Frequently Used Song Titles

Here's something I assembled for my own amusement. I've long been aware of the phenomenon of different songs with the same titles--around 1986 there were three songs called "State of The Heart" that I was aware of, and I also remember two songs called "Hold On"(by Wilson Phillips and En Vogue)being in the Top 10 simultaneously. I also have a list of all the songs on the albums in my collection anyway, so I figured why not use the power of text processing in Perl and find the duplicates?

So I did, and I continue to do so for any albums I run across, songs I hear, videos I see, etc. The results you see below. (Can you tell I'm compulsive?)

But there is still room for improvement. My own collection, vast as it is, is still small compared to all that is out there. I suspect that there are still many songs that I'm missing. So if you happen to know of another song called "Hold On"(for instance)which is not listed here, then feel free to let me know. (There are also many songs where I don't know the exact album that they came from, which is a lesser concern, but still nice to know.)

Similarly, while I'd like to say I'm familiar with every song on this list, it is not always the case, and so I may have missed the possibility that I have two versions of the same song(which are normally listed together) listed separately. I'd appreciate knowing if this has happened. (I.E. if I have cover versions listed as different...)

There are deeper issues which, because I'm compulsive, still trouble me. What is the title of a song? Is it necessary that it have only one? I've seen the same song listed with and without parenthesized bits, with more or fewer words attached, etc. (For instance, I seem to recall hearing that the Bon Jovi song I knew as "You Give Love A Bad Name", the title I saw the the video, was called "Shot Through The Heart" on the album. However, I have recently been informed in no uncertain terms that "Shot Through The Heart" is a totally different Bon Jovi song, and sent an audio sample to prove it.) If a song is known by two titles, then does it count for both of them for the purposes of duplication?

Similarly, how does "The" affect a title? When I sort, I tend to ignore a leading "The", so "Deal" and "The Deal" would sort together. But are they the same song title? As in the previous paragraph, the song may be listed different places with or without "The". And what about those parenthesized bits, anyway? Does Robert Palmer's "Pride" have the same title as U2's "Pride(In The Name of Love)"? Because it was easier to write my program that way, I've taken mostly a purist's approach below, so close matches are not considered sufficient. But if anyone else has any opinions on the matter(besides the fact that I need to get a life--I know that already, thank you), let me know that as well. (My email address is at the bottom of the form, but for convenience I will also list it here: alfvaen@gmail.com.

Since so many people have asked about this one, I will state that I do not consider Prince to have a song called "Sign of The Times". Everywhere I've seen it, it's "Sign 'O' The Times". (On the album, the O is actually a peace symbol, but I don't know if HTML supports that yet.) Similarly, Alanis Morissette's song is "Thank U" not "Thank You". And I apologize for falsely spreading information that may have lead some people to believe that the Beatles song "Rain" was on the album "Revolver".

Anyways, enjoy, and feel free to contribute or not. I have done all this work for, well, mostly for me, but for anyone else who is curious about this kind of thing as well. And the response I've gotten proves that there are more of you out there, perhaps not as compulsive as I, but at least enough to have your own contributions. Thank you to all of you who have done so--and if you haven't had a response from me, then it's just because I'm very far behind. I also lost an entire year's worth of data a while ago, so if your addition isn't in here, that's probably where it went. So please don't be discouraged by the lack of email response! Or the fact that I don't seem to update this page more than once a year! Send more!

Last updated: 2/24/2007

The Den of Ubiquity / Aaron V. Humphrey / alfvaen@gmail.com