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The Politics of Nomenclature

2006; Wiley; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1524-2226.2006.00073.x

1533-1598

Ian Inglis,

Historical and Scientific Studies

Philosophers have long debated the relationship between the world and the language we use when we try to describe and understand the world. Whether grounded in metaphysical, epistemological, structuralist, or postmodernist terms, such discussions revolve, one way or another, around one inescapable observation, aptly summarized some 70 years ago by A. J. Ayer: “We cannot, in our language, refer to the sensible properties of a thing without introducing a word or phrase which appears to stand for the thing itself” (Ayer 56). In practice, what this means is that to attain and demonstrate knowledge of something, we must first name it. While the capacity to impose names thus empowers us, it simultaneously constrains us, because we are restricted to talking and thinking about the world only in the terms that (our) language permits. “Our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language that we use. The concepts we have settle for us the form of the experience we have of the world” (Winch 15). This is as true for the routine relationships we have with the objects and activities of everyday behavior as it is for the more intangible conditions, emotions, and ethical systems that shape our personal and social lives. A telling example of this emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century when manufacturers, conscious of the commercial need to distinguish their product from that of their competitors, began to market packaged goods under specific brand names, rather than under the generic labels of “salt,”“flour,”“tea,”“coffee,” and so on. Patent medicines and tobaccos were among the first goods to be (regionally) identified and promoted in this way and were soon followed by a wide variety of household commodities—Bird's custard powder, Cadbury's cocoa, Robin starch, Colman's mustard. Improvements in transport, production processes, and packaging, and developments in trademark laws and advertising—particularly after the First World War—confirmed the significance of brand names. As the marketing industry is eager to point out, brands fulfill a wide range of functions and perform a variety of roles—ownership, identification, information, imagery, reassurance, differentiation, association, and symbolization (Cowley; Crainer; Franzen and Bouwman; Southgate). One hundred years on from that formative period in brand marketing, the products of popular music may be seen to be uniquely susceptible to the kind of pressures faced generally by other commodities. As they strive for commercial success within an intensely competitive market in which an overwhelming majority of records fail to sell in sufficient quantities to recoup their production/promotion costs, and in which the “life expectancy” of new bands tends to be measured in weeks or months rather than years or decades, the nomenclature of performers in rock and pop has become a central component in their overall presentation. More especially, it may be used “to organize the music's meaning and its consumption” (Street 100). Just as many household goods have been subjected to the imposition of new brand names in the search for increased profits and/or new markets (Opal Fruits to Starburst sweets; Jif to Cif cleaning fluid; Olivio to Bertolli margarine; Darkie to Darlie toothpaste), so too the history of popular music is littered with comparable changes of name, undertaken for similar reasons (the Vipers—the Drifters—the Shadows; the N'Betweens—Ambrose Slade—Slade; the Four Aims—the Four Tops; the High Numbers—the Who; the Quarrymen—Johnny & the Moondogs—the Silver Beetles—the Beatles; the New Yardbirds—Led Zeppelin; the Primettes—the Supremes; the Scorpions—the Spectres—Traffic Jam—Status Quo). In terms of its content, the choice of name, for any group or band, may be shaped by a number of factors. It may reflect geographic location (the Detroit Spinners, Chicago, the New York Dolls). It may be a family name (the Jackson Five, the Osmonds). It may derive from the individual names of one or more group members (Manfred Mann, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Abba, Fleetwood Mac). It may point, directly or indirectly, toward a particular musical genre (Metallica, the Stranglers, the Damned, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band). It may be a homage to another performer (the Hollies, the Rolling Stones). It may be chosen to offend (the Slits, Dead Kennedys, the Sex Pistols), to amuse (the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Bow Wow Wow, Echo & the Bunnymen), or to confuse (Mott The Hoople, The Teardrop Explodes, Frankie Goes To Hollywood). It may be chosen to emphasize a political stance (Rage Against The Machine, the Flying Pickets, UB 40). It may be chosen—as was the case in pre-Civil Rights USA—to signify ethnicity (the Orioles, the Spiders, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Ink Spots). It is undoubtedly interesting—and frankly enjoyable—to speculate in this way about the origins of group names. And it is clear that certain names have encouraged certain assumptions across different periods and genres of popular music (Laing 41–52; Rogan 20–40). The “meanings” conveyed by “Marilyn Manson” and “Sid Vicious” are quite different to those conveyed by “Brian Warner” and “John Ritchie;”“Reg Dwight” and “Elton John” may identify the same person but not the same persona; “Boy George” and “Elvis Costello” carry with them implicit suggestions that “George O'Dowd” and “Declan McManus” do not. In these and many similar cases, decisions about nomenclature lie at the heart of the popular music industry's desire to “brand” performers so that—like the household products mentioned earlier—they become “instantly recognizable and condensed into a specific image which could become a trademark” (Negus 71). Of course, these codes and our interpretations of them are not fixed or static; Ian Fleming's deliberate choice of an overtly dull and nondescript name for his newly created fictional spy in 1953 resulted in a huge resurgence of popularity for a traditional boy's forename that was fast disappearing from common usage. Nevertheless, attributions of multiple meanings to a single word remain less common than a general acceptance of its agreed meaning. “Although there are many words that have more than one meaning, ambiguities are in practice rather rare … if all our words could be interpreted in several ways, communication would be in danger of breaking down” (Quirk 78–79). It follows that, in a popular music context, not only do names assist us in preparing preliminary evaluations of the performer, but they also contribute to the ways in which we erect and maintain lines of demarcation between what is “ours” and what is “theirs”—a common tendency across all areas of social activity and cultural consumption: Making the boundaries as exact and precise as possible, so that they can be easily noticed and once noticed understood unambiguously, seems to be a matter of supreme importance for human beings living and trained to live in a man-made world. (Bauman 55) However, while the content of names (as the above examples indicate) can provide important clues to some of the external political characteristics of the group—its position within the popular music environment, its musical allegiances, its point of origin, its ideological persuasion—it reveals little about that group's internal politics. For that reason, I am concerned less with the content than with the form that such names, or brands, take. More than anything else, variations in the arrangement of the words used to distinguish and identify a group denote variations in the structure of the group, and therefore constrain, as discussed earlier, our idea of what is real. Moreover, this is as true for those “synthetic” or manufactured groups whose name is determined by their creators, as it is for the “organic” groups who name themselves. In both cases, group names provide not only a description but also a definition. There are four principal types: Leader and subordinates; Group members; Component parts; Collaborators. For many years, the conventional practice in the marketing and presentation of popular music was to draw attention to the lead vocalist; indeed, the first major chart success of the Rock'n'Roll era was by Bill Haley and the Comets. But while Haley's name is remembered and recognized, those of the Comets (Billy Gussak, Marshall Lytle, Danny Cedrone, Joey Ambrose, Billy Williamson, and Johnny Grande) are largely forgotten—not because of any musical deficiency, but because of their subsidiary position within the named structure of the group. Just as the removal of a person's true name is an effective strategy of marginalization—which is why it often accompanies slavery or incarceration—so too the decision to distinguish by name one person among several grants authority and power, and establishes a clear hierarchy. In the majority of cases where groups have utilized a leader-and-subordinates model, the decision may well have been prompted by commercial considerations. The major recording stars (pre- and post-Rock'n'Roll) of the 1950s were, almost without exception, solo performers and, particularly in the early years of an evolving popular music industry, it undoubtedly was easier to rely on traditional structures and cultures and to concentrate resources on the promotion of one person. However, the model quickly came to be recognized as the preferred choice, both in the US (Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Johnny and the Hurricanes) and in the UK (Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, Marty Wilde and the Wild Cats). A less common alternative, but one which retained the identification of a leader and assistants, was to employ one person's name to represent the entire group (the Johnny Burnette Trio, the Karl Denver Trio, the Dave Clark Five, the Lonnie Donegan Trio). In fact, one of the reasons given by Decca to justify its decision in 1962 to offer a recording contract to the London-based Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, rather than the Beatles, was that they conformed to the familiar lead singer and backing group model. And when the Beatles did eventually sign to Parlophone, they encountered a similar response from George Martin: I went home wondering which one of them was going to be the star. My thinking was so colored by the success of people like Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard that I couldn't imagine a group being successful as a group. I felt that one of them was bound to come out as having a better voice than the others. Whoever that was would be the one, and the rest would become like Cliff Richard's backing group, the Shadows. (Martin 124) Following the success of the Beatles, the 1960s were marked by a tendency to move away from the leader-and-subordinates structure. But the practice has never disappeared. From Gladys Knight and the Pips to Country Joe and the Fish, from Freddy and the Dreamers to Adam and the Ants, from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers to Ian Dury and the Blockheads, from the Jimi Hendrix Experience to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the construction of a group around a named leader—usually its lead singer—has remained a staple ingredient in the marketing of music. Not only is the leader privileged by the emphasis on his/her name, and its appearance, in speech and in print, above the names of the other members, but this sense of distance is physically reinforced through a performance topography which persistently places the lead singer at the front of the stage (closer to the audience) and the subsidiary members arranged behind, akin to the way in which troops line up behind their commander. This style of nomenclature unashamedly bestows and reflects authority. Motown's re-branding of the Supremes as Diana Ross & the Supremes in 1967 was as much dictated by the imbalance of power within the group and by Ross's growing ambitions as they were by the record label's desire to capitalize on one of its major commercial assets: [Mary] Wilson and [Cindy] Birdsong were powerless to prevent their lead singer becoming exclusive both on and off stage. By now Diana usually travelled separately from them, was referred to as “Miss Ross” by managers and record company personnel (Mary and Cindy continued to be addressed by their own Christian names) and had her own personal secretary. (Davis 81) Significantly, when Ross left the group in 1970 and was replaced by Jean Terrell, the trio reverted to its original leaderless name. The example of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band illustrates the manner in which the leader-and-subordinates model may work to suggest an apparent division of labor at odds with its reality and to restrict wider public recognition of musical contributions and expertise. While not questioning the undoubted success of Springsteen's brand image, it is, to say the least, surprising that musicians such as Steve Van Zandt, Clarence Clemons, Nils Lofgren, and Patti Scialfa should be (literally) labeled as backing musicians through the same linguistic device that was applied to Bill Haley's Comets half a century ago. One of the many ways in which the Beatles and their peers demonstrated their awareness of the themes and traditions of popular music in the US was through their adoption of a group image and a group name. While it is true that the solo singer was always the dominant vehicle of Rock'n'Roll, there were sets of performers who eschewed the leader-and-subordinates model in favor of a more egalitarian choice of name that clearly identified them as a group of (typically, four or five) equal participants—the Platters, the Drifters, the Coasters, the Shirelles. In the UK, this option was largely overlooked until the emergence of performers (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, the Small Faces, the Searchers, the Animals, the Moody Blues) who not only offered new musics, but defined, presented, and named themselves in new ways. This development coincided with, and was clearly influenced by, the “codal shift” identified by Bradley, which “established music-making, rather than just music-listening, as an important, respected, even central practice in the lives of huge numbers of … working-class boys” (75). The re-alignment, from leader-and-subordinates to group membership in the early 1960s, was a specific example of the rejection of the deferential attitude toward “leaders,”“experts,” and “authorities” that was to define much of the decade's subsequent cultural activity. To suggest that this system of naming signifies equality does not, of course, infer equal contributions (not all members may be songwriters, or vocalists, for example), but it does assume equal rights and responsibilities—including, crucially, monetary rights. Whereas the typical financial arrangement within the leader-and-subordinates model gives the leader a higher salary and a greater share of any royalties (the subordinates may often, like hired musicians, simply receive a fixed wage), group members will expect to share equally in whatever rewards accrue. But in a symbolic sense—and a name, after all, is a symbol—group members also share an idea of belonging, and being seen to belong, to an exclusive club or community or “band of brothers” that no one else can join, unless invited. In fact, through their group name, each possesses the same identification: a Beach Boy, a Spice Girl, a Bee Gee, an Eagle, a Sex Pistol, a Hive. If a member leaves, he/she ceases to be what they were. In 1969, when he renounced his membership of the group he had helped to found some 7 years earlier, Brian Jones remained Brian Jones, but ceased to be a Rolling Stone; Mick Taylor, on the other hand, suddenly became a Rolling Stone. In some cases, the sense of membership is increased by adherence to a common physical image, which further strengthens brand recognition. The “mop-top” hairstyles and collarless suits of the Beatles, the tartan accessories of the Bay City Rollers, and the black leather jackets, tee-shirts and blue jeans of the Ramones were, like soccer team strips, succinct announcements of a common and unique membership. A group is two or more individuals in face–to–face interaction, each aware of his or her membership in the group, each aware of the others who belong to the group, and each aware of their positive interdependence as they strive to achieve mutual goals. (Johnson and Johnson 8) While the above definition was constructed to aid in social psychological explorations of peer group formation rather than in discussions about aspects of popular music, it nonetheless provides an accurate analysis of the significant factors which govern the structural choices faced by musicians, and of their implications. The observation that group members are united through their collective personality—through the things they have in common—derives in part from Durkheim's account of those communities characterized by mechanical solidarity, where cohesiveness and continuity are determined by the extent to which members share similar tasks, attributes, and skills. The adoption of a common name to specify such a community, the maintenance of mutual communications, consensual norms, behavioral expectations, and collective goals by those who (perhaps only temporarily) share the name, and the public perception of those distinguished by the name express very clearly the sense of groups or “clans” which are … very similar to each other in their internal organization … it is a cultural unity because the members of the various clan groups all adhere to the same set of common beliefs and sentiments. Thus any part of such a society can break away without much loss to the others … there is little scope for differentiation between individuals; each individual is a microcosm of the whole. (Giddens 76) That the media continue to routinely identify and name individuals in terms of their membership long after such affiliations have lapsed—“former Beatle Ringo Starr”; “one-time Byrd Chris Hillman”; “ex-Bay City Roller Les McKeown”—says much about the effectiveness of the concept of the group as a form of brand identification. Just as the leader-and-subordinates style of nomenclature was, at least in part, overtaken by a model of group membership, so too that model began to give way, in the late 1960s, to an approach favoring a structure of component parts. By dispensing with a plural name (the Temptations, the Monkees, the Doors) and substituting a singular name (Traffic, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival), groups are announcing that they wish to be regarded not as a collection of several members, any of whom might be replaced, but as one integrated unit in which each part is an individual but indispensable component. Indeed, it is significant that this strategy was initially associated with, and stimulated by, two quite separate musical trajectories. The first was the proliferation in Los Angeles and San Francisco of a growing number of performers who were propelled by a number of disparate political goals—a fierce opposition to escalating US involvement in Vietnam, a willingness to place drug use at the center of their hedonistic lifestyle, support for the civil rights movement, a desire for greater personal/sexual freedom, and disillusionment with a repressive domestic government. In this multi-faceted cultural climate, the decision of many West Coast groups to adopt one identifying name symbolically retained an awareness of individual (often idiosyncratic) motivation and participation within the framework of a wider movement, typically described as the “counter-culture”: “we are only beginning to realize the incredible vastness of the changes that are coming … beside it, a mere revolution, such as the French or the Russian, seems inconsequential … what is coming is nothing less than a new way of life and a new man—a man who is part of the living world” (Reich 291). The absence of the plural form (Love rather than the Loves, the Grateful Dead rather than the Grateful Deads, Quicksilver Messenger Service rather than the Quicksilver Messengers) thus acknowledged and articulated the notion of a fraternity in which all had quite different but equally important contributions to make. The second trajectory, which was more common in the UK, was the emergence of the so-called “supergroup.” Inspired by a desire to move away from traditional forms of membership and association, the supergroup offered musicians the opportunity to distance themselves from the formalized, semi-permanent structures preferred by the popular music industry; it recognized individual expertise, allowed for extra-group activities, encouraged flexibility, and valued innovation. In these circumstances, the adoption of a name that stressed singularity rather than plurality emphatically rejected the concept of similar members and powerfully endorsed the concept of component parts in which individual characteristics can flourish to simultaneously guarantee the success of the collective whole. The union from July 1966 to November 1968 of Eric Clapton (from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers), Jack Bruce (from Manfred Mann), and Ginger Baker (from Graham Bond's Organization) under the name of Cream was perhaps the first example of supergroup formation and presentation. In February 1969, Blind Faith brought together, for one year, Clapton, Baker, Ric Grech (from Family), and Steve Winwood (from Traffic). Steve Marriott (from the Small Faces), Peter Frampton (from The Herd), Jerry Shirley (from Little Women), and Greg Ridley (from Spooky Tooth) utilized the same template during their existence as Humble Pie from April 1969 to October 1971. Whether fuelled by the ideological rationale of the West Coast groups or the professional motivation of the British supergroups, the choice of a singular name indicates “a system of differentiated and special functions united in definite relationships” (Durkheim 129). In contrast, therefore, to the collective consciousness or mechanical solidarity associated with the system of group members, the system of component parts can be seen to be characterized by a greater reliance on the individual interests which build into organic solidarity: Here solidarity stems not simply from acceptance of a common set of beliefs and sentiments, but from functional interdependence in the division of labor. Organic solidarity presupposes …difference between individuals in their beliefs and actions. The growth of organic solidarity …[is]… hence associated with increasing individualism … but commonly held beliefs and sentiments do not disappear altogether. (Giddens 77) As the perceived distinctions between rock and pop have intensified, so that the former is routinely associated with qualities of “creativity,”“authenticity,” and “distinctiveness,” while the latter is depicted as “commercial,”“contrived,” and “predictable,” the selection of a naming system that incorporates some of those desired properties has become a matter of some importance. That so many rock groups have opted for a singular name—Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Free, Buffalo Springfield, Roxy Music, Blondie, Television, Genesis, Yes, Steely Dan, Oasis, Destiny's Child, Velvet Revolver—is an embodiment of the musical and ideological characteristics implicit in their reference to musicians who are component parts in an organic whole. And the policy has also become commonplace among pop groups for whom the brand impact of a single word (or its occasional plural derivations) is an attractive marketing alternative—Mud, Sweet, Wham!, Boyzone, Blue, Duran Duran, Wet Wet Wet. The supergroups discussed above were happy to see their individual contributions temporarily subsumed under a collective identity. That is not true for collaborators who, while willing to work with others, wish to retain their sense of self. The explicit naming of each person inside a group thus fuses the personal, the political, and the professional, so that the musical product becomes a collaborative project between peers rather than a joint work by equal participants. Furthermore, individual reputations can be enhanced or protected, because, for example, albums may be regarded as little more than compilations of solo tracks, each marked by greater or lesser inputs from the other collaborators; public perceptions of the ownership of songs on the early albums of Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) demonstrated this very obviously. Of course, it can be argued that the naming of each musician is the most just and democratic way to direct an audience's attention to their equal significance and is also an important commercial index for potential customers. Thus, the branding of Emerson, Lake & Palmer not only denoted a certain equivalence in the role of organ, guitar, and drums, but also alerted fans of The Nice, King Crimson, and Atomic Rooster to the continuing musical activity of some of their former personnel. The same considerations informed the creation of the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band; Ashton, Gardner & Dyke; Paice, Ashton & Lord; McGuinness Flint; the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver; Beck, Bogart & Appice; Kossoff, Kirke, Tetsu & Rabbit. David Crosby: The idea was that we were equals in this band and that no one was the leader. That's one of the reasons we used our own names. The other reason was so that nobody could wind up owning the name and plugging different people into it; we all had experience with that (Crosby and Gottlieb 195). However, with the exception of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, none of the collaborations lasted for very long. This may not be surprising; while commercial, contractual, and democratic motivations may play some part in the decision to employ this style of nomenclature, it is more likely the case that self-interest and a desire to be seen to occupy a central, rather than a peripheral, status are more pressing arguments in its favor, and “a society in which each individual solely pursues his own interest [will] disintegrate within a short space of time” (Giddens 77). Whilst the naming of collaborators has been a relatively rare option in popular music's 50-year history (although it was familiar across the jazz, big band, and swing eras), it has become more common from the 1990s onward. The growth of hip-hop and dance cultures has been marked, among other things, by a desire to acknowledge the separate musical contributions of a wide variety of personnel, including disc jockeys, producers, dancers, vocalists, instrumentalists, and programmers; as a result, many collaborators who had little input into previous musical styles, or whose inputs might have been overlooked, have found themselves credited (informally and formally) as named contributors on many records. At the same time, a desire to work flexibly and rapidly within these cultures has resulted in a much greater number of spontaneous, short-term collaborations, in the studio and in performance; again, when such collaborations occur, it has become normal to acknowledge all parties. In fact, as I write this, the US and UK singles charts include several such collaborations: Ice Cube, featuring Mack 10 and Ms Toi; Destiny's Child, featuring T. I. and Lil Wayne; Lil John and The East Side Boys, featuring Usher and Ludacris; Ja Rule, featuring R. Kelly and Ashanti; Ben Watt, featuring Estelle and Baby Blak; Trick Daddy, featuring Lil John and Twista; Snoop Dogg, featuring Justin Timberlake and Charly Wilson. The practice is not completely new. The collaborations between Bob Dylan and The Band, which resulted in the jointly credited The Basement Tapes, took place in 1967. Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, and Stephen Stills were named as the joint authors of the Super Sessions album in 1968. In 1969, both sides of the “Get Back”/“Don't Let Me Down” single were credited to the Beatles with Billy Preston; in the same year, “Goo Goo Barabajagal”/“Bed With Me” was credited to Donovan and the Jeff Beck Group (which included Ron Wood, Nicky Hopkins, and Micky Waller), and the 1975 single release of “I Saw Her Standing There”/“Whatever Gets You Through The Night”/“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” to the Elton John Band featuring John Lennon and the Muscle Shoals Horns. However, these were often immediate outcomes of specific and unexpected live performances that reflected common musical interests and personal friendships; the practice today tends to reflect studio liaisons which are planned and executed professionally, and which owe as much to technological factors as to personal affection. It may be that these unashamedly transitory “arrangements” (often lacking any historical or musical commonalities) cannot be considered as groups in the way that their predecessors can. On the other hand, it may be that the avenues they provide for market-driven, opportunist, media-friendly alliances represent a plausible future direction for commercial music-making, especially in the fast-declining singles market. As the familiar conception of a fixed, coherent, and stable identity disappears from contemporary social theory, perhaps the familiar conception of fixed, coherent, and stable groups might disappear from contemporary popular music: Identity becomes a “moveable feast” formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us. The subject assumes different identities at different times, identities which are not unified around a coherent “self”… . As the systems of meaning and cultural representation multiply, we are confronted by a bewildering, fleeting multiplicity of possible identities, any one of which we could identify with—at least temporarily. (Hall 1992a: 277) The ways in which groups' names are selected and utilized give them the status of ideas or concepts. And a concept performs a number of functions: First, it allows us to characterize and classify … it is a tool to think with … . Secondly, it is an image or set of images [which] calls up in our mind's eye a composite picture … . Thirdly, it provides a standard or model of comparison [and] helps to explain “difference”… . Fourthly, it provides criteria of evaluation … around which powerful positive and negative feelings cluster. (Hall 1992b: 277) Hall's discussion revolves around the discourse that shapes our understanding of historical-political labels like “The West.” Yet, it is equally applicable to the way in which we organize our ideas about popular music: we use names to categorize groups into certain musical traditions or genres, to condense and represent in verbal and visual language a particular image, to compare differences and similarities between sets of performers, and to produce certain kinds of musical knowledge and attitudes. And in each of these activities, it is the brand name of the group that acts as the point of origin for our speculations about its professional motivations and internal hierarchy. Consider the transformations in “meaning” that might result from these (fictitious) variations (see Table 1). Although the musical output and personnel of the groups remain unaltered, each change of name demands adjustments to our classifications, images, comparisons, and evaluations of them: leaders may become members, collaborators may become subordinates. In short, particular patterns of language encourage particular patterns of thought. Language is not neutral; it directs, it seduces, it privileges: “we cannot attain complete impartiality while we use the language of everyday life … even with the very impersonal language of science, the task is sometimes difficult” (Hayakawa and Hayakawa 29). In this discussion, I have set out to explore one way in which the (often very personal) language of popular music, even at its most basic level, contravenes any notions of impartiality. The presentation of names maintains differentials of power and authority; the reception of names preserves understandings of creativity and influence. To the extent that we can only satisfactorily refer to things for which we have names, the nomenclature of popular music is not a peripheral but a fundamental constituent of any musical engagement. Long before a single note has been played or heard, the brand names of popular music determine some of the key ideological moments in its production and consumption.