Out of the Blue Song Titles

A lot of songs are named from their lyrics, typically a part of the chorus, but that isn't always the case for every song. In fact, some song titles do not appear at all in the lyrics. It kind of makes you wonder, where did these titles come from and what do they mean? Find out below!

The song never actually uses the phrase "A Day in the Life" but if you listen to lyrical story, it is in fact about a day in the life, in England.

Who is Baba O'Riley? He is not in the song, he is actually two different people. The song's title is a combination of two of Townshend's philosophical and musical influences: Meher Baba and Terry Riley.

A Black Dog, or any type of dog is not mentioned once in the song. It was actually named after a black, nameless Labrador that the band found wandering nearby and befriended him while working on the track.

Sure, the song contains the word America and the word Breakfast and probably the word in, but the meaning is still not directly apparent. The song is about being young and wanting to make it in America. Perhaps the being young part is represented by "breakfast"--the first and most important meal of the day.

What is a D'yer Mak'er? Because honestly, it sounds like a made up phrase. Well, the title is actually a play on the word "Jamaica" and the phrase "did you make her" when spoken in an English accent. Try it out! I can't because I do an awful English accent.

This protest song is about young people speaking their minds, For What It's Worth, because the world isn't necessarily listening.

Although the words Fool in the Rain don't appear together in a single line of the song, the title is pretty self-explanatory once you listen to the lyrics.

Everyone knows what Hair of the Dog is, right? After a night of drinking, sometimes drinking more in the morning can help to ease the hangover. This song is not about drinking or being hungover, it is about a woman playing a man (the writer) and he wants to say that he can't be messed with.

Although the song does not contain the words Immigrant or Song, the very first line is self-explanatory: "We come from the land of the ice and snow/From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow/The hammer of the gods/W'ell drive our ships to new lands" It all makes sense now!

Maggie is mentioned many times throughout the song, but May is included once. Is it a nickname, a middle name or a last name?  Rod Stewart borrowed the name Maggie Mae from a Liverpool folk song. The character was based on real heartbreak, Maggie made Rod a man.

The title seems as though it was taken from a nursery rhyme: Over the Hills and Far Away [to grandmother's house we go], but the lyrics were actually inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's book "The Hobbit" as well as his poem titled "Over the Hills and Far Away".

The word Paranoid is nowhere in this song and it is actually not about paranoia at all. Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath said: "Basically, it's just about depression, because I didn't really know the difference between depression and paranoia. It's a drug thing; when you're smoking a joint you get totally paranoid about people, you can't relate to people. There's that crossover between the paranoia you get when you're smoking dope and the depression afterwards." Black Sabbath cuts deep.

The song is certainly set in space, but the words Space and Oddity do not appear in the song's lyrics. The title is a play on the phrase "Space Odyssey," and it tells the story of a fictional astronaut who cuts off communication with Earth and floats into space. That sounds like a space oddity if I've ever heard one!

The Spirit of Radio is actually an anti-radio song. In fact, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson said: “It’s funny, we got so much airplay behind ‘Spirit of the Radio,’ because people thought it was a song about how great radio was and they never really listened to the lyrics and saw how it was a song about how great radio used to be. It was really a song lamenting the fact that we thought radio was losing its originality. In spite of that, because, I guess, it had radio in its title, they just took it at face value and the song got a tremendous amount of airplay and really helped us out a lot in a backwards sort of way.”

The song's title was originally "The Devil Is My Name" but Mick Jagger said: "Songs can metamorphosize. And Sympathy for the Devil is one of those songs that started off like one thing, I wrote it one way and then we started the change the rhythm. And then it became completely different. And then it got very exciting. It started off as a folk song and then became a samba. A good song can become anything. It's got lots of historical references and lots of poetry." Jagger says the song is  not a celebration of Satanism, it is simply about the dark side of man.