Non-Appearing Title

Songs where the title does not appear in the lyrics. At all.

In some cases, the title refers to an older song that is being sampled or parodied. In other cases, it's because the song is the length of a series' episode, and/or without chorus included as it's supposed to tell a story rather to be a catchy tune.

The Something Song is often a somewhat borderline case of this trope, since the "song" portion of the title doesn't usually appear in the lyrics. However, the preceding word in the title often appears in the lyrics a lot.

Compare Non-Indicative Name and Word Salad Title. Often leads to Refrain from Assuming, when a phrase from the lyrics starts getting mistaken for the title; e.g., some people think Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is called "Mama", "Scaramouche", or "Galileo".

The direct opposite of this trope is Title Drop.

If you were looking for titles not appearing in visual media, see Title, Please!.

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Examples:

• Pick a J-pop song, any J-Pop song, especially the ones with English titles. More often than not, the title will never be uttered in the song at all.
  • One example that's actually with Japanese title: "Izanagi", the opening theme of Kamen Rider Zi-O Rider Time: Kamen Rider Shinobi miniseries, does not feature the word "Izanagi" at all in the lyric. Closest in the lyric is the word "izanau", which is an actual word that means "calling out", while "Izanagi" is the name of a Japanese deity.
• Almost any song with "Song" or "Blues" in its title (e.g. "Mercury Blues", which at least has the "Mercury" half).
  • With the notable exceptions of Nick Cave's "The Weeping Song" and "Higgs Boson Blues", Queen's "Melancholy Blues", Bob Dylan's "Tombstone Blues" and "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", The White Stripes' "300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues", The Manic Street Preachers' "Watsville Blues", Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues", Glenn Frey's "Smuggler's Blues", David Bowie's "Running Gun Blues," "Existential Blues," and "I Got Those Wake Up 7:30, Wash Your Ears They're Dirty, Eat your Eggs and Oatmeal Rush to School Blues", Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues", Robert Johnson's "Walking Blues", Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues", Weird Al Yankovic's "Buckingham Blues", Brian Setzer's "'49 Mercury Blues", George Harrison's "Sue Me, Sue You Blues", and Elton John's "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues".
  • A double exception: Neil Diamond's "Song Sung Blue".
  • Another exception to this and the above J-Pop rule (sort of) is the Cowboy Bebop end theme, "The Real Folk Blues".
  • The musicals Love Life, Celebration and Pippin each averted this with a song titled "Love Song".
• A lot of hardcore bands use this trope.
  • The Devil Wears Prada's "Hey John, What's Your Name Again?".
  • Heavyheavylowlow's "3000, 100 Points, 100 Pts, Gummy Octopi".
  • There are literally thousands of examples.
• 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up" was specifically given that title to prevent it from being confused with the Marvin Gaye classic "What's Going On", due to the latter phrase being the one used in the chorus.
• AC/DC's "Rock N Roll Train" - the chorus repeatedly refers to a "runaway train", but the words "rock and roll" are never mentioned in that particular song. The Working Title was in fact "Runaway Train" and it was considered for a Title Track for the album, but they decided it was too overused as a title ^note Soul Asylum, Elton John, and Tom Petty all have different songs of that name, among others; so the song became "Rock N Roll Train" while the album became Black Ice.
• Adam and the Ants' "Kings of the Wild Frontier".
• Aerosmith's "Adam's Apple".
• Though they have increased the ratio of songs with the titles mentioned in more recent releases, AFI used to do this a lot.
  • And as to why they stopped doing so seems to be related to Executive Meddling, given how only two (three if you count the bit for the short video) of Blaqk Audio's (sideproject of Jade and Davey) songs mention the title, and they're all B-sides.
• Against Me! have done this more than a few times:
  • "From Her Lips to God's Ears (The Energizer)"
  • "Pretty Girls (The Mover)"
  • "Even At Our Worst We're Still Better Than Most (The Roller)"
  • "Anna Is A Stool Pigeon"
  • "Fuck My Life 666"
  • "Transgender Dysphoria Blues"
  • "Scream It Till Your Coughing Up Blood"
  • "Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled Fists"
  • "Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners"
  • "Pints Of Guinness Make You Strong"
  • "White People For Peace"
  • "Reinventing Axl Rose"
  • "Thrash Unreal"
  • "Those Anarcho Punks Are Mysterious..."
  • "Cliche Guevara"
  • "We Laugh At Danger And Break All The Rules"
  • "We Did It All For Don"
  • "TSR"
  • "Mutiny On The Electronic Bay"
  • "Sink Florida Sink"
  • "Slurring The Rhythms"
  • "You Look Like I Need A Drink"
  • "Piss And Vinegar"
  • "Borne On The FM Waves Of The Heart"
• The All American Rejects' "Mona Lisa". The phrase "When the World Comes Down" appears multiple times in the chorus, and seems like the most likely title of the song. It's the title of the album instead.
• Alter Bridge's "Metalingus" (which you may know better as "ON THIS DAY!", especially if you've been watching Professional Wrestling for the past decade), "White Knuckles" and "Words Darker Than Their Wings".
• "Professional Widow" by Tori Amos, among others.
• Apollo 440:
  • "Electro Glide In Blue" is named after the film Electra Glide in Blue, but the lyrics don't have any relevance to this.
  • "Lost in Space (Theme)" has lyrics consisting of lines from Lost in Space, made into a Voice Clip Song that appeared in the end credits. No Title Drop was made in the film, so none is made in the song either.
  • "Electronic Civil Disobedience" is, as the title indicates, an electronic song about civil disobedience, and the lyrics describe this without actually saying those three words in a row.
  • "Diamonds In The Sidewalk" is just Jack Kerouac reciting a passage from his poem "Mexico City Blues", with instrumental accompaniment. The poem does not say "diamonds in the sidewalk" at any point.
  • "Bulletproof Blues" has neither of those two words in its lyrics.
• A number of Arcade Fire songs, including "Antichrist Television Blues", "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations", "Intervention", "Rebellion (Lies)", and "The Well and the Lighthouse" (though at least that one actually is about a well and a lighthouse).
• Arctic Monkeys has "D is For Dangerous", "Da Frame 2R", "Brianstorm", "Fluorescent Adolescent", and a few others.
• The Arrogant Worms' "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate", and "The Tokyo Love Story".
• Audioslave's "Bring 'Em Back Alive", "Cochise", "Exploder", and "Hypnotize".
• MusicAsh have "Petrol", "Goldfinger", "I'd Give You Anything", "Let it Flow", "Lost in You", "Low Ebb", "Jesus Says", "Numbskull", "Orpheus", "Polaris" and "Planet of Excess" (originally intended to be called "Suicide Girls" which does appear in the lyrics) among others.
• The Avalanches' "Saturday Night Inside Out".
• Avenged Sevenfold has "Bat Country", which doesn't appear in the lyrics but makes sense if you actually understand the reference.
• Emilie Autumn's "Shalott" and "Rapunzel" qualify, though with both the title is important to understanding exactly what the song is about.
  • You could technically count every single song on Laced/Unlaced, except that it's an instrumental album.
    • And like the Barenaked Ladies example below, "306" has only one mention of the title lyric (it's in the first verse).
• The B-52s: "Legal Tender"
• Backyard Babies "Minus Celsius" could as well have been called "Minus Fahrenheit", but it's a Swedish band. (Eric Half-A-Trope - the "Minus" appears.)
• "The Weight" by The Band
• The Bangles, if you don't count "The Rain Song", have only done this four times: "Dover Beach", "Silent Treatment", "Between the Two," and "Song For a Good Son".
• The Barenaked Ladies almost did this with their song "Wizard of Magic Land," which was actually the last line in the song. However, the song does have an alternate title of "It's Only Me," which is sung in every chorus.
  • The liner notes for that song say that the record label made them use the alternate title. They indicate that you can sing the original title along with the main keyboard riff. Including the parenthesis.
• The Beatles:
  • "The Ballad of John And Yoko", "A Day in the Life", "The Inner Light", "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Yer Blues".
  • "Love You To" counts - the closest it comes to a title drop is "I'll make love to you".
  • "Revolution No. 9' is a bit of a zig-zag. The loop of a voice saying "number nine'' continuously is heard not the word "Revolution" doesn't appear at all.
• Quite a few songs from Beck, including "E-Pro" and "Jack-Ass". The latter is played with, in that you hear an actual jackass braying at the end.
• The Bee Gees' first big hit "New York Mining Disaster 1941", probably better known by the first line of the chorus: "Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?"
• Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song", though "Day-O" (part of the lyrics) is used as an alternate title.
• Ben Folds Five has "Song for the Dumped" and "Rent A Cop", though both titles are descriptive of the song's subject/topic.
• Big Audio Dynamite's "E=MC2".
• The Birthday Massacre's "The Dream", "Looking Glass", "Movie", "Red Stars", "Play Dead" and "Science". "Play Dead" gets pretty close, with the line "I'll cast you a spell, a magic where everyone plays dead forever." "Red Stars" also comes close, with "red star [note the singular]" appearing in the chorus.
• Björk's "Jóga", "Bachelorette", "Pluto", "Heirloom", "You've Been Flirting Again", "Hyperballad", "Pneumonia", "Domestica", "Frosti", "Batabid", "Ancestors", "Dark Matter" and "Cosmogony"
• The Black Angels: Most of their songs don't include the title in the lyrics, such as their most popular song, "Young Man Dead."
• Blessid Union of Souls' "Hey Leonardo", though the alternate title "She Likes Me for Me" does appear.
• blink-182:
  • "Josie", more recognizable by the chorus, the repeated "I know that everything/know that everything's gonna be fine."
  • "Edging", which features Tom DeLonge's return to the band, refers to the sexual practice of the same name.
• Blood Red Shoes' "Say Something, Say Anything" in Box of Secrets.
• Blue October (the American one):
  • "Overweight" (the closest it gets is "Ever carried the weight of another?")
  • "The Answer"
  • "Mr. Blue's Menu"
  • "Black Orchid"
  • A half example with "Conversation via Radio (Do You Ever Wonder?)" - while "conversation via radio" never appears in the lyrics, "Do you ever wonder?" appears with quite a bit of frequency.
  • Also true of "Sexual Powertrip", which is also called "Sexual Powertrip (One Big Lie) Bla Bla Bla". The second two titles appear, but the primary title - the first one - does not.
• Blue Öyster Cult: "Morning Final", "Divine Wind"
• Blur's "Song 2". It was originally a Working Title, but the title stuck.
• The Boo Radleys didn't seem that bothered whether their titles appeared in the lyrics or not. Some of their better known songs with non-appearing titles are "Lazarus", "Barney (...And Me)" and "From The Bench At Belvidere" (and just to add to the confusion, "From the Bench at Belvidere" does contain the phrase "Barney and me").
• Brand New have more than a few, especially on their first two albums. "Jude Law and a Semester Abroad", "Sudden Death in Carolina", "Logan to Government Center", "Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Doesn't", and "Guernica", among others.
• Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" is entirely about somebody being paranoid, but the actual word doesn't feature anywhere in the song.
• Mary J. Blige's "Family Affair."
• Accidentally occurs in Ken Boothe's cover of Bread's Everything I Own. Throughout the record Ken sings 'Anything I own' instead of the title.
• Bronski Beat's Signature Song, "Smalltown Boy".
• BT: "Superfabulous", "Somnambulist"("somnambulating" appears, but not "somnambulist"), "Paris"(although "Parisians" appears), and "The Last Moment of Clarity"(not "Deeper And Deeper" or "Life's A Twisted Road") from Emotional Technology, "Movement in Still Life"(mostly Looped Lyrics anyway), "Mercury & Solace", and "Love on Haight Street" from Movement in Still Life, and "Firewater", "Lullaby for Gaia", and "Solar Plexus" from ESCM(US version).
• Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth". The title comes from the record company misunderstanding David Crosby when he told them "I have a new song, for what it's worth", making the title a form of Throw It In!.
• Bush has the songs "Bomb", "Testosterone", "Disease of the Dancing Cats", and "Altered State" among others.
• Butthole Surfers: "Strawberry", "Some Dispute Over T-Shirt Sales", "Goofy's Concern"...And that's just one album (Independent Worm Saloon).
• Cab Calloway's "Hep Cat's Love Song".
• Cake's "Shadow Stabbing" and "Nugget".
• Colbie Caillat's "Iris".
• Lionel Cartwright doesn't sing "Be My Angel" at any point in the song of that name. However, the backing vocalists sing it over the chorus repeatedly.
• Rosanne Cash's "Blue Moon with Heartache", sort of. "Blue moon" and "heartache" occur in the first verse, but they are separated by quite a few words and do not reappear in the chorus.
• Cat Power's cover of "Satisfaction" drops the chorus, and thus the title never comes up in the song.
• Harry Chapin's song "Sniper".
• Cheap Trick's "Mandocello". It's actually named for an instrument used in the song, rather than any of the lyrics.
• Chicago's "Dialogue" and “Beginnings” (although the phrase “only the beginning” is used numerous times).
• Pick a Chiodos song. Any Chiodos song.
  • With the exception of All Nereids Beware, albeit the Title Drop only occurs in Metal Scream form, so it's pretty easy to miss.
  • And "One Day Women Will All Become Monsters". It's the last line.
  • With the release of Illuminaudio, "Those Who Slay Together Stay Together" also makes an exception.
• Several songs by Childish Gambino, especially on because the internet. Examples include "II. Shadows", "IV. Sweatpants", "III. Flight of the Navigator" and more. Many of the song titles only make sense if you have read the album's accompanying screenplay. Also his most radio-successful song, "Redbone".
• Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping."
• "Train in Vain" by The Clash, named so to avoid confusion with another song called "Stand By Me".
• Leonard Cohen has 'Master Song', 'The Stranger Song', 'Ballad of the Absent Mare', 'Villanelle for Our Time', 'To a Teacher', 'Death of a Ladies' Man', 'Memories', 'Anthem', 'Tacoma Trailer', 'Story of Isaac', 'The Partisan', 'One of Us Cannot Be Wrong' and 'Hunter's Lullaby'.
  • "Chelsea Hotel #2" is a borderline example, with the words "Chelsea Hotel" appearing but not the number, as is "Paper Thin Hotel", which has all of the words in the title but not in the same order.
• Coldplay's "Amsterdam", "Don't Panic", "Parachutes", "The Scientist", "X&Y", "Life in Technicolor" (mostly instrumental), "Life in Technicolor II" (not mostly instrumental, but still no Title Drop), "Viva la Vida" (the title track for an album, but this phrase isn't in any of their songs; supposedly it was a Line-of-Sight Name found while recording the album), "Twisted Logic", "Lovers in Japan", "Chinese Sleep Chant" (probably), "The Escapist", "Charlie Brown", "Ink", "Midnight", "Hymn for the Weekend", "Adventure of a Lifetime", and probably more in the future if this is any indication...
• Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy".
• The full version of Community's theme tune, "At Least It Was Here" by The 88.
• Elvis Costello's "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4". The song would still fit the trope even if the "No. 4" part was dropped.
• Covenant's "Theremin", which doesn't use the instrument of the same name either. Same for "Leviathan", "Pulse", "20hz", and others.
• The Cowsills' "The Rain, the Park and Other Things", often assumed to be "Flower Girl". "The rain" and "the park" do appear in the lyrics, but in different verses.
• Cream:
  • "Badge": Ringo Starr misread George Harrison's handwriting on the sheet music, and asked "what's badge?" where it actually said "bridge".
  • "SWLABR": An initialism for "She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow" (or possibly "Was" instead of "Walks");^note Jack Bruce, who wrote the music, gave both words as the expansion of "W" at different times. neither the initialism nor its expansion ever appears in the lyrics. In fact, apart from the article "a", the only part of the expanded title that appears verbatim in the lyrics is "rainbow". ("Bearded" never appears, but "beard" does.)
• Creed's "Ode", from their first album My Own Prison.
• Jim Croce's "Thursday" and "Age."
• "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash does not mention any of those words in the lyrics.
• Crowded House's "Kare Kare" off Together Alone.
• "She Sells Sanctuary" by The Cult.
• The Cure's creepy "Lullaby" (although you can consider the title is self-describing). "Inbetween Days" could also count, as the complete title doesn't appear.
  • "Lovesong"
  • Interestingly, not only do all three albums of their "Trilogy" have title tracks, all of the title tracks are examples of this trope (although "Bloodflowers" does have the phrase "flowers of blood").
  • "Mint Car" also qualifies; the title seems to evoke the idea that a new, refreshing relationship feels like a car in mint condition, where there's a sense of excitement and freedom associated with the new part of the narrator's life.
• Daniel Amos's "Horrendous Disc" (from the album of the same name).
• Da Yoopers do this a lot: "Chicquito War", "Bingo Fever", "Fishin wit Fred", "Yooper Kid", "Pizza in My Shorts", "Da Fishing Trip", "He Thinks He's Elvis", "My First Time Ever", "She Don't Make Good Pasties"…
• Daft Punk: whilst "Aerodynamic" clearly doesn't appear in the song (it's an instrumental), "Digital Love" also doesn't appear in the lyrics.
• Death Cab for Cutie's "Steadier Footing", "Lightness" (not "Ivory Lines"), "Expo '86", "Marching Bands of Manhattan", "Grapevine Fires" (not "Before We All Burn"), "Transatlanticism", and "President of What?" (not "I Saw The Scene Unfold" or "Break You Down").
• John Denver's "Annie's Song".
• Depeche Mode:
  • "I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead" (also a Non-Indicative Name, as it's a Silly Love Song).
  • Their song "Enjoy the Silence" subverts this trope; you won't hear the name of the song for what appears to be its entire running time; and then, a full six seconds after the music has faded, the title is dropped and the song finally ends. Since some radio stations would occasionally cut the song once the music faded, you could be left thinking the trope was played straight, if it was the first time you heard it.
    • They were probably playing the single edit, which is just the same as the album version but without the Title Drop. Notably, pretty much every other mix of the song averts this confusion by incorporating the title into the main body of the song.
• The Devin Townsend Project: "March Of The Poozers", "Stormbending", among others...
• Disturbed's "Bound", "Numb", and "Conflict", with the latter featuring the word 'Enemy' at least over fifty times. Interestingly, the classic demo-tape/underground recording of "Perfect Insanity" does feature its title throughout, but the Indestructible re-recording drops this, making it one of these.
• Donovan's "Sunshine Superman".
• The Doobie Brothers' "Daughters of the Sea," "Pursuit on 53rd St." and "Long Train Runnin'."
  • The latter does have "see them long trains run".
• The Doors' "Shaman's Blues".
• Down Low: "New Monday" – random Working Title that was never changed –, "The Moldau" – retaining the title of the Bedrich Smetana piece they sampled, even though the lyrics aren't about the river at all – and "The Final To The World", which is simply a remix of "Start The Riot". Downplayed with the latter, where the actual phrase in the chorus is "start a riot", and perhaps notably averted with "Murder (Part II)".
• The Darkness song "Knockers", it does mention a girl's breasts though.
• DragonForce's "Heartbreak Armageddon", "Operation Ground and Pound", and "Revolution Deathsquad". They were all named solely for the sake of having cool song titles.
  • More DragonForce: "Black Winter Night", "Heroes of Our Time", "Soldiers of the Wasteland", "Storming the Burning Fields", "Scars of Yesterday", and "EPM".
    • Although "Storming the Burning Fields'''s title is dropped in another song. Also, the demo version of "Black Winter Night" had a Title Drop but the verse containing it was cut from the song's final version.
• Actually fairly common in Drake's songs, though the titles may have something to do with the subject matter. Some examples are "Marvin's Room" (also an example of Non-Indicative Name), "Headlines", "Karaoke" and "The Resistance".
• "Panic Attack" by Dream Theater contains neither the word "panic" nor the word "attack". Much like the "Lullaby" example above, though, the title still describes the song (or more accurately, the lyrics describe the title).
  • Likewise, "Repentance," "Prophets of War," "The Ministry of Lost Souls" and "In the Presence of Enemies" - all consecutive tracks on Systematic Chaos.
• Bob Dylan:
  • "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"—because who would dare sell a single labeled "Everybody Must Get Stoned"?
  • Dylan did this a lot in his earlier career; another example: "Positively 4th Street".
• Eiffel 65's "My Console".
• New Order side project Electronic generally use non-appearing titles, e.g. "Reality" (not "I Don't Need You Anymore"), except when the song is co-written with an outside collaborator.
• Billie Eilish has a few songs like this, such as "ilomilo", "listen before i go" and "Billie Bossa Nova".
• Many Electric Valentine songs, including "13 Reasons", "Chasing The Sun", "The Opposite of Name Dropping", and "A Better Class of Criminal".
• Elisa's "Rainbow".
• Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Karn Evil 9".
• Enigma's "Sadeness (Part I)". The title is a Portmanteau not used in the lyrics.
• Enur (Natasja) has the hit "Calabria". The word is not uttered anywhere in the song. Not that you would understand if she pronounced it anyways.
• Erasure - "Breath of Life"
  • "She Won't Be Home", which may be mistaken as "Lonely Christmas" or "He Won't Be Near".
  • And "The Circus", which could be called something like "Pieces of a Broken Dream".
• "Whisper" by Evanescence. The closest it gets to a title drop is "whispered voices at my ear". Also, "Bleed" only has the title dropped once.
  • "My Immortal" as well.
  • "Cloud Nine", "The Change", "Haunted"
  • "Lacrymosa" is a special case as the lyrics written by Amy Lee don't feature the word Lacrymosa, the background choir says it though.
  • "October"
• Betty Everett's "The Shoop Shoop Song"; as per usual, the alternate title (It's In His Kiss) is part of the song.
  • However, the background singers do sing "shoop shoop." A lot.
• "Untitled" and "Everything Else" by Everything Else.
• Fairport Convention - "Genesis Hall", "Autopsy" and "Percy's Song" on Unhalfbricking
• Faith Assembly - Redemption.
• Faith No More's "Epic", "Jizzlobber", "Cuckoo for Caca", "Caralho Voador", "King for a Day", "RV", "Malpractice", "A Small Victory", "Zombie Eaters", most of We Care a Lot and half of Introduce Yourself and Album of the Year. This doesn't include "Paths of Glory", which is only an "s" away from averting the trope. It does include "Anne's Song", in which Anne gets a number of mentions.
• Almost every single song ever by The Fall of Troy, with very few exceptions.
• Most songs by Falling Up, including "A Guide to Marine Life", "How They Made Cameras", and "The Dark Side to Indoor Track Meets".
  • All of the songs off of their Dawn Escapes album qualify.
  • The title of "Murexa" on the album Captiva is title dropped in the next song "Drago or the Dragons".
  • Many of the songs titles on Fangs! are not contained within those songs, but are referenced in other songs.
  • Lead singer Jessy Ribordy's other project, The River Empires, exaggerates this trope, including the title drops in other songs.
• All of Fall Out Boy's songs except for *deep breath* "Alpha Dog", "America's Suitehearts", "Calm Before the Storm", "Dance Dance", "Dead On Arrival", "Golden", "Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy" (half of it, anyway), "Growing Up", "Hum Hallelujah", "I Don't Care","The Music or the Misery", "Saturday", "Star 67", "This Ain't a Scene, It's An Arms Race", "Thnks fr th Mmrs" (in spelled-out form), "Sugar, We're Going Down", and "What A Catch Donnie" (part of it).
  • Fall Out Boy is noted for the use of this trope by both critics and fans. Approximately 2/3 of their songs have Non-Appearing Titles. This was especially noticeable on their 2005 album From Under the Cork Tree, which features such songs as "Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part to Save the Scene and Stop Going to Shows)," "I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me," "I've Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth (Summer Song)," and "XO."
  • Averted entirely on the 2013 album "Save Rock and Roll", in which every song's title appears in the track's chorus, more or less verbatim. Furthermore, there is also a track on the album entitled "Save Rock and Roll", showing that the band has finally learned how to use titles sensibly.
  • Their 2015 album American Beauty/American Psycho also averts the trope, for the most part anyway. The closing track, "Twin Skeleton's (Hotel in NYC)," doesn't contain the phrase "twin skeletons," but it does contain the two words individually.
• Fatboy Slim has many songs like this, including "The Rockafeller Skank", "Gangster Trippin'", "Song for Lindy", "Song for Shelter", "Don't Let the Man Get You Down", "First Down", "Santa Cruz", "Going Out of My Head", "Everybody Needs a 303", "Everybody Loves a Carnival", "10th and Crenshaw", "Next to Nothing", "Soul Surfing", "Sho Nuff", "Love Island", "Acid 8000", "Ya Mama", "The Sound of Milwaukee", "Star 69", and countless others.
• Foo Fighters have "Hey, Johnny Park!", "Oh, George", "Weenie Beenie", "Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)" and "White Limo" (the limo is there, but its color is never referenced).
• The Flaming Lips are fond of this trope. Examples include "Race For the Prize", "Fight Test", "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1", "Pilot Can At the Queer of God", "Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles", "Free Radicals", and "Flowers of Neptune 6", among many, many others.
• Fleetwood Mac's "Oh, Well." With the opening line "Can't help about the shape I'm in / I can't sing, I ain't pretty and my legs are thin."
• Florence + the Machine's "Cosmic Love" and "Blinding".
• Dan Fogelberg:
  • "Heart Hotels" – "Heart" is in the lyrics, but "hotel" appears only in the singular form, and the two words never appear together.
  • "Same Old Lang Syne" — Doesn't appear in this form; the closest it gets is "another 'Auld Lang Syne'".
• Steve Forbert's only hit of note, "Romeo's Tune".
• Foster the People's "Helena Beat", "Houdini", and "Life on the Nickel".
• Franz Ferdinand has "Auf Achse", the only example in any of their studio albums. Counting b-sides, there's also "Better in Hoboken" and "Brown Onions" (which is an instrumental, regardless).
• An interesting case is the mid-1980s song "Friends and Lovers", which both plays with and averts this trope.
  • The song was originally recorded in 1985 as a pop duet by Gloria Loring and Carl Anderson for Days of Our Lives, in which Loring played a lounge singer. The title doesn't appear in that form in the lyrics, though the first line of the chorus goes "So I'll be your friend / And I'll be your lover". However, it wasn't released to pop radio until summer 1986...
  • ...by which time a version with a different arrangement but identical lyrics had been recorded by Eddie Rabbitt and Juice Newton and released to country radio. The Rabbitt/Newton version averted the trope by being retitled "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)"; the final phrase of the chorus is "we could be both to each other".
• Front 242's "Headhunter" never refers to the hunter by this title.
  • Moldavia, Neurobashing, First In / First Out, Rerun Time, and Leitmotiv 136 stray into Non-Indicative Name territory.
• Frou Frou, Flicks, Psychobabble, Close Up and Old Piano.
• Peter Gabriel has "The Tower that Ate People".
• Garbage has on the studio albums "Supervixen", "Vow", "Parade," "Blood For Poppies," "Anonymous XXX," ("anonymous" does appear) and the Title Track of "No Gods No Masters" (the closest lyric is "no master, no gods to obey"). A few B-sides too, namely "#1 Crush," "Driving Lesson," "Subhuman," and "Sex Never Goes Out of Fashion".
• Bob Geldof's "Great Song of Indifference" which is also The Something Song with Lyrical Dissonance.
• "Supper's Ready" by Genesis does not use that phrase at any point in the song (the closest we get is the lyric "And it's hey, babe, your supper's waiting for you..." and to a lesser extent, the later lyric "This is the supper of the mighty one"). The song itself is divided into seven individually-titled sections; of those sections, only "The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man" and "Willow Farm" receive title drops.
  • Other examples from their catalogue include "The Musical Box" from Nursery Cryme and "Firth of Fifth" from Selling England by the Pound.
• Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe".
• George Harrison's "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp". It is subtitled "Let It Roll", however, which appears repeatedly (it's the main part of the chorus).
• Although it fits its theme of a man filled with regret, the title of GIMS's "Le prix à payer" never appears in its lyrics.
• Glass Animals frequently invoke this trope; examples include "Flip", "Walla Walla", "Hazey", "Wyrd", "Cocoa Hooves", "Life Itself", "Season 2 Episode 3", and "Cane Shuga". Additionally, "Youth", "Mama's Gun", and "The Other Side of Paradise" contain variations on their titles but not the titles themselves.
• A good deal of songs by Glassjaw use this trope, including Jesus Glue, When One Eight Becomes Two Zeros, Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence, Pretty Lush, Must've Run All Day, Radio Cambodia, Majour, and Trailer Park Jesus.
  • Subverted, however, with Pink Roses, All Good Junkies Go To Heaven, and Natural Born Farmer, where the title appears usually in the middle of the chorus.
• Goldfrapp's "Deep Honey", "Hairy Trees", and "Koko".
  • "Horse Tears", also, but the line 'my horse is crying' appears in the first verse.
• Bobby Goldsboro's "Summer (The First Time)". The closest it comes is mentioning "the very first time."
• Good Kid has "Nomu", "Alchemist", "Witches", "Atlas", "Slingshot", "Aloe Lite", and "No Time to Explain".
• Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris" and "Hate This Place".
• Probably too many Gorillaz songs to name, including two of their biggest hits, "Clint Eastwood" and "19-2000". Confusingly, the phrase "Fire Coming Out Of A Monkey's Head" doesn't appear anywhere in the song of that name, but does appear in "Don't Get Lost In Heaven", the very next song on the album.
  • Despite the words "Feel Good" being said throughout the song, "Feel Good Inc." does not include the complete title.
  • "Dirty Harry", "El Manana", "Empire Ants", "To Binge", "Pirate Jet," "Latin Simone", and "Amarillo" don't make any reference to their titles either.
  • "Pirate Jet" does- listen in the background and there's a chorus of "pirate jet, pirate jet, pirate jet" in a mechanical voice.
• The Grateful Dead had several. Not counting instrumentals and "____ Blues", they are: "The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)", "(That's It For) The Other One", "Born Cross-Eyed", "The Eleven", "New Speedway Boogie", "Wharf Rat", "Weather Report Suite" and "Estimated Prophet" (though the word "prophet" does appear in that last).
• Green Day has a lot of them, namely "16", "American Eulogy", "Armatage Shanks", "At the Library", "Bab's Uvula Who?", "Basket Case", "Brain Stew/Jaded", "Brat", "Burnout" (though this does have "I'm not growing up, I'm just burning out"), "Dirty Rotten Bastards", "East Jesus Nowhere", "Emenius Sleepus", "Father Of All...", "F.O.D." (although the phrase "Fuck off or die," for which this stands, does appear), "Good Riddance" (although the song's subtitle, "Time of Your Life," appears several times), "Going to Pasalacqua", "Green Day", "Having a Blast", "Homecoming", "J.A.R.", "Jackass", "Last Night on Earth", "Letterbomb",^note Although "Homecoming" does include "Letterbomb" in the final segment "Longview", "Panic Song", "Platypus (I Hate You)", "Poprocks & Coke", "Prosthetic Head", "Pulling Teeth", "Sassafras Roots", "Stuck With Me", "The Grouch", and "¿Viva la Gloria? (Little Girl)".
  • The odd thing about "Stuck With Me" is that the B-Side "Do Dah Dah", which has a non-appearing title itself, does have the line "you're stuck with me" in the chorus. There's a reason for this - While they were recording some demos for Insomniac, someone at the studio had mislabeled an as-yet untitled song as "Stuck With Me", so the band decided to just go with that as the title. When they decided to make the song that was originally supposed to be called "Stuck With Me" a B-side, they naturally had to call it something else.
• 2d6 is a comedy rap duo whose song titles never have any relevance. They just keep lists of phrases they find amusing and assign one to each song.
• Madeline Harper Guest uses these occasionally. "The Ending Stays The Same" and "Under The Willow Tree" have titles slightly different from recurring lines ("the ending just/still stays the same" and "under the weeping willow tree", respectively), and "Cinderella Redux" bears no resemblance whatsoever to the lyrics, though it's an excellent description of the theme.
• Guns N' Roses' "Estranged", "Shackler's Revenge", and "Chinese Democracy".
• Half Man Half Biscuit have plenty. Even their big hits "All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit" and "Trumpton Riots" don't quite include the full titles (although "Joy Division Oven Gloves" does). Some, like "Architecture and Morality, Ted and Alice" and "Malayan Jelutong" are obscure Nigel-isms which seem to have nothing to do with the song at all.
• Jack Harlow did this with "Baxter Avenue", a track from his debut album Thats What They All Say. While the track is named after a street in Harlow's hometown of Louisville known for its nightlife, and the lyrics basically tell the story of his life in the city, the street name is nowhere to be found.
• Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta". A flagpole is mentioned in one verse, in the context of the cliche "run it up the flagpole and see who salutes".
• The Ending Theme of HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, "Heartcatch Paradise" (which at least has the "Heartcatch" part).
  • Heartcatch is, however, the first Pretty Cure series to actually have the full title of its opening theme song appear in the song (though Yes! Pretty Cure 5 had several near-misses).
  • And while we're at anime songs, the opening theme of Princess Tutu, "Morning Grace", doesn't have words "morning grace" popping up anywhere.
• Don Henley's "A Month of Sundays".
• The Herd's "From the Underworld".
• I Fight Dragons has "Suburban Doxology" and "No One Likes Superman Anymore".
• Imagine Dragons' "The Unknown".
• In Flames' "System" and "Trigger".
• For a band with 20 years of music, Inkubus Sukkubus has surprisingly few such songs. Away With The Faeries, Beltaine, Conquistadors, Danse Vampyr, Death and the Virgin, Enchantment, Eternity, Gypsy Lament, Hang Around, Hedonistic Gene, Incubus, Intercourse With The Vampire, Love Spell, Nymphomania, Old Hornie, Reptile, Song To Pan, Soul Inside, Storm, Struwwelpeter, The Rape Of Maude Bowen (Borderline example, although Maude Bowen is named, and the fact she was raped is also mentioned, the actual title never appears) The Witch of Berkeley, Trinity, Vampyra, Vampyre Erotica (Although in Vampyra, the phrase Vampiria Erotica is part of the chorus), Vampyre Kiss, Vermillion Rush, Vlad, Wake of the Christian Knights, Witch Hunt, and bother versions of Wytches. Out of about 150 songs, that's an impressive total.
• Most of Interface's songs lack title drops, with a few exceptions being "Destination", "Faith in Nothing", "It Begins Today", "Everyone Listening", "Not With Me", and "Ghosts of Your Ambition".
• Interpol is famous for this, with many of their popular songs such as "Obstacle 1", "PDA", "NYC", "Evil", and "Narc". It's easier to list the songs in which this isn't the case.
  • Every song on Turn on the Bright Lights is this sans "Say Hello to the Angels" (and "Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down", though that one is debatable ^note It only appears in Studio Chatter, and it is said as "..she's always down" rather than "...she was always down." and the bonus track "Specialist").
  • In Antics, every song aside from "Slow Hands", "Not Even Jail" and "Length of Love"^note Well, kind of. It's "lengths of love" in the song.
  • Much less frequently in Our Love to Admire, with only "Pioneer to the Falls", "The Scale", "The Heinrich Maneuver", and "Mammoth" having non-appearing titles.
• Only three songs in Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind have a Title Drop, four if you count "Sunlight, falling on your steel" on "Sun and Steel". It would be five if "To Tame a Land" had been allowed to keep its original title, "Dune". Powerslave has "The Duellists" (and an instrumental), Seventh Son of a Seventh Son has two ("The Clairvoyant" and "The Prophecy"), No Prayer for the Dying has two (the title track and "Fates Warning"), Brave New World has "The Mercenary", Dance of Death has "Rainmaker" (the title track is borderline, as "Dance of the dead" appears), A Matter of Life and Death has "The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg", and The Final Frontier has "The Alchemist" (the word "alchemy" does appear) and a borderline in "Satellite 15... The Final Frontier" (the latter appears, while the album number nod doesn't). After The Book of Souls averted this, Senjutsu had two songs whose Gratuitous Foreign Language is absent from the lyrics (the title track and "Stratego") plus "The Parchment".
• The James Gang's "Funk #49".
• Ja Rule, R. Kelly, and Ashanti "Wonderful" (though various other conjugations of the word "wonder" appear, "wonderful" does not.)
• Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", although it makes a lot of other Alice allusions.
• A bunch of Jethro Tull songs, especially in their early albums. Examples include "Alive and Well and Living In", "Cheap Day Return", "Hymn 43", "My God", "A Song for Jeffery".
• Elton John's "The Greatest Discovery", "Indian Sunset", "Curtains", "Song for Guy" (nearly entirely instrumental, but contains the lyrics "Life isn’t everything" near the end), "American Triangle", "Postcards from Richard Nixon".
• Rickie Lee Jones' "On Saturday Afternoons in 1963".
• Jerry Lee Lewis' "High School Confidential", the theme song from the 1958 film of that name. Though "high school hop" is sung multiple times in the chorus, the word "confidential" isn't close to being hinted at.
• Among the 19 tracks on Joy Division's (proper) studio LPs Unknown Pleasures and Closer, only five ("She's Lost Control", "Shadowplay", "Isolation", "Colony" and "Heart and Soul") fail to qualify for this trope. Scanning their entire (complex) discography, results are not unambiguous. For every "Love Will Tear Us Apart" there are also a "Digital", "Atmosphere" and "Dead Souls".
• Billy Joel: "Summer Highland Falls", "Goodnight Saigon"^*while neither word appears in the lyrics, the song is about soldiers in the Vietnam War, "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant"^*the words "Italian restaurant" do appear numerous times, "Travelin' Prayer". "Famous Last Words" is close, as the line is "These are the last words I have to say" (which was true, as it was the last song on his last studio album that had lyrics.)
• Judas Priest has both ''Dreamer Deceiver'' and ''Deceiver'' where only the word "Dreamer" can be heard in the first song.
• Karnivool songs run about 66% in line with this trope. Examples: "A.M. War", "Aeons", "Alpha Omega", "C.O.T.E." (aka "Center Of The Earth"), "Change (Part 1)", "Da-Reka", "Deadman", "Eidolon", "Fear Of The Sky", "Featherweight", "Float", "Goliath", "Headcase", "Illumine", "Mauseum", "Nachash", "Roquefort", "Sewn & Silent" (Partially true: 'sewn' is mentioned but not 'silent', though 'silencing' is), "Shutter Speed", "Synops", "The Caudal Lure", "The Refusal", "Themata", "Umbra".
• Kenna’s “New Sacred Cow”. This one in particular is interesting, given that it’s the title track from his debut album of the same name.
• Anna Kendrick's Cover Version of "When I'm Gone" by The Carter Family is officially titled "Cups": The original song was named for the chorus, while the cover owes it's non-appearing title to another cover that inspired Kendrick's: A popular YouTube video of the group Lulu And The Lampshades performing the song acapella with plastic cups as a rhythm accompaniment. Kendrick's version is sometimes credited as "Cups (When I'm Gone)", or even "Cups (Pitch Perfect's When I'm Gone)", since she originally performed the song as part of that film.
• Kent has "Mannen i den vita hatten", "La belle époque", "Klåparen" and "Ff".
• Greg Lake's "I Believe In Father Christmas" has the line "I believed in Father Christmas", but that's as close as it gets.
• Lamb does this quite a lot. Just the first album has "Lusty", "God Bless", "Trans Fatty Acid", "Gold", "Feela" and "Gorecki" So six out of nine songs.
• The Last Shadow Puppets, not counting covers, has a title drop in every song except "My Mistakes Were Made For You", "Black Plant", "Pattern", "The Dream Synopsis", and "The Bourne Identity".
• Many songs by Led Zeppelin: "The Battle of Evermore", "Black Country Woman", "Black Dog", "Boogie With Stu", "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp", "Candy Store Rock", "Carouselambra", "The Crunge", "D'yer Mak'er", "Four Sticks", "Hats Off To (Roy) Harper", "Hots on for Nowhere", "Immigrant Song", "Out on the Tiles", "Over the Hills and Far Away", "Ozone Baby", "The Rover", "Sick Again", "Tea for One", "Thank You", "Trampled Under Foot", and "Wearing and Tearing".
• Julian Lennon's "Valotte".
• Lostprophets are notorious for this. Pretty much almost every single song in their self-titled first album is this ("Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja", "And Then She Told Me to Leave"), while their second album almost entirely averted this (Except for "We are Godzilla, You are Japan"). They revert on a couple of tracks on their third album ("Heaven for the Weather, Hell for the Company", "Can't Stop, Gotta Date with Hate") and then stay a fair distance in their fourth (only exclusion being their last track on the album, "The Light that Shines Twice as Bright").
• Very few from Kylie Minogue; examples include "Enjoy Yourself", "Love Affair", "Difficult By Design" and "B.P.M.".
• Most Liars songs fit the trope, eg. all but one song on their first album.
• A few from Linkin Park, including "Papercut", "Pts.OF.Athrty", "Faint", "The Catalyst", and " Robot Boy".
• A lot of songs by Love have titles that allude to the song's subject but never appear in the lyrics, like "The Red Telephone" and "The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This".
• "Shut Up" by Madness is an interesting case, as an early version did have a Title Drop as the last two words of the song - they ended up cutting the entire last verse for length, but kept the title anyway. It still makes sense thematically - the lyrics concern an Unreliable Narrator who is trying to proclaim his innocence of attempted burglary while inadvertently making his guilt all the more obvious; he should really just "shut up" before he gets himself in more trouble.
• Madonna's "Bedtime Story", "Mer Girl", "Impressive Instant".
• The Mamas and the Papas' "Creeque Alley". The song is about their time on Creeque Alley in the US Virgin Islands, but the title is never said.
• The Manic Street Preachers have several, mostly those with lyrics by Richey Edwards - 'Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart', 'Facing Page: Top Left', 'William's Last Words', 'Jackie Collins Existential Question Time', 'The Intense Humming of Evil', 'Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier', 'Stay Beautiful', 'Crucifix Kiss', 'Nostalgic Pushhead', 'Symphony of Tourette', 'Yes', 'Archives of Pain', '4st 7lb', 'Mausoleum', 'Faster', 'Peeled Apples', 'Virginia State Epileptic Colony', 'The Convalescent', 'Golden Platitudes' and 'A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun.
• Manowar's "March for Revenge (By the Soldiers of Death)".
• Marilyn Manson, with some songs like "Count To Six And Die" and "Slutgarden", although it's rare.
• Essentially all of The Mars Volta. "Inertiatic ESP", "Cotopaxi", "Wax Simulacra", Teflon", "The Widow"....
  • However, it's probably best to not ask questions where Mars Volta lyrics are involved.
• On Mary and the Black Lambs album "As the City Sleeps" The track Departed is the only song that doesn't mention the title.
• Meat Loaf's spoken-word "Wasted Youth" from Bat Out of Hell II, although its title forms the opening lyrics for the following song. It's probably the only instance of this trope in the whole of his musical output.
• John Mellencamp's "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" is a partial example. None of the words in the main title appear in the lyrics, but the subtitle appears multiple times in the chorus.
• Metallica's "Ride the Lightning", "Fade to Black", "Escape", "...And Justice for All", "Eye of the Beholder", "Dyers Eve", and "Disposable Heroes". "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" is borderline, since only "Sanitarium" appears.
  • However, the words "Fade to Black" are in the lyrics of "The Memory Remains".
  • "The Unforgiven" trilogy has a straight one in III, and two borderline in the others ("I dub thee unforgiven", "are you unforgiven too?")
  • "Enter Sandman" is another borderline example. The words "enter" and "sandman" do appear in the song, but never together as they appear in the title.
• Megadeth have a habit of forming the title of a song by associating names given to specific parts of said-song, whether they're instrumental or not; that means those songs automatically fall under this trope. Examples : "Holy Wars... The Punishment Is Due", "Last Rites/Loved To Death", "Good Mourning/Black Friday".
  • Straight examples include : "Poison Was The Cure", "In My Darkest Hour", "Tornado Of Souls", "Return To Hangar"...etc.
• MGMT's "Kids" from Oracular Spectacular.
• Nearly everything (if not everything) by Minus The Bear.
  • Which is a shame for anyone expecting a song about a monkey knife fight.
• Moby's "Natural Blues", "Down Slow", "The Rafters", "Look Back In", "18", "My Weakness", "Machete", "In This World", "Signs of Love", "Sunday (The Day Before My Birthday)", "Sleep Alone", "Fireworks", "Rushing", "7", "If Things Were Perfect", "Everloving", "Inside", "Guitar Flute & String", "Porcelain", and "Memory Gospel".
• The entirety of Mom Jeans' Best Buds. Neither the album title nor any of the song titles appear at any point in the lyrics, and most of the song titles have nothing to do with the songs, instead being references like "Vape Nation" or "Scott Pilgrim vs. My GPA"
• The Monkees' "Good Clean Fun". The band has speculated that not mentioning the title may have hurt the single's commercial prospects because fans didn't know what song to request. The title itself was Mike Nesmith's Take That! against a record company executive who told him he should write songs that were "good clean fun" and had a hook.
  • Several other songs by The Monkees fell under this trope as well, most of which were composed by Nesmith. In fact, Nez did it so often, the results could fill a Sporcle quiz.
  • "For Pete's Sake" is probably their most famous example, given that an edited version of that song served as the closing theme for the second season of their 1960s TV series.
  • Another notable example is Micky Dolenz's "Randy Scouse Git"; Dolenz first heard the phrase on the TV show Till Death Do Us Part. After the band's British record label told them that the phrase was inappropriate in the UK and forced them to give the song an alternate title, Dolenz said, "Okay, "Alternate Title" it is."
• Sarah McLachlan has quite a few songs that fall under this trope. Excluding covers, these songs are: "Awakenings," "Ben's Song," "Dirty Little Secret," "Elsewhere," "Fumbling Towards Ecstacy," "Last Dance," "Out of the Shadows," "Possession," "Touch," "Sad Clown," "Song for My Father," "Uphill Battle," "Vox," and "Wintersong." Most of these songs come from her first album, although some of these, most notably "Awakenings," are much more recent. To an extent, "Circle," "Illusions of Bliss," and "The Path of Thorns" could also fall under this trope.
• Mono's "Life in Mono".
• Monster High's theme "Fright Song".
• Many, many songs by the Mountain Goats.
• Mouse on Mars have never had a song share its title with an album. The closest they've ever come was the song "Glim" from the album Glam.
• Muse's "Knights of Cydonia", "Muscle Museum", "Apocalypse Please", "Butterflies and Hurricanes", "Exo-Politics", "Map of the Problematique", "Thoughts of a Dying Atheist", among others.
  • "Uprising" comes close, with the line "rise up and take the power back".
  • "Hysteria" plays with this trope a bit; the U.S. single release gave it the subtitle "I Want It Now", which does appear prominently in the chorus. On the album and on all other releases, it's just "Hysteria".
• My Bloody Valentine: Most songs on Loveless qualify, including "Only Shallow", "Loomer", "When You Sleep", "I Only Said", and "Soon".
• My Chemical Romance is fond of this. So much so that it's easier to list their songs that do have the title in the lyrics.
  • "Blood", "Mama", "Teenagers", "The Sharpest Lives", "Dead!", "Sleep", "To The End", "Heaven Help Us", "I Don't Love You". So that's 38 (82%) of their songs - not counting covers - that follow this trope. It is worthy of note that all the songs except "To The End" and that follow the trope are from their third album, The Black Parade.
  • Fourth album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys also has some aversions, like "The Only Hope for Me Is You", "The Kids from Yesterday", "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)" and "Sing". "Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back" sort of counts too ("So just save yourself and I'll hold them back tonight").
• My Head's "Humbucker". A pretty confusing one because while the title isn't in the lyrics, the phrase "my head" is, leading at least one radio DJ to mistakenly announce it as "My Head" by Humbucker instead of the other way around.
• My Morning Jacket's "Wordless Chorus" - though the chorus of the song is just a string of harmonized "aah"'s, so in a way it is named for the lyrics. The lyric sheet even transcribes the chorus itself as "WORDLESSCHORUS".
• Miyuki Nakajima's "Yuuwaku" ("Seduction"), "Yokorembo" ("Unrequited Love"), "Revival," and "Pierrot".
• Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog". If they'd named it what they wanted (which was in the song), it'd never get played on radio.
• Nelly and Kelly Rowland's "Dilemma".
• Kate Nash's "Pumpkin Soup". She has several others too, like "Paris" and "Do-Wah-Doo".
• Most New Order songs, except "Confusion", "Crystal", "Regret", "Shellshock", "Perfect Kiss" (the Title Drop isn't until near the end of the song, though), "1963", "Touched by the Hand of God" and a handful of others. "World (The Price of Love)" has "the price of love" in its chorus but impressively avoids mentioning the world.
• The Newsboys have "The Breakfast Song", which does mention breakfast but never uses the title in a lyric.
• Nik Kershaw's "The Riddle" — and while we're on the subject of things not appearing, don't try to look for a meaning either Word of God says it's a bunch of gibberish thrown together.
• Nine Inch Nails: "Heresy", "I'm Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally", "The Downward Spiral", many others.
• Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"—although it can be hard to tell with the song's famously hard-to-decipher lyrics.
  • Many of their songs, actually: "About a Girl", "Aero Zeppelin", "Aneurysm", "Hairspray Queen", "Lithium", "Sliver", "Tourette's"...
  • Don't forget "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle".
  • Kurt Cobain was having trouble coming up with a title for "About A Girl" when he first brought it to the studio - when drummer Chad Channing asked him what it was about, he replied that it was "about a girl", so...
• The Notorious B.I.G.'s classic "Juicy". While the name is undoubtedly because the song samples "Juicy Fruit" by Mtume, it doesn't appear in the lyrics at all.
• Oasis's "Acquiesce", "Columbia", "Digsy's Dinner", "The Hindu Times", "The Importance of Being Idle", and "Married with Children".
• Many, many songs by of Montreal. To name just two, "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" and "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)".
• "The Kids Aren't Alright" by The Offspring.
• Not one song ever released by Om has the full song title in the lyrics.
  • Only these songs so far have part of the song title in its lyrics: "Pilgrimage" and "Pilgrimage (Reprise)" have the word 'pilgrim' in them; "Flight of the Eagle" has the word 'flight' in it several times; "State of Non-Return" has the lyric "the non-returner sees".
• Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's "Souvenir". Also "Pandora's Box", which is a Shout-Out to the film of the same name.
• Origami Angel: It'd be easier to note exceptions, which do have their titles appear:
  • Quiet Hours inversions: "Ride Our Bikes to School", "Hey There", "Notice", "Mark My Words" (as "mark my fucking words"),
  • Gen 3 inversions: "Ruby" is the only song to include its title in the lyrics.
  • Somewhere City inversions: "Skeleton Key", "Find Your Throne", "The Air Up Here"
  • GAMI GANG inversions: "You Won't.", "Kno U", "Caught In The Moment"
• Oscillator X - "Dynamo".
• Our Lady Peace: "4am" was indeed written at 4am, but the time is never mentioned in the song.
• "Rosa Parks" by Outkast. Parks' name is never mentioned anywhere in the song although "back of the bus" does reference her civil rights movement.
• Overkill have "Overkill III (Under The Influence)", "Infectious", "Playing With Spiders/Skullkrusher" (only "Skullkrusher" is said during the song which may imply the instrumental intro is actually named "Playing With Spiders"), "Soulitude" and a bunch of other songs/instrumentals.
• Owl City's "Meteor Shower" doesn't say anything about meteors. This and the fact that it's incredibly short - literally just six lines long - often leads listeners to forget what it's called.
• All of Panic! at the Disco's first album, and part of their second.
  • You would think that with interesting mouthfuls like "There's a Reason These Tables Are Numbered, Honey, You Just Haven't Figured It Out Yet" and "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off", at least one of those titles would be used in the song; some of their song titles are long enough to be the chorus.
• Pantera has "Suicide Note Pt. I", "Suicide Note Pt. II", "The Underground in America", "Reprise (Sandblasted Skin)", "10's", "War Nerve", "Use My Third Arm", Strength Beyond Strength", "Good Friends and a Bottle of Pills", "25 Years", "Throes of Rejection", and "No Good (Attack the Radical)".
• The Paper Chase LOVE this trope, and since they've never made a non-Concept Album, often a song is named after a lyric from another song on the album, i.e. "It's Out There And It's Gonna Get You", or a straight up example such as "Where Have Those Hands Been?!"
• "Miss Sarajevo" by U2—er, The Passengers.
• Pearl Jam's "Corduroy", "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town", "I Got ID" (the supposedly original title, "I Got Shit", appears), "The Fixer", "Wishlist" and "Yellow Ledbetter".
• Katy Perry has "Hot N Cold"; the chorus does start with "you're hot and you're cold" however, just not "hot and cold".
• Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers' "Mary Jane's Last Dance". The closest it comes is "Last dance with Mary Jane".
• Petra's "The Coloring Song".
• Pink Floyd has "Eclipse", "Brain Damage" (the latter being the one song that says "I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon!"), and in The Wall, "In The Flesh?"/"In The Flesh", "The Trial", and the parts of "Another Brick In The Wall" people don't know. Also, "Chapter 24", "Astronomy Domine", "Let There Be More Light", "Echoes" and a bunch others.
  • To clarify the last, the three parts of "Another Brick In the Wall", which are separated from one another on the album, have a shared refrain that runs as follows:
    • Part 1: "All in all, it was just a brick in the wall. All in all, it was all just bricks in the wall."
    • Part 2: "All in all, it's just another brick in the wall. All in all, you're just another brick in the wall."
    • Part 3: "All in all, it was all just bricks in the wall. All in all, you were all just bricks in the wall."
  • Part 2 is the best-known one, the only one to state the title, and is the only part of the three to be played on the radio.
  • "Sheep" has bleeting and references to lambs, but not sheep. "Dogs" also has barking, but no lyrics mentioning a dog. The dogs are mentioned in "Sheep", however.
• Plus One's "Exodus".
• The Police: "Synchronicity II".
• Primitive Radio Gods' "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand".
• PVRIS: "St. Patrick", "Eyelids" (which has "eyes"), "Mirrors" (which has "mirror"), "What's Wrong", and "Nola 1". Lynn Gunn has been asked why she gave "What's Wrong" a non-appearing title; she doesn't remember.
• "Warrior's Dance" by The Prodigy.
• Pulp's "Disco 2000". "Disco" isn't anywhere in the lyrics, at least.
• Finley Quaye's "Supreme I Preme", "Maverick A Strike" and "Sunday Shining". The closest the latter comes to the title is "sun is shining".
• Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", "The Prophet's Song", "A Winter's Tale".
• Queens of the Stone Age notably did this for "Feel Good Hit Of The Summer", to conceal the fact that the song's lyrics consist entirely of drug references.
• Queensrÿche's "Electric Requiem" and "Suite Sister Mary".
• Radiohead's "Lurgee", "Planet Telex", "Talk Show Host", "Subterranean Homesick Alien", "Exit Music (For a Film)", "Lucky", "The Tourist", "The National Anthem", "How To Disappear Completely", "In Limbo", "Idioteque", "Motion Picture Soundtrack", "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box", "Pyramid Song", "Bodysnatchers", "Nude", "Faust Arp", and "Daydreaming".
• Rammstein's "Dalai Lama".
• Rayburn's "Fat Tuesday".
• Red Hot Chili Peppers has multiple songs where each title does not appear in the lyrics.
  • "Mellowship Slinky In B Major" (which does contain the word "mellowship"), "Funky Monks" (though 'monks' does appear in the text, and the band call themselves 'funky monks' in their song Sikamikanico), and "The Greeting Song" from Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
  • "Special Secret Song Inside," mainly because the song's real title, "Party on Your Pussy," was considered too explicit by the record label. Same with "Battleship," which had the title "Blowjob Park."
  • "Warm Tape" from By the Way.
• Red Jumpsuit Apparatus's "Ass Shaker".
• Reel Big Fish has their song "The Set Up", which does not feature any of those words.
• Relient K's album Mmhmm had several very Panic!-esque titles, the most memorable being "The Only Thing Worse than Beating a Dead Horse Is Betting on One".
  • There's also the memorable Relient K song, "Crayons Can Melt On Us For All I Care", which, because of this trope, is commonly refered to as "I Just Wasted Ten Seconds of Your Life"
• R.E.M. have quite a few songs like this: "Wolves, Lower" (though does contain the phrase "Lower, wolves"), "9-9", "So. Central Rain" (which contains the subtitle, "I'm Sorry", which does appear in the song), "Little America", "Feeling Gravity's Pull", "Good Advices", "Flowers of Guatemala", "Walter’s Theme", "Lightnin’ Hopkins", "King of Birds", "Pop Song 89", "The Wrong Child", "I Remember California" and probably dozens of others. Noticeably more common before they became really famous.
  • "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" doesn't mention when said serpent slumbers, but how (e.g. "The sidewinder sleeps in a coil" or "The sidewinder sleeps on his back").
  • "Swan Swan H" is debatable because of the line "Swan, Swan, Hummingbird". In the liner notes to the compilation And I Feel Fine.., Michael Stipe calls for the full title to be used and Mike Mills expresses some distate at the truncation.
  • Also debatable is "E-bow The Letter" - the lyrics briefly mention "this letter" (the other part of the title comes from the fact that an E-bow is used in the instrumentation of the song).
  • A few more: "Texarkana", "Country Feedback", "Circus Envy", "Binky the Doormat", "Low Desert", "The Lifting".
• Ride's "Seagull", "Polar Bear", "Chrome Waves", "Mouse Trap", "Cool Your Boots", and "OX4".
• The Rolling Stones' "Prodigal Son", "Sympathy for the Devil", "Let It Bleed" and "New Faces".
• Roxy Music have "Re-Make Re-Model", "2HB", "Beauty Queen", "Psalm", "Triptych", and "Manifesto".
• Rush has "2112", "Cygnus X-1 Book I" and "Book II", "The Spirit of Radio", "Manhattan Project," "Distant Early Warning", "War Paint" and "Presto".
• Sad Cafe's "Every Day Hurts".
• Savant's "Spaceheart"
• Say Anything...'s "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too".
• Boz Scaggs' "Lido Shuffle" is about a man named Lido, with his name dropped many times, but the word "shuffle" doesn't appear at all.
• The Shins' "Know Your Onion".
  • "Phantom Limb". (the word "phantom" appears exactly once)
  • "Caring is Creepy".
• Shiina Ringo has a lot of examples. Perhaps the strangest is "浴室" (Yokushitsu) or "La salle de bain" (both of which mean "Bathroom"), which appears to have nothing to do with the song. "La salle de bain" isn't even in the same language as the lyrics of that version (which are in English), although she does that a lot too.
• The title song of Shiny Toy Guns' We Are Pilots album, oddly. And "Jackie Will Save Me", although her name does appear in the lyrics. And "When They Came For Us".
• Simon & Garfunkel's "A Simple Desultory Philippic."
  • Also "The 59th Street Bridge Song", subtitled "Feelin' Groovy".
• Paul Simon’s "Gumboots."
• Simple Plan's "Untitled", though "How could this happen to me?" is used as an alternate title.
• The Sir Douglas Quintet's "The Rains Came".
• The Smashing Pumpkins' "Cherub Rock", "Disarm", "Rocket", "Soma", "Geek U.S.A.", Mayonnaise", "Silverfuck", "Luna", "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness", "Jellybelly", "Here Is No Why", "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", "Fuck You (An Ode to No One)", Cupid de Locke", "Galapogos", "Muzzle", "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans", "Where the Boys Fear to Tread", "Thirty-Three", "In the Arms of Sleep", "Tales of a Scorched Earth", "Thru the Eyes of Ruby", "X.Y.U." and "Farewell and Goodnight", among countless others.
• The Smiths' "The Headmaster Ritual", "How Soon Is Now", and "Suffer Little Children", "Shakespeare's Sister", "Nowhere Fast", "Half a Person", "Barbarism Begins at Home" and "Paint A Vulgar Picture".
  • "How Soon is Now" does come very close to dropping the title halfway through the song: "When you say it's gonna happen now, well when exactly do you mean?"
• The Smyrk's "The Ballad of Fletcher Reede".
• Snow Patrol's "How to be Dead", "Spitting Games", "Chocolate" (the UK single release featured a sticker quoting the chorus "this is the straw, final straw") "If There's a Rocket, Tie Me to It", "Olive Grove Facing the Sea", "Disaster Button", "Life-ning", "The President". "You're All I Have" doesn't have the name per se, but it does have "you are all that I have". Noticeably more common up to and including their breakthrough album Final Steaw,
• Sonata Arctica have 'The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Real Puppet'.
  • There is also "Dream Thieves", "The Misery", "Kingdom For A Heart", "The End of This Chapter", "White Pearl, Black Oceans...", "Letter to Dana", and "The Cage".
• The Spinto Band seems pretty fond of these. Not getting into early self-released material, there's "The Black Flag", "The Cat's Pajamas", "Crack The Whip", "Needlepoint", "Pumpkins And Paisley", "Spy Vs. Spy", "Summer Grof", and "Trust Vs. Mistrust".
• Steely Dan's "Kings", "Pretzel Logic" and "The Caves of Altamira".
• The vast majority of Stereolab songs.
• Stereophonics' "Dakota".
• Sufjan Stevens' two "state albums", Michigan and Illinois!, have a total of two songs between them whose lyrics contain the title completely: "Romulus" and "Chicago". "Jacksonville" is close, containing a use of "Jackson" that might refer to the titular city. Many of the other titles are long, reference-laden sentences.
• Sevendust's "Waffle".
• Sigue Sigue Sputnik's "Love Missile F1-11", commonly called "Shoot It Up".
• Regina Spektor has "Rejazz", "Bon Idée", "Lounge", "Lulliby", "Chemo Limo" ^note which does come close to a Title Drop - "I couldn't afford chemo like I couldn't afford a limo" is part of the chorus, "Fidelity", and "Dance Anthem of the 80s", on top of "Ode to Divorce", "Sailor Song", "Hotel Song" and "Chicken Song".
• Rod Stewart's "Young Turks". The chorus instead has "young hearts". The less obvious title was possibly chosen to avoid confusion with the Candi Staton song "Young Hearts Run Free". Whether that benefit outweighed the obviously confusing lyrics/titles mismatch is open to question.
  • Also, "Maggie May." Although the woman the song is about is frequently referred to as Maggie, the "May" part never comes up.
• The indie pop band Stars has quite a few: "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead", "Set Yourself On Fire", "Elevator Love Letter" (elevator is in the song but 'Love Letter' is not), "The Big Fight", "What the Snowman Learned About Love", "Romantic Comedy".
• The Stars on 45 single titled (for legal reasons): "Medley: Intro "Venus"/Sugar, Sugar/No Reply/I'll Be Back/Drive My Car/Do You Want to Know a Secret/We Can Work It Out/I Should Have Known Better/Nowhere Man/You're Going to Lose That Girl/Stars on 45." No wonder the title's not in the lyrics (though all the individual song titles are, apart from "Venus"). The medley holds the record for the longest-titled single to hit #1 on the Billboard charts.
• Stone Temple Pilots' "Interstate Love Song", "Big Empty", "Plush", and "Sex Type Thing", among others.
• Styx's A.D. 1928 and A.D. 1958.
• Donna Summer's "If You Got It Flaunt It".
• Supertramp's "The Logical Song" (the word "logical" does show up, but without "song"), "Just Another Nervous Wreck" (the closest approach is "everyone's a nervous wreck now"), "Downstream", "A Soapbox Opera", "Fool's Overture", and "Breakfast in America" (both "breakfast" and "America" appear, but not together).
• "Ronan" by Taylor Swift, which was a charity single written for a boy who died of cancer. This is the only example in her repertoire.
• System of a Down's "ATWA" and "Chop Suey!".
  • Also "BYOB" and "Prison Song" (the word prison shows up, but not Prison Song). "Chop Suey!" is because the original title was "Suicide", which does appear in the song.
  • "Needles" might be another — the word "needle" is in the bridge, but not "needles" — though it's a borderline case.
  • There's also 'Chik'N'Stu', 'U-Fig', 'This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I'm On This Song', 'Tentative' and 'Stealing Society' by way of direct examples.
• Talking Heads: "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel", "Found a Job", "Artists Only", "Life During Wartime", "Drugs", "Crosseyed and Painless", "The Great Curve", "Seen and Not Seen", "Swamp"
• Pretty much every Taking Back Sunday song on their first couple of albums.
• Tally Hall:
  • Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum has "Be Born", "Just Apathy", "Two Wuv", "The Whole World and You", and then "13" and "Dream" (which don't have lyrics anyways).
  • Good & Evil only has "Hymn for a Scarecrow".
• The Tamperer: "Feel It", named so because it samples The Jacksons' "Can You Feel It".
• Tears for Fears:
  • "The Prisoner"
  • "Ideas as Opiates"
  • "The Conflict"
  • "Pharaohs"
  • "Sea Song"
  • "Famous Last Words"
  • "Gas Giants"
  • "Brian Wilson Said"
  • "The Madness of Roland"
• Many of the songs Vienna Teng writes don't have the title appear in the song.
• They Might Be Giants' "Absolutely Bill's Mood": Bill refers to Record Producer Bill Krauss, while the "absolutely" part is a nod to Bob Dylan adding emphatic adverbs to song titles, such as "Absolutely Sweet Marie" or "Positively 4th Street".
  • A complete list can be found here.
• The Three Degrees' "Year of Decision".
• At no point in Pam Tillis's song "Please" does she sing the title word. However, a few of the backing vocalists sing it under a couple of the lines.
• Tory Lanez's 2021 hit "The Color Violet", which is about a playboy's heartbreak.
• The Toys' "A Lover's Concerto".
• Trout Fishing in America has "Eleven Easy Steps". According to Word of God, the title came from the instructions to a playplace that gutarist Ezra Idlet was building for his and bassist Keith Grimwood's kids.
• Type O Negative have 'Unsuccessfully Coping With the Natural Beauty of Infidelity' and 'Christian Woman', among others.
• Ultravox's "Hymn"(not "Till Thy Kingdom Come"), from Quartet.
• "Unchained Melody", so named because it was written for the film Unchained.
• U2: "Drowning Man", "Premonade", "MLK", "Exit", "God Part II" (the title is a reference to John Lennon's "God", as the band imitates the lyrical structure of that song), "Bad", "Mothers of the Disappeared, "Red Light", "Mofo" (though one chorus does mention "motherfucking rock and roll"), "Three Sunrises", "Indian Summer Sky", "The Unforgettable Fire", "A Sort of Homecoming".
• Name any song by Underworld that isn't "Spoonman" (from dubnobasswithmyheadman.
  • There are other Underworld songs that don't qualify - "Pearl's Girl", "King of Snake", "Mmm Skycraper I Love You"... but by and large, Underworld do favour non-appearing titles.
• The 1992 jazz-rap classic by Us3, "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)", is based mainly off a sample of Herbie Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island". While the main title (regardless of spelling) isn't in the lyrics, the subtitle appears several times.
• Utada Hikaru's "Kremlin Dusk", besides the instrumental "Opening" and "Opening Crossover" from her Exodus album.
• Van Halen: "Love Walks In" (the chorus actually goes "Love comes walkin' in") and "5150".
• Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner". The name of the diner the singer is in is never mentioned in the lyrics.
• Gene Vincent's "Race with the Devil".
• Variation: There is one Vocaloid song which is known by many fans as "Triple Baka". There's no mention of the actual phrase "Triple Baka" during the song. Then again...
• Tom Waits has quite a few: "Frank's Wild Years" from Swordfishtrombones, (the words all appear in the first line, but not together), "Cemetery Polka" and "Jockey Full Of Bourbon" from Rain Dogs, "Black Wings" from Bone Machine among others. On the other hand, all 16 songs on Mule Variations have their title appear in the lyrics. The bonus tracks on the Australia/NZ edition bring it up to 18 and it still averts the trope.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic does this with his parodies whenever the new title lyric no longer makes a fitting title ("Lose Yourself" -> "Couch Potato" rather than "Lose Your Mind"), contains a trademark he can't get the rights to use as a title ("Piano Man" -> "Ode to a Superhero", and "American Pie" -> "The Saga Begins"), or hasn't actually changed from the original ("Complicated" -> "A Complicated Song", "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" -> "Headline News"). By coincidence, all the parodies on Poodle Hat - three of them being examples above - were subjected to this, except for "eBay".
  • And two fit the last rule with a song which already didn't feature the title ("Smells Like Nirvana", "Bohemian Polka"). For that matter, the rest of his polka medleys (except "Polka Face").
• Weezer's Maladroit has four different tracks titled this way: "American Gigolo", "Space Rock", "Burndt Jamb" and "Death And Destruction". "Burndt Jamb" originally had nothing but Scat Singing for lyrics, while "Death And Destruction" was originally an instrumental, and both ended up keeping their working titles once they received proper lyrics. "Surf Wax America" also doesn't have its title in the lyrics (other than brief references to surfing and waxing down a surfboard). And despite clearly being a Christmas song, "The Christmas Song" never specifically mentions the word "Christmas".
• Mary Wells' "What's Easy for Two Is So Hard for One".
• Wilco's "Summer Teeth", "You Are My Face", "Solitaire", and "One and a Half Stars".
• Robbie Williams's "Tripping".
• Wolfmother's "Tales".
• Yazoo had quite a few, including the single "Nobody's Diary" (which includes "diary" but not "nobody's"). Others include "Too Pieces", "Bad Connection", "And On", "Unmarked" and "Ode to Boy".
• Yello's "Blazing Saddles".
• Frank Zappa has "Teenage Wind" and "Drafted Again", which happen to be the first and last tracks of You Are What You Is.
• The Zombies' "Care of Cell 44".
• Machine Head and "Imperium", from Through the Ashes of Empires.
• Gigi d'Agostino's "L'Amour Toujours" and any other song by him with a French title.
  • The song was actually released in the U.S. under the title "I'll Fly With You".
• Subverted with "Strawberry Letter 23" by Shuggie Otis and Covered Up by Brothers Johnson: The words "Strawberry Letter 22" appear, but not 23. Apparently, the song itself is Strawberry Letter 23.
• Saliva's "Lackluster".
• "Komm, Susser Tod"(Come, Sweet Death), from The End of Evangelion. The title does not show up in either language.
• Delerium - "Incantation", "Heaven's Earth", and most other songs, "Silence" being one of the few exceptions.
• Everything But The Girl's "Missing"(although "I miss you" is in the refrain), "Five Fathoms" (not "Love You More), and "Clubland Lullaby".
• "Spirit" by Fantasy Project, which instead drops the title of the album, ''Stay'', in its refrain. In the album's actual title track, the title is absent from the refrain (although it appears in the bridge).
• Decoded Feedback has many, including "Mother Tenebrarum", "Bio-Vital" (not "In Your Eyes"), "2 Faces" (although "face to face" appears), "Silent Killer" (not "Touch Me"), "Proteus Syndrome" (not "The Black Hole"), "Another Loss" (not "Love Will Never Die"), etc.
• "E for Extinction" by Thousand Foot Krutch.
• "Tongue Tied" by Eve 6. (not "One Thousand Faces")
• "White Sky" by Vampire Weekend
• "Empire State of Mind" (often assumed to be called "New York") by Jay-Z
• "Apollo (Live on Your TV)" (the subtitle appears, but not the main title), "Asleep or Awake", "Green Queen"(not "Peace of Mind") and "Butterfly Defect" by Apoptygma Berzerk, from Rocket Science. And "Eclipse" (not "As The World Stands Still" or "For a Moment") from Welcome to Earth, which was named in honor of the 1999 European solar eclipse, but nowhere do the lyrics directly mention it.
• The Portuguese and original version of Tom Jobim's "A Garota de Ipanema" (The Girl from Ipanema) does not mention the word garota even once.
• "Digital Dream" by Laserdance, which is their only song with full lyrics(although they're mostly unintelligible). All of their other songs are either instrumental, or have only a single stanza that often doesn't include the title. The refrain "scratch my back" was apparently the song's working title.
• "Duvet" by BoA.
• Band of Horses "I Go to the Barn because I Like the..." features a title that bears no clear relation to the song at all, as well as a title whose words are nowhere to be found in the song proper.
• Swans did/do this a lot. Some especially worthy examples:
  • The piano ballad "Blackmail" from Children Of God, although subtly loaded with dissonantly creepy lyrical implications, never mentions the title, even indirectly (except on, perhaps, an emotional level).
  • "You Fucking People Make Me Sick" on My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky seems to be a kind of trippy Obsession Song... Until it isn't.
    • Also, when you combine it with the album title, you realize just how long it all takes to type...
  • Soundtracks For The Blind contains many titles which have apparently little to no relation to the subject matter. Then you think about it. Or look it up. After which, seeing as this is a Swans album, you begin to smell the Nightmare Fuel...
• A few cases among theme songs for Pokémon: The Series. Among the openings there's "Mezase Pokémon Master", "Advance Adventure", "Battle Frontier", "Saikou - Everyday!" and "Best Wishes!"
  • In fact, "Saikou - Everyday!" is the only theme song to use the exact phrase "Mezase Pokémon Master" in the lyrics.
• "Dissertation on the State of Bliss" from The Country Girl. Ira Gershwin chose not to title the song after its refrain because several other songs had been titled "Love And Learn" already.
• Loreena McKennitt's "Skellig." Not only does the title not appear in the song but most people will need the liner notes to figure out what the title references and how it relates to the song.
• van Canto absolutely loves Title Drop in every single song that's not Frodo's Dream (makes sense, as he basically tells about his dream)
• "Beachball" (not "People Get Ready") by Nalin & Kane.
• Otenki has a song called "Phoenix" which mentions neither the bird nor the city.
• Even church hymns aren't immune to this trope. "A Beautiful Life" by William M. Golden describes several aspects of a beautiful life, but the closest it comes to a Title Drop is the line "The only life that will endure,//Is one that’s kind and good and pure" that's hidden away in the third verse that may or may not be sung in services.
• "Gypsy Woman" (mistakenly called "She's Homeless") by Crystal Waters.
• Days Of The New's "Touch, Peel And Stand", sort of. It has something of a masked Title Drop: "And now I stand / and I peel for more / won't you touch me, touch me..."
• Trapt's "Still Frame". Though the main chorus does feature the lyric "this picture's frozen and I can't get out".
• New Years Day's "Ready, Aim, Misfire".
• This trope appears at least four times on every Umphrey's Mcgee album.
• Subverted very peculiarly by Magma on "Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh". Five of the piece's seven movements are named after a lyric from one of the other movements.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls:
  • The first movie features a scene where the girls sing a rousing song encouraging the students to help Twilight Sparkle win the Fall Formal crown. The name of the song? "Equestria Girls". That's right — the song named after the movie features no Title Drops whatsoever. The title does appear in the modified version of the song used for the franchise as a whole, however.
  • This title can also cause major confusion with the earlier "Equestria Girls" advertisement which is a parody on Katy Perry's "California Gurls" released long before anyone at Hasbro even thought about making the ponies human.
• Grouplove's "Shark Attack" has no mention of sharks or attacks.
• "Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was either that or "Blblblbl, Blblblbl, Blblblbl!"
• The title song of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying only includes the first three words of the title. No wonder it's usually referred to as "How To".
• Kate Yanai's "Bacardi Feeling" is an interesting case: It started its life in a European Bacardi commercial in which it did contain its own title. It became popular enough for Kate Yanai to re-record it as a full-length song with no references to rum in the lyrics whatsoever. However, the title stayed the same because it was a Bacardi commercial after all where people knew the song from, so they walked into record stores and looked for "that Bacardi song". And since the commercial in question was mostly aired in non-English-speaking nations, those who didn't understand English hardly noticed that the word "Bacardi" was missing. Kelly Rowland's cover, by the way, is named "Summer Dreamin'" and targeted at an audience that's too young to know anything about the Bacardi commercial which started it all.
• There is a Russian indie synthpop/noise/whatever-they-want band named Kobyla i trupoglzye zhaby iskali tseziyu, nashli pozdno utrom svistyashego khna (Roughly thranslated The Horse and the Corpse-Eyed Toads Have Searched for Caesium And Found It Late In The Morning of Whistling Henna; often shortened to "Kobyla i trupoglazye zhaby" for obvious reasons) has a cult status partially built on absolutely bizarre titles. Band's founder (and, largely, the only driving force apart from a few Garfunkels), Anton Vagin, usually has a few credited persons in album sidenotes, who were just sitting and giving the titles to songs until they find something appropriate. Appropriate in their own way, as texts are either Word Salad Lyrics or Phrase Salad Lyrics, sometimes instrumentals occur, as well. That makes track listing a great fun to read. You can find track listings here, on a torrent tracker (Vagin put them here himself) and they will make as much sense if translated by anything like Google Translate.
• Ukrainian band Skryabin has a song Mumiy Trol which is titled so because it spoofs the style of Russian band named Mumiy Trol.
• La Cage aux folles has "Masculinity" (also known as "Masculinity Lesson"): "masculine" appears three times in the lyrics, but the actual title does not.
• Project Pitchfork's "Lament", which may be misconstrued as "Forever Apart" from the refrain.
• "Gecko (Overdrive)" by Oliver Heldens and Becky Hill. "Overdrive" is repeated frequently, but "Gecko" isn't mentioned once.
• "Nasty Freestyle" by T-Wayne. The name refers to the fact he was freestyling over the beat from Greg Bandit Marco's song "Nasty". However, the title isn't ever used in the lyrics.
• Experimental rock band Man Man loves using non-appearing titles for their songs, sometimes falling into Word Salad Title. "Skin Tension", "Whalebones", "Paul's Grotesque", "I, Manface"... the list goes on. Their two latest albums have more songs with TitleDrops than their earlier work, but they are still very fond of this trope.
• "The Minstrel, The Jester And I" from Once Upon a Mattress. The King has to mime the title, since he can't sing it.
• With the exception of Scarlet and Light, any song by Periphery. Some times these titles can be ridiculous, Jetpacks Was Yes, Buttersnips, Froggin' Bullfish, etc.
• The Music Man has a few:
  • The Spoken Word number "Rock Island" is titled because its patter is synchronized to train rhythms.
  • "Iowa Stubborn" and "Marian the Librarian" each contain all the words in the title, but never in that sequence.
• In Closer Than Ever, "The Sound of Muzak" is titled after a pun. The lyrics repeat the word "music" over and over, but "Muzak" is spoken (not sung) once. "Life Story," "Fandango" and "Another Wedding Song" also do not include their respective titles in the lyrics.
• "Forever the Sickest Kids" has their song La La Laniey, in which the song alludes to a dangerous girl the singer is in love with, but never names her. The "la la la" part of the chorus just continues, and the girl is never named.
• From Hamilton: "Farmer Refuted" (which is named after the actual essay on which the song is based), "Cabinet Battle #1" and "Cabinet Battle #2", and "Schuyler Defeated" (which is really just a bridging/exposition song anyway). Also, "The Story Of Tonight (Reprise)" and "Stay Alive (Reprise)" obviously don't include the 'reprise' part, but they do both include the first part of the title.
• "The Battle Hymn of Love" by Kathy Mattea and Tim O'Brien. The word "battle" shows up only once, and surprisingly, so does the word "love".
• "Christina's Song" by MAX. It's a Grief Song for Christina Grimmie.
• There are many songs out there that feature profanities in the title but not in the song itself, including "The Shark's Own Private Fuck" by Sunny Day Real Estate, "Ignorant Piece of Shit" by Carissa's Wierd, and many more.
  • Conversely, "NSFW" by Psycho Stick is an example whose lyrics (with the exception of a brief spoken introduction of a guest vocalist) consist only of profanities.
• Logic, Khalid, and Alessia Cara's "1-800-273-8255". The song is about talking someone out of suicide, and the title was the number for the (U.S.) National Suicide Prevention Hotline... until July 2022, when said 800 number was replaced by the three-digit numeric code 9-8-8.
• David Hasselhoff's "Guardians Inferno" has a title combining Guardians of the Galaxy with Disco Inferno, but the lyrics don't actually include either of those words.
• Westeros: An American Musical: Many songs have this for various reasons:
  • "Hand-Holding", "Small Council", "Plot Development", "First Watch", "Red Woman", "No Waiting", "More Than Jest Friends", "Hisstorically Inaccurate", "The Dorne Identity", "Growing Concerned", "A H(e)art Inflamed", "Stark to Finish", "Opposing Council", "Hostile Witness", "Talk Less, Stab More", "Sword in the Darkness" and "The Storm's End" are all indicative of what the song is about, but don't actually appear in the lyrics.
  • "Stannis Refuted" and "Knight's Watch Defeated" inherit the feature from their respective Hamilton originals, "Farmer Refuted" and "Schuyler Defeated".
  • "Shae No to This" is a parody of "Say No to This" from Hamilton, but retains none of the instances of the titular sentence.
• The Little Mermaid (1989): "Part of Your World" is a downplayed example. The title does appear, but only in the song's reprise later in the movie. In the full song, which is the one people are most likely to think of when they hear the name, Ariel only sings "Part of that world".
• DJ Sakin & Friends' remake of the Braveheart theme is officially titled "Protect Your Mind (For the Love of a Princess)", which is non-appearing even in the vocal version, though it does drop the film title.
• Zigzagged by Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki". The Japanese title 上を向いて歩こう^note I Look Up as I Walk is also the beginning of the lyrics. However, they decided that English speaking audiences wouldn't be able to remember a title in Japanese, so for the American market, they retitled it as "Sukiyaki", despite that word not appearing in the lyrics and having absolutely nothing to do with the song.
• A lot of YOASOBI songs have titles that don't appear in the lyrics, but are thematically relevant. For example, "Kaibutsu" (monster) is about Legoshi's struggles with a society that sees carnivores like him as monsters; while "Halzion" refers to the Philadelphia fleabane, a flower that represents reminisced love, and the song is about two people reminiscing on the time they met and fell in love online.
• The song from the Donkey Hodie episode "Hoof Dancing Is Hard" is called "Grampy's Secret Recipe", but this title doesn't appear in the lyrics. The closest it gets is the line "It's my super secret recipe for how to succeed".
• Indonesian band Peterpan/Noah:
  • Taman Langit has "Tertinggalkan Waktu" which fits the theme of being but is not mentioned in the lyrics.
  • From Bintang di Surga, "Diatas Normal" is not mentioned in its lyrics.
  • Also from Bintang di Surga, "2DSD" is a random string which has nothing to do with song (it was meant to be a placeholder title). Noah's version averts this by moving "2DSD" into a subtitle while the main title "Tetap Berdiri" is mentioned in the lyrics.
  • The last track of Seperti Seharusnya is "Puisi Adinda", meaning "Adinda's Poem", and doesn't mention the title in its lyrics.
• "Romeo's Tune" by Steve Forbert. Could easily be titled "Southern Kisses".
• "The Breakup Song" by The Greg Kihn Band. Subtitled "They Don't Write 'Em". Granted, the first line is "We had broken up for good just an hour before", and the subtitle does appear in the chorus.
• "Danny's Song" by Loggins and Messina.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has the song "Talk to the Jeans" by Pizza Party.
• Zombie Nation's "Kernkraft 400" is an interesting one: the name of the song doesn't appear anywhere; the lyrics consist of just their name over and over.
• Numerous Eurovision Song Contest songs don't have the name in their title. To limit it to just the winners:
  • Denmark 1963 - "Dansevise" by Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann: "dans"^note the Danish for "dance" appears in the lyrics, but not "evise"^note the Danish for "ballad".
  • France 1969 - "Un jour, un enfant" by Frida Boccara: Both parts of the title appear separately in the lyrics, but not together.
  • France 1977 - "L'oiseau et l'enfant" by Marie Myriam: The same story as above.
  • Italy 1990 - "Insieme: 1992" by Toto Cutugno: Since the song is about the various nations of Europe coming together, it should come as no surprise that "1992" - the year the European Union was due to be formed - doesn't appear in the lyrics.
  • Ukraine 2016 - "1944" by Jamala: The year in the title - the year the Crimean Tatars, amongst whom were the singer's ancestors, were deported from the Crimea to the Uzbek SSR - doesn't appear in the title.
• Brian Justin Crum's song "Wild Side" never mentions the title and is actually a song about power imbalance in a relationship.
• The Hitachi advertising jingle "Hitachi no Ki" does not have that phrase anywhere in the lyrics, not even in the full version.
• River City Girls: "Can’t Quit the RCG" doesn't have that exact phrase, instead its third-last line being "I can't quit these River City Girls".
• The Kidsongs version of the Italian song "Funiculi, Funicula" replaces the Title Drop with "Tra la la la, tra la la la".