. It’s about as non-commercial as you can get, just like the band themselves.

Honorable Mention: The Hooters, Crazy P (formerly known as Crazy Penis), Cock and Ball Torture

3. Worst Band Name That Reminds You Of Your Childhood

Winner: The Mr. T Experience

Any band who’d dare invoke the name that beat the sh*t out of Rocky in Rocky III will inevitably sound idiotic when people actually see them and realize they aren’t muscular, mohawked black men with no tolerance for jibba jabba.

Honorable Mention: Atreyu, Au Revoir Simone (it’s from Pee Wee Herman), Toto

2. Worst Band Name That Makes No Goddamn Sense

Winner: Hoobastank

To quote lead singer Doug Robb: ‘It doesn’t mean anything. And it’s really cool – it’s one of those old high school inside-joke words that didn’t really mean anything, and people started throwing meanings to it and everything, and when we started we were still in high school and it fit at the time.’ Robb, just because you did it in high school doesn’t mean you have to do it now. What kind of world would this be if everybody kept living their lives playing nintendo and mooning the drive-through guy? Wait…that would be an awesome world. Disregard that analogy.

Honorable Mention: Chumbawamba, :wumpscut:

1.  Worst Band Name That Is Even Hated By Its Own Band

Winner: Green Day

The name allegedly comes from a song lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong wrote about smoking pot. Whenever the band or their group of friends had some primo grass to smoke, they would declare it a ‘green day’. Sometimes, the man is right when he tells you that getting high leads to bad decisions.

Honorable Mention: The Smashing Pumpkins

Most of the above-mentioned acts didn’t have the luxury of the internet when they came up with their names. Just like everything else, the internet has made coming up with a band name easier and more soulless with sites like namepistol.com and bandnamemaker.com. Give us a post if you can come up with something fit for one of the ten categories, or know about a band that should’ve made the list.