Pop Will Repeat Itself: The Theory of Repetitive Song Titles

Hey, Meh writer @JasonToon here. As you know if you’ve hung around here for any length of time, repetition is a big part of what we do. Like, take this Ion Audio Vinyl Motion Suitcase Turntable. It’s a cool little record player with a rechargeable battery that lasts about nine hours. It’s got its own speaker built into it, or you can connect to external speakers via 3.5mm or RCA, or use the USB connection to rip your records to MP3. It looks pretty cool, too.

All of which we’ve told you before. But maybe you weren’t ready to believe it. Maybe you were waiting to see some customer reviews. Maybe you didn’t have the money. They say, in sales, it takes a few contacts to close the deal. And also, since we often buy all of the existing stock on a product, it’s hard to blow it all out in one day. So, repetition!

Repetition is also vital to music. Especially pop music. Some songs take repetition so far they put it in the song title - but just about all pop songs repeat some words or phrases in the chorus. What are songwriters trying to do when they repeat words right in the title itself?

Sometimes it just makes sense with the subject matter of the song. What’s more “more” than “more”? “More More More”, as on the Andrea True Connection’s hymn to disco excess:

Though they couldn’t be more different musically, irritable SoCal punks Black Flag pulled the same lyrical trick with “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie”:

Repetition can also convey a sense of things piling up, like the unpaid notes left by Destiny’s Child’s no-account trifling boyfriend on “Bills Bills Bills”:

Repeating a name gives it a pleading quality. Hear the yearning in Eddie Cochran’s voice when he calls out to “Jeannie Jeannie Jeannie”:

Or, a name can be repeated with a head shake at the named person’s tragic circumstances, which is what the Undertones do on “Jimmy Jimmy”:

If you’re urging your audience to do something, repeating the exhortation makes it all the more effective. Hear that strategy on “Dance, Dance” by Fall Out Boy:

Repetition can also take on a laudatory quality, a celebration of whatever you’re calling out. So it is on NWA’s “Gangsta Gangsta” (which, in case you just got off the boat from Mars, is VERY NSFW):

Time can also be conveyed by repetition. Nowhere in the song “Tighter, Tighter” does the band, Alive ‘N Kickin’, sing the phrase “tighter, tighter.” But the title works to evoke the progressively tighter bond between the song’s lovestruck protagonists:

Then there are the meta-strategies, where repetition calls attention to itself to make a point. It can stand for inarticulacy and inanity, as on Trio’s proto-Sprockets left-field hit “Da Da Da”:

Or the repetition can be so inane that it warns listeners, “If this title gets on your nerves, you’ll hate this song.” Love it or hate it, nobody who listens to “Yummy Yummy Yummy” by Ohio Express can possibly be surprised by what they hear:

And then there are those pop songs that repeat words in the title precisely because that’s what pop songs have always done. “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah” is a perfect title for the Pogues’ '60s soul pastiche and its accompanying video:

Ultimately, though, the most potent reason to give a song a repetitive title is because it just sounds cool. If this song had been called “Louie”, we never would have heard of The Kingsmen:

We just hope that by repeating this Ion Audio Vinyl Motion Suitcase Turntable the way these songs repeat their nagging choruses, it’ll worm its way into your head like a great pop 45.

A few of our previous weekend playlists, suitable for repeat listening:

• 13 Labor Day Songs More Working People Should Hear
• The Thirsty Sound of Desert Rock
• 14 Basslines You Should Hear on a Decent Speaker
• Turn On Country Style: Psychedelic Country Nuggets
• Library Music: Overdue for Recognition
• 808 101: The Drum Machine That Moved The '80s