20: PREFAB SPROUT

According to the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums, this band took their name from a line in the Frank / Nancy Sinatra / Lee Hazlewood song Jackson, which goes "We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout" which frontman McAloon apparently heard to be 'hotter than a prefab sprout'.

However, it is also said that he had devised the meaningless name as a tribute to other meaningless names of bands from his younger days. Which ever version of events you happen to believe, its still an extremely crap name.

19: THE BAND

Zinger !!

18: BOWLING FOR SOUP

Bowling for Soup member Chris Van Malmsteen recalls "It started as a Steve Martin joke on his 'Wild and Crazy Guy' album. He says he wrote a book called 'Bowling for Sh**'. We didn't think anyone would put that on a flyer so we went with Bowling for Soup. Originally we were called Rubberneck."

.. all we know is, its an uuuuuuber lame name for a band.

17: CRISPY AMBULANCE

A rip off of the band Joy Devision, but with a silly silly name.

16: SPANDAU BALLET

Spandau Ballet were originally called 'The Makers' back in the days, but apparently that wasn't lame enough.

According to some sources, the name Spandau Ballet could point to two possible meanings: one refers to the jerky movements of Nazi war prisoners hanged at Spandau prison as they were hanged, or according to others, it refers to enemy lines getting shot down by the a German World War II machine gun MG42 Spandau (both origins pointing to macabre Nazi heritage). Very artsy... and not nice.

However the more likely source of the name came in fact from graffiti one of the band members saw on the wall of a gents lav in a nightclub. So in other words, their name was inspired by a drunk dude who was literally 'taking the p*ss'.

15: 5IVE

Okay... there's one, two, three, four, five of us.

Okay, well then what about 'FIVE' !?!?

Ooh ooh, but let's make it really cool and put a 5 instead of an F!!

YEAHHHH... so then its like 'FIVE-IVE'.... Oh...

Hmm.. Well a 5 kiiiiiinda looks like an F right... ??

NAI !!!

14: CHUMBAWAMBA

These dudes say "We liked the sound of Chumbawamba because it wasn't nailing ourselves down", although over the years they have also come up with many numerous other excuses for why they have such a pathetic stupid annoying lame sounding name.

They have claimed that a monkey randomly came up with it in a classic experiment involving a typewriter, one of the band had a dream where men were called chumbas and women were called wumbas, and also that it was the name of a Walford Town Football Team mascot... but none of these excuses the stupidity of this name.

13: NICKLEBACK

This name originates from the nickel in change that band member Mike Kroeger gave customers at his Starbucks job where he would frequently have to say, "Here's your nickel back!".

For some reason you can instantly sense that this band are going to sound just as annoying and rock cliche'ey as the band name they've decided to settle on.

12: THE THE

Zinger No.2 !!

11: BUSH

According to the band, the meaning of this name is threefold:

1. The band is from Shepards Bush, England.

2. They all smoke weed, which is known in some circles as 'bush'.

3. Its a slang term for male and female pubic hair.

- See, that last one might just be a good reason to opt for another name with less ermmm pubic connotations.

NEXT >> THE WORST 10 NAMES


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