Band Name Bureau
In 2005, during my first year at The A.V. Club, I appended a list of terrible band names to my ballot for our year-end “best music” roundup. What started as a throwaway joke evolved into the Year in Band Names, one of the site’s most enduring annual columns.
In 2020, I expanded that idea into Band Name Bureau, an ongoing newsletter dedicated to cataloging, celebrating, and making light of band names from around the world.
While the newsletter is playful, it uses names as a side door into talking about music. The highfalutin take is that Band Name Bureau explores language, genre signaling, identity, and how artists position themselves in a fractured cultural landscape. Even when your name is, say, Fartbarf.
Band names aren’t trivial; they’re branding, storytelling, and ambition condensed into a few words—and I live for the ones that don’t consider any of that.
What You’ll Find in Band Name Bureau
Regular roundups of weird, funny, regrettable, and outright terrible names of real bands.
Deep dives into origins of famous band’s names, along with other stories looking into the names famous bands almost chose.
Interviews—with artists about their names, and with critics, comedians, and noteworthy people.
Annual reviews stretching back two decades to assess the bands that formed that year.
Lots of fun nonsense.
Start Here
In the Audit, I have career-spanning conversations with artists about the names of their projects. Who better to interview than a lifer like J. Robbins, whose career spans decades and includes names like Jawbox, Office of Future Plans, Government issue, and more?
“The Story of” is my regular series that dives deep into noteworthy names. For Fartbarf, it’s an exploration of self-sabotage, expectation-setting, and the strange power of a deliberately terrible name.
A perfect addition to the canon of the genre
This edition explores a bunch of “yeah-no” names and the aesthetics of casual detachment.