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"I wish I had had the fucking sense to change the name of the song. 'I'm Not Sick But I'm Not Well' is what everybody calls it."
Sean Nelson, on "Flagpole Sitta"

Most songs have the title of the song as the refrain or otherwise prominently featured in the lyrics. However, woe betide to the casual listener who assumes that this is true of all songs. They're liable to say something like "I love that song 'Teenage Wasteland'" and get permanently branded a noob or a poser, or just get banned altogether for mentioning a Fandom-Enraging Misconception.

In the defense of such listeners, this Title Confusion often results from idiosyncratic song naming, where the title of the song has apparently nothing whatsoever to do with the tune (thereby averting Title Drop). Also, songs are frequently played on the radio (or by friends) with no introduction, so the best anyone can do for identification is typing whatever line is most memorable into Google with "lyrics" after it or humming a few bars.

Songs that outlast their initial airplay popularity to become incorporated into other works such as films and video games as background music are particularly vulnerable to this, as contemporary listeners can catch the title being mentioned by a radio DJ or see the credits of the music video.

As a general rule, if the song title is given as "Phrase 1 (Phrase 2)", it's probably this type of song. Phrase 1 is the official title and Phrase 2 is the line that repeatedly appears in the lyrics (while Phrase 1 appears less often or not at all) that everyone thinks is the title. Or sometimes the other way around, which apparently represents the musicians giving up and titling the song what everyone calls it anyway, but retaining their original title in parenthetized form.

Opera tunes are traditionally known by their first linesnote , so this trope never applies to them if you're good at catching words in Italian or German. Of course, there's the catch of being able to tell where songs begin, as they sometimes begin with sung dialoguenote  rather than with actual song. People who assume that the song's name is the most prominent words in the text, such as someone referring to the "nessun dorma" aria as "vincerò, vincerò!", will be discreetly labelled "beginner" by the rest of the group and anyone talking with them is politely "dumbing down" for them or offering to explain (the shift towards the more well-known titles has been happening recently, though).

See also Misattributed Song and Non-Appearing Title. Sometimes turns into a Chorus-Only Song. For In-Universe examples of this trope, see Something Something Leonard Bernstein.


Examples:

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Modern Artists

    A-D 
  • Four Non Blondes' biggest (and only) hit is not "What's Going On", It's "What's Up". The former title was avoided so it wouldn't be mistaken for a cover of the Marvin Gaye song of that name. Neither is it called "HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA", for those who only know it from the He-Man music video. And even that isn't the full video's title, which is "Fabulous Secret Powers."
  • 16 Horsepower did this very often. Most notable is "Coal Black Horses," the chorus of which repeats the name-friendly phrase "Hey hey hey, it's always forever, hey hey hey, never or now". Other examples are "Hang my teeth on your door", "Neck on the new blade" and "The Denver Grab."
  • Abwärts, a legendary German punk band. When you google for "Der Westen ist einsam", you find their album, and even a cover of the song from that album which took the "wrong" name...but the song, while having the phrase in the lyrics, itself is titled "Affentanz".
  • The Bryan Adams song is "Summer of '69", not "Best Days of My Life." Both phrases feature in the lyrics, but "best days of my life" ends the chorus, a typical position for a title, while "the summer of '69" appears once in a verse and then forms the outro. Interestingly, the original title was "Best Days of My Life," and the phrase appeared much more often in the first draft of the lyrics.
  • Adelitas Way did "The Collapse", not "Do You Feel The Collapse" or "Get Laid Out".
  • Aerosmith:
    • While recording their legendary "Raising Hell" album, rap pioneers Run–D.M.C. had problems tracking down Aerosmith to ask them to collaborate on the remake of their "Walk This Way." The reason? As Russell "Rapper's Run" Simmons admitted later, they thought both the band and the song were "Toys in the Attic" (which was both the name of the album "Walk This Way" appeared on and a completely different song on that album).
    • It's "Rag Doll," not "Livin' in a Movie", "Daddy's Little Cutie," "Old Tin Lizzy," or anything else.
    • It is also not well-known that the official title of "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" includes the parentheses.
  • Aesop Rock's song (under the moniker of Hail Mary Mallon) that talks about the increasingly outlandish ways to spend currency, with the catchy hook of "Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, motherfucker", is actually called "Whales".
  • AFI:
    • If someone mentions "Kiss My Eyes and Lay Me to Sleep," they're probably thinking of "Prelude 12/21." (Not to be confused with "Miss Murder", the actual hit song it leads into)
    • In the same vein, "As We All Form One Dark Flame," "Love Your Hate," or "You Are Now One of Us," is actually "Miseria Cantare (The Beginning)".
  • The Afroman song that people keep calling "Colt 45" is called "Crazy Rap." "Colt 45" is a COMPLETELY different song from the same artist.
  • "Here I Am" and "The One That You Love" are two different Air Supply songs (the fact that they're both from the same album, which is also titled "The One That You Love", doesn't help a bit... to make matters even worse, the songs were also released as the A and B sides of the same single). The former is sometimes referred to as "Just When I Thought I Was Over You" to try to head off the confusion.
  • The name of The Alan Parsons Project's biggest hit in America is not "I Can Read Your Mind," but "Eye in the Sky." Both lines occur in the chorus, but the former is the one at the end of the chorus and the one that repeats most often.
  • Alice in Chains big hit from the early nineties is called "Would?" not "Into the Flood (Again)."
  • Allan Sherman: A special case. Although the title is right in the first verse, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)" is often known under the Setting Title "Camp Granada".
  • The Alter Bridge song that professional wrestler Edge uses as his entrance music is called "Metalingus", not "On This Day."
  • Alvvays:
    • "In Undertow" is often referred to as "There's No Turning Back".
    • "Archie, Marry Me" is widely believed to be called "Marry Me, Archie".
  • Ambrosia's "Biggest Part of Me" is usually mistakenly referred to by its repeated choral refrain: "Make a Wish."
  • America doesn't have a song called "Will You Meet Me in the Middle?" That's "Sister Golden Hair." And the song after “Ventura Highway” on their second album is NOT called "I'm Gonna Miss You", which is clearly said at the start of each chorus. The actual title is "To Each His Own" which is the first thing said in the song, but doesn’t appear again.
  • Tori Amos never released a song called "Starfucker." It's "Professional Widow." (Although The Rolling Stones did have a "Starfucker." Their record company made them change it to "Star Star.")
  • The Amity Affliction do not have a song called "Let The Ocean Take Me", it's "Don't Lean On Me". Another example where the actual title does appear in the lyrics, though not as prominently.
  • Anberlin:
    • It's "The Feel Good Drag," not "Was This Over Before (Before It Ever Began)" or any variation thereof.
    • "Fin" is not called "Patron Saint of Lost Causes."
  • Anastacia's song "I'm Outta Love" is often misnamed "Set Me Free." The former does appear in the refrain but is not as obvious.
  • Animal Collective has never released a song called "Open Up Your Throat." The actual name of the song is "Brother Sport."
  • The Arcade Fire song "Rebellion (Lies)" never has the word "rebellion" occur in its lyrics; it has the word "lies" only in the backup vocals, but it is repeated many times back there.
  • Tasmin Archer's biggest hit wasn't called "I Blame You For The Moonlit Sky" or any variation thereof. Rather, it's title was "Sleeping Satellite", the last words in the chorus.
  • Archive's song "Bullets," which was used in a teaser for the video game Cyberpunk 2077, is sometimes called "Personal Responsibility."
  • Arctic Monkeys' Signature Song is called "Do I Wanna Know?", not "Crawling Back to You".
  • Looking for the Aqua song "Candyman"? No such title, it's "Lollipop." Perhaps the more obvious phrase was not used as the title in an attempt to avoid people confusing it with the Sammy Davis song "The Candy Man".
  • Joseph Arthur's "In the Sun" is often known as "May God's Love Be with You" or "If I Find My Way," both of which appear at noticeable turning points in the song.
  • Back in the sixties, Atomic Rooster did a song which was called "Devil's Answer", and not the repeated imperative "Change!"
  • That one song by The Avalanches isn't "That Boy Needs Therapy", it's "Frontier Psychiatrist".
  • Avenged Sevenfold:
    • There's no song called "I'm Not Insane." The song that repeatedly uses that line is called "Almost Easy," which plays at the chorus ("Come back to me, it's almost easy...").
    • The song commonly known as "You Can't Win This Fight" is actually "Welcome to the Family"
    • It's "Bat Country", not "Caught Here in a Fiery Blaze".
  • Neither Baby Bash nor Robin Schulz have a song called "Sugar, How You Get So Fly". The Baby Bash song is called "Suga Suga" while the Robin Schulz version is "Sugar".
  • Bananarama:
    • They never made a song called "Your Desire" nor did they ever do one titled "Goddess on the Mountaintop" or "She's Got It". However they did cover Shocking Blue's song "Venus."
    • They never released a single called "Don't It Make You Feel Good". They did have a hit entitled "Shy Boy".
  • The Band's "The Weight" is not called "Take a Load Off, Fanny" or "I Pulled Into Nazareth" (although that last one would have been a cool title).
  • A Christmas example, The classic Band Aid Christmas Charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas" is not titled "Feed The World!" or "Let them know it's Christmas Time". Although the much more obscure B-side was called "Feed the World", and it has been released occasionally as "Do They Know It's Christmas (Feed The World)".
  • Bastille's "Pompeii" is not called "But If You Close Your Eyes" or "How Am I Gonna Be An Optimist About This". Also, "Laura Palmer" is not called "This Is Your Heart"
  • Sara Bareilles:
    • Did you think she did "Head Underwater" or "I'm Not Gonna Write You a Love Song"? It's actually titled "Love Song."
    • Did you think she made "You Are Not Me (Who Made You King of Anything?)"? It's simply "King of Anything."
    • Did you think she made "I'll Be All Right, Just Not Tonight?" It's actually "Gonna Get Over You."
  • People tend to remember "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies as the song with "chickety-china, the Chinese chicken" and mislabel it as such. The line appears only once but is very distinctive.
  • In 1965, Len Barry never did a song called "Like Taking Candy From a Baby." That was "1-2-3." The inverse of the Three Dog Night example several folders down, the words (or numbers) "1, 2, 3" are heard only twice, at the very start and during the reprise at the end while "like taking candy from a baby" is repeated in the bridges.
  • Toni Basil's one hit isn't called "Hey Mickey" but just "Mickey". Even Basil's official YouTube upload of the video calls it by the former title.
  • That The Beach Boys song (actually Older Than Television) about a miserable boat trip is called "Sloop John B," not "I Wanna Go Home." To add to the confusion, while the Beach Boys' version has made "Sloop John B" the most popular title, the song had previously been recorded by many other acts under many other titles, most commonly "The John B. Sails", "The Wreck of the John B" (a Non-Indicative Name) and, yes, "I Wanna Go Home" (Johnny Cash was one of the artists who used the latter). It's pot luck which title applies to any given version.
  • "Loving You More" by Bear Hands doesn't exist. "Giants", however, does.
  • Beartooth don't have a song known as "Up on the Mountain". The song you're looking for is called "In Between".
  • The Beatles:
    • The second track on Abbey Road is just called "Something," not "Something in the Way She Moves." note 
    • The Beatles never recorded a song called "Please Don't Be Long." Despite this lyric occurring many times throughout the song, its actual name is "Blue Jay Way" which is only said once in the song. They did, however, record a song called "It Won't Be Long", which opens their second album, With the Beatles.
    • "Eleanor Rigby" from Revolver is not "All the Lonely People" or "Look at all the Lonely People."
    • The second track on Rubber Soul is officially titled "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," but people nearly always omit the parenthetical bit.
    • "The Ballad of John and Yoko" isn't "You Know It Ain't Easy" or "They're Gonna Crucify Me." And it has no relation to Ringo Starr's solo hit "It Don't Come Easy," either.
  • Natasha Bedingfield doesn't have a song called "Take me Away". The name of the song is "Pocketful of Sunshine".
    • She also doesn't have a song called "Feel the Rain on Your Skin", but she does have a song called "Unwritten".
  • The Bee Gees don't have a song called "Mr. Jones" or "Have You Seen My Wife, Mr. Jones?", the song is called "New York Mining Disaster 1941". It's worth noting that the actual title appears nowhere in the song.
  • Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield" is often mistitled "We Are Young," after the line that begins the chorus instead of ending it.
  • The Beautiful South did a song called "Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud)", and not "Carry On Regardless."
  • Ben Folds has no song called "Give me my Money Back!" Instead, it's called "Song for the Dumped."
  • Beyoncé doesn’t have a song called “Love me lights out” or one called “To the left”, their names are “XO” and “Irreplaceable”.
  • That Justin Bieber song is just called "Boyfriend," not "If I Was Your Boyfriend."
  • The Biffy Clyro song "Many of Horror" is often referred to as "When We Collide" after the first line of the chorus. Matters made worse by Matt Cardle's cover, which really did change the name of the song. The song has also been released as "Many of Horror (When We Collide)" & "When We Collide (Many of Horror)".
  • The Big Bopper: "Chantilly Lace" is not called "Hellloooo Baby!" note 
  • Billy Idol made a song called "White Wedding", not "Hey, Little Sister" or "Time to Start Again".
  • The Billy Talent song "The Navy Song" is continually named under the repeated lyrics: "In the Fall."
  • Biz Markie's major hit isn't called "You Got What I Need," it's "Just a Friend."
  • Black Sheep's most famous track is not known as "This or That," "You Can Go With This," or anything with the words "this" or "that" in it. The title is actually "The Choice Is Yours."
  • blink-182:
    • The band does not have a song called "Say It Ain't So." That song is called "All the Small Things."
    • blink-182 (or their fans) later inverted this before releasing their Self-Titled Album. When a version of the first track was released, many people began calling it "Action" because you can hear a sport's commentator saying "Get ready for action!" at the beginning of the song, despite the fact that "Feeling This" is literally every other line in the song. When the album was released, the song was titled "Feeling This."
    • And their song "Dammit" doesn't once use that word.
    • Nor is Adam mentioned anywhere in "Adam's Song."
  • Bloc Party's best known song is called "Helicopter", not "Hoping For a Miracle".
  • The Bloodhound Gang:
    • "The Bad Touch" is more commonly referred to as "the Discovery Channel song." The Eiffel 65 remix, in particular, is commonly known as "Eiffel 65 - Discovery Channel", effectively combining this trope with a subversion of Misattributed Song.
    • Also, "Fire Water Burn" isn't named "The Roof is On Fire".
  • Blondie's hit from 1981 is not titled "The Man From Mars", it's "Rapture". The rap portion of the song, providing a detailed list of actions by that man is actually more memorable than the singing portion.
  • Blue Murder's second single isn't titled "Love Can Break Your Heart", it's titled "Jelly Roll" (a title that appears nowhere in the lyrics).
  • Blue Öyster Cult fans have this problem all the time, particularly given the band's frequent use of Word Salad titles and the sheer wordiness of their lyrics. Below, some of their songs (on the left, the actual title; on the right, the title most fans think of):
    • "Hot Rails to Hell" = "Burn Your Eyes Out"
    • "7 Screaming Diz-Busters" = "Lucifer the Light"
    • "Flaming Telepaths" = "The Joke's on You"
    • "Extraterrestrial Intelligence" = "Balthazar"
    • "Sinful Love" = "Daredevil"
    • Ironically inverted with "The Golden Age of Leather." Everybody knows the song title, but it's mentioned once at the beginning of the song (in the "glee-club" opening) and then is never mentioned again.
    • Oddly with "Tattoo Vampire", where the title is indeed sung several times toward the end of the song, but in such a way that it sounds like "Vampire Tattoo".
  • The Bluetones' biggest hit is called "Slight Return," despite these words not appearing anywhere in the song; it's more usually known by the chorus, as lampshaded in their later B-Side "Armageddon (Outta Here)":
    Student 1: What's their hit? "Slight Return," that's the one.
    Student 2: Oh, I don't know that one, I only know the one that goes "you don't have to have the solution, you've got to invest in the problem".
    Student 1: Yeah, that's "Slight Return."
    Student 2: Oh. I thought it was called "You Don't Have To Have The Solution, You've Got To Invest In The Problem."
    Student 1: No.
    Student 2: Oh.
  • Blur:
    • "Song 2" is often called "Woo Hoo" after the chorus. This may be a cautionary tale for bands: if you're going to give your song the second most generic title possible (at least there's a number instead of just calling it "Song"), fans will invent their own name for it. The fact that Damon Albarn's lyrics are mostly incomprehensible otherwise doesn't help.
    • Their other big hit — the one with the spoken-word verses by Phil Daniels — isn't called "All the People" or "Hand in Hand" or anything like that. Its title is the last word of the chorus, "Parklife."
  • James Blunt's "1973" isn't called "Here we Go Again".
  • The Eric Bogle song "No Man's Land" is sometimes known as (and has been recorded under) the alternate title "Green Fields of France". Some people, however, refer to the song as "Willie McBride" (the name of the dead soldier to whom the song is addressed).
  • Bon Jovi: "Shot Through the Heart" and "You Give Love a Bad Name" are two different songs. To add to the confusion, both start with the words "Shot through the heart"...
  • Boston doesn't have a song called "Taking My Time". That's the second part of "Foreplay/Long Time".
  • That David Bowie song from Space Oddity is "Space Oddity," not "Major Tom." (And even people who manage not to call it "Major Tom" still often miss the wordplay and call it "Space Odyssey".) Peter Schilling's new-wave sequel to Bowie's song, on the other hand, was titled "Major Tom" despite there being no mention of Tom in the chorus. It's sometimes referred to as "Coming Home" (its subtitle). To add to the confusion, Peter Schilling has two "Major Tom" songs. One takes the themes of the Bowie song and runs with them — "Major Tom (Coming Home)," the second one is "Major Tom, Part 2" (the first one was the hit). Or, in the original German version of the former, as "Major Tom (völlig losgelöst)"; the parenthetical part features very prominently in the chorus.
  • Brand New's brand new song has just come out, and it's already being referred to as "We Don't Feel Anything," which is the most prominent line in the song. However, it's actually called "Mene."
  • The Laura Branigan song sometimes known as "Creatures of the Night" is titled "Self Control" (a line that does appear in the song as "you take my self control" but is not as clearly enunciated as the mistaken title).
  • The Bravery song with the chorus "I just want love" is actually called "Unconditional."
  • Breaking Benjamin:
    • The first single in six years is not called "Tear The Whole World Down." It's actually called "Failure."
    • It's "Breath", not "You Take the Breath Right Out of Me" or "I'll Be The Death of You".
    • That song they did for Halo 2 is not called "Only the Darkness Will Survive" or "I’ll Be the One To Save Us All". It’s actually called "Blow Me Away", which appears in the verses.
  • That Bring Me the Horizon song is not called "This is Sempiternal." It's called "Shadow Moses."
  • James Brown:
    • His most famous song is called "I Got You (I Feel Good)," not "I Feel Good." (Initially, the song's title was just "I Got You" without the subtitle. The original version has shown up on several compilations over the years.) An inversion, since the subtitle is sung only in the first verse, whereas the main title is in the chorus.
    • His second-most famous is not "Sex Machine," or "Get Up," or "Get On Up," but has the baffling title "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine."
  • BT:
    • The only single off of Emotional Technology is actually titled "Somnambulist (Simply Being Loved)." Between 75% of the refrain consisting of the subtitle and the U.S. home version of DDR Extreme including it with the title switched around, it's usually referred to as just "Simply Being Loved." (In fact, it doesn't even have its main title in the lyrics. The closest it somes to title-dropping is: "So little joy, so little joy / It's complicated / I feel I'm stumbling in the dark / Somnambulated.")
    • There is no song titled "Do You Cry Your Eyes Asleep." That's "The Horse of Gravity," whose title appears but once. Most of the remixes only use the refrain, completely leaving out the title.
    • The song with the refrain "Reach Out for Me" is titled "Mercury and Solace," also a Non-Appearing Title.
  • Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" is not "Stop, Hey, What's That Sound," but that is a subtitle.
  • Jimmy Buffett's song "Defying Gravity" (not that one) is sometimes referred to as "Big Round Ball."
  • Butthole Surfers' "Pepper," their biggest hit and one of their frequent Non-Appearing Title songs, gets mistakenly called "Coming Down The Mountain" (the last line of every verse), "I Don't Mind the Sun Sometimes" (the first line of the chorus), or "Through Other People's Eyes" (the last line of the chorus). Or some variation on the lines "They were all in love with dying/They were doing it in Texas."
  • The Byrds didn't do a song called "I'm Going to Catch That Horse." The title is "Chestnut Mare".
  • Colbie Caillat released no such song as "Wherever You Go" or "Starts In My Toes." It's "Bubbly."
  • Cake:
    • "Nugget" is often mistitled "Shut The Fuck Up," since the latter phrase makes up about half the chorus and it's got a Non-Appearing Title. Chicken McNuggets get mentioned in the lyrics, but that probably couldn't have been used as a title without getting in trouble with McDonald's.
    • "The Distance" is often known instead as "She's Going The Distance".
  • Canned Heat:
    • The famous song about overdoing white powder is called "Amphetamine Annie" and not "Speed Kills!"
    • "Shadow Stabbing" is not "Say It All," "Outside" or any of the other lyrics that actually appear in the song.
  • The Cardigans' "Lovefool" is sometimes referred to as "Love Me, Love Me" (or just "Love Me") — there's an almost-but-not-quite title drop in the chorus: "Love me, love me / Say that you love me / Fool me, fool me / go on and fool me." Adding to the confusion is the fact that Justin Bieber adapted the chorus of "Lovefool" into his song "Love Me" .
  • Caramell's song "Caramelldansen" is sometimes dubbed "U-U-Uaua" by Nico Nico Douga users for the chant before and after the chorus.
  • It's "(They Long To Be) Close to You" by Carpenters, not "Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear." This one is interesting, because "close to you" features often and prominently in the chorus, while "Why do birds suddenly appear" occurs only once as the first line in the song. It being the first line is why it's mistaken to be the title, as whenever the song shows up in films and television shows, the first line is prominently heard (usually during a "falling in love" moment) while most of the rest is quickly interrupted.
    • It's "Yesterday Once More", not "Every Sha-La-La-La".
  • Despite most of the stanzas of the song begin with an emphatic "Right now", the name of Carrie Underwood's song is "Before He Cheats".
  • The Cars:
    • Their famous hit ballad is simply titled "Drive" not "Who's Gonna Drive You Home?"
    • The big hit is entitled "You Might Think", not "All I Want Is You".
    • It's "Let's Go," not "I Like The Nightlife Baby."
    • "Here She Comes Again" doesn't exist, the actual title is "My Best Friend's Girl".
  • Cascada's song "Love Again" is much better known as "The Summer Belongs to You".
  • C & C Music Factory's hit is not called "Everybody Dance Now," it's "Gonna Make You Sweat," although "Everybody Dance Now" is its subtitle.
  • The Chainsmokers:
    • They don't have a song called "Say You'll Never Let Me Go." It's called "Roses," which is never said in the lyrics (the singer of the song just happens to go by the stage name "Rozes").
    • "#SELFIE" is not called "Let Me Take a Selfie."
    • They also never did anything called "We Ain't Ever Getting Older," even though that line quickly became a motto. The song you're looking for is "Closer".
  • Chamillionaire's 2005 hit is not called "Ridin' Dirty" or "Tryin' to Catch Me Ridin' Dirty" - it's just "Ridin'". Thanks to the first phrase of its chorus becoming a meme, it is also sometimes mistakenly referred to as "They See Me Rolling".
  • Chase & Status' most famous hit is not called "Sweet Sensation". It's called "Blind Faith". The line is repeated a few times throughout the song, but is nowhere near as prominent as the "SWEEEEEEET SENSATION" that kicks off the chorus.
  • The Chemical Brothers' most well-known song "Hey Boy Hey Girl" is often mistitled as "Here We Go".
  • Chic's disco hit was not titled "Freak Out!" It's "Le Freak." C'est Chic. Both phrases appear in the chorus, but "Freak Out!" is first, significantly louder, and much easier to pick out.
  • Chicago:
    • "Call On Me" and "Questions 67 and 68" have too many phrases in the chorus to list all possible alternate titles(and in the latter, the title is only sung by Peter Cetera at the very end).
    • “25 Or 6 To 4” is not called, despite appearances, "Waiting For The Break of Day." Nor is it a telephone number, "250624".
  • Childish Gambino does this a lot on because the internet.
    • "I. The Worst Guys" is not called "All She Needed Was Some" and "Flight of the Navigator" isn't "Hold Me Close My Darling". He also does the parenthetical type of this trope a couple times, with "Telegraph Ave. (Oakland by Lloyd)" and "Zealots of Stockholm (Free Information)".
    • Also seen on a lot of the songs on I AM JUST A RAPPER and I AM JUST A RAPPER 2, as the format Gambino used for basically all of them was his title followed by the sample title, which often turned out to provide the memorable hook, in parentheses.
    • His hit single from summer 2017 is not called "Daylight" or "Don't You Close Your Eyes". Those lines come from his song "Redbone", a word that doesn't even show up in the lyrics.
  • Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping" may best be known as "I Get Knocked Down" or "Pissing the Night Away".
  • CHVRCHES:
    • "Get Out" is often mistakenly called "Kaleidoscope". This one is a bit of an odd example, in that the song actually has two refrains, and the title does come from one of them—but many listeners assume that it's the other one.
      "So do you want to turn it around,
      And do you want to show me how?
      You are a kaleidoscope,
      You are a kaleidoscope."
    • "Tether" is widely assumed to be called "Capable" or "Feeling Capable". Particularly understandable, since the Eric Prydz remix of the song (the most well-known version) is literally nothing but the refrain.
      "Feeling capable of seeing the end,
      Feeling capable of saying it's over.
      Feeling capable of seeing the end,
      Feeling capable of saying it's over."
  • Cinderella doesn't have a song called "Last Train Out of My Heart". That would be the title track to Heartbreak Station, a phrase which is not in the song's lyrics.
  • Cinnamons and Evening Cinema's popular TikTok song is titled "Summertime" instead of "Kimi no Toriko".
  • The words "Train in Vain" never appear in The Clash's song of that name. It's commonly known as "Stand by Me" for lyrics that do appear in the song. (The title is probably a reference to the Robert Johnson classic "Love in Vain".) Part of the problem with this example is that it wasn’t on the track listing for London Calling due to being hastily added after the album sleeves were already produced.
  • The George M Cohan song "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" was originally titled "The Yankee Doodle Boy" (and the last line of the chorus is "I am that Yankee Doodle boy").
  • Coheed and Cambria's song "A Favor House Atlantic" often gets this treatment, being referred to as "Good Eye Sniper", the first line of the refrain, or as "Bye Bye Beautiful", the first line of the chorus. "Time Consumer" is often called "Matthew, Goodnight", or "Maria, My Star, Matthew Goodnight", which are the most easily understood lyrics. (Granted, many of Coheed's song titles aren't included as lyrics in the song, and only make sense if the listener takes the titles in the context of the Amory Wars storyline.)
  • Coldplay has a lot of counterintuitive song titles:
    • "Fix You" is not called "Lights Will Guide You Home". The title comes from the last words of the chorus, rather than the first.
    • "Politik" could easily get mislabeled as "Open Up Your Eyes", since that line is shouted loudly numerous consecutive times, while the word "Politik" only appears twice and doesn't sound important.
    • "Don't Panic" is not called "We Live In A Beautiful World"
    • "Viva La Vida" has many title-esque lines in it (some may call the song "When I Ruled The World"), but the phrase "Viva La Vida" isn't in there at all, although it is part of the title of its album — Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends ("Death and All His Friends" being the name of the last(ish) song on the album.)
    • "Charlie Brown" does not contain the phrase "Charlie Brown" and has no obvious relation to Charlie Brown. From the lyrics, the song sounds like it's called "Glowing In The Dark" (which is repeated prominently 3 times). Some incorrectly list the song name as "Cartoon Heart" due to the lyric halfway through the song; the fact that this was the original name of the song doesn't help either.
    • "Adventure of a Lifetime" may be seen as "Turn Your Magic On" (said in the verses and the bridge) or "Alive Again" (chorus).
    • "The Scientist", a Non-Appearing Title, is not called 'Nobody Said It Was Easy', 'Let's Go/Take Me Back To The Start', 'You Don't Know How Lovely/Lucky You Are' or anything else from the lyrics.
  • Phil Collins:
    • "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven" is named after an line in the second verse. Based on the chorus, a more predictable title might be "How Many Times" or "How Many Times (Can I Say I'm Sorry?) or some variation, the line that ends both verses, or "Please Believe in Me", which is the line that ends the chorus.
    • "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" — as the bracketed title would suggest — is frequently known as "Take a Look at Me Now". (Just to complicate matters, the song is named for the movie in which it appeared. In the lyrics, the line is "against the odds": It is sung as "against all odds" only in the last verse, and not in all versions of the song.)
  • Album Title Drops are a frequent victim of this trope. Elvis Costello's "Brilliant Mistake" is often thought to be called "King of America" because it's the title of the album and the first line of the song.
  • Jonathan Coulton:
    • The love song from an evil villain to his female captive is titled "Skullcrusher Mountain", not "I'm So Into You". The latter phrase appears in the chorus; the title appears at the beginning of every verse.
    • His song about a zombie wanting to eat his colleague's brains isn't titled "All We Wanna Do Is Eat Your Brains", nor is it "Eat Your Brains" or any other variation on that. The song is actually titled "Re: Your Brains" ("re" is short for "regarding", not "reply" - it's meant to look like a business email subject header).
  • The Cowsills did not do a song called "The Flower Girl"; that's "The Rain, the Park, and Other Things".
  • Cracker:
    • "Low" is frequently called "Like Being Stoned" (or just "Stoned"); the title is in the chorus, it's just not the part people tend to remember for some reason.
    • Another song's title is "Teen Angst", not "What the World Needs Now".
  • The Cranberries:
    • That "In Your Head" song by them? It's actually called "Zombie".
    • The fact that Eminem sampled the chorus in a song of his ACTUALLY titled "In Your Head" is likely not helping.
    • "Dreams" was often mistaken as "Dream to Me", which Dario G. retitled their cover version as.
  • Crazy Town never recorded a song titled "Come My Lady" or "Sugar Baby". It's actually called "Butterfly", which isn't by Limp Bizkit either.
  • Creature Feature never released a song called "We Are Coming For You". That appears in "The Unearthly Ones".
  • Creedence Clearwater Revival:
    • Once, all three panelists on Jeopardy! gave questions to a Final Answer that were variations of "What is 'Rolling on the River'?" The song is called "Proud Mary" (a name that appears in the song's pre-chorus, though partly due to John Fogerty's faux-New Orleans accent, it isn't easy for all listeners to make out).
    • There is no CCR song titled "Some Folks" or "It Ain't Me". It's "Fortunate Son".
  • "One Last Breath" by Creed might be better known as "Hold Me Now" or "Six Feet From The Edge", both of which prominently appear as part of the chorus. The actual song title shows up in the penultimate lines of the first two verses. Nor have they ever recorded a song called "Look at Me." That would be "Bullets."
  • Jim Croce had two songs with Non Appearing Titles: "Age" ("I've traded love for pennies, sold my soul for less . . ." and "Thursday" ("I was looking for a lifetime lover, and you were looking for a friend.")
  • Sheryl Crow doesn't have a song called "Santa Monica Boulevard". That's called "All I Wanna Do".
  • "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House is not called "Hey Now, Hey Now".
  • Cryoshell:
    • "Creeping in my Soul" is sometimes subjected to this. Due to a repeated refrain, it is often called "Creeps from the Deep". Creeping in my soul is also repeated several times throughout the song, but part of the confusion stems from the fact that the song was featured in a video called Creeps from the Deep. For whatever reason, it is also sometimes has the subtitle "Deep Dive" added to the title (ie. "Creeping in my Soul (Deep Dive))".
    • They also have a song "Closer to the Truth", often called "Take me Home", as that phrase is uttered multiple times throughout the song, while the title is buried at the end of the chorus.
  • The Cult doesn't have songs called "Smoke She is a-Rising", "Smoke on the Horizon" or "Smokestack Lightning". You're thinking of "Fire Woman". They also don't have a song called "The Dogs Lay at Your Feet", it's "Edie (Ciao Baby)".
  • The Cure:
    • "A Forest" has been referred to as "Into the Trees".
    • "Let's Go to Bed" saves that part for the very end. Those words aren't uttered at all in the chorus.
    • They didn't make a song called "I Will Always Love You". It's "Lovesong", which doesn't appear in the song but obviously describes its content.
  • Billy Currington's "Good Directions" has the title only at the very end. It is not titled "Right Back Here to Me" (a recurring line) except in Luke Bryan's cover.
  • Denzel Curry's infamous rap is not called "I Am The One" - it's "Ultimate".
  • The most well-known song by Cypress Hill is called "Insane in the Brain", not "Insane in the Membrane". Easy to confuse, because the latter is said far more often than the former in the song.
  • DAGames's Five Nights at Freddy's Filk Song "Not Here All Night" is better known as "I'm the Phone Guy" or "I am the Phone Guy" due to those lines being repeated several times each chorus. The line that the song is actually named after can only be heard quietly in the background and so is easy to miss.
  • One of the most known songs by Gigi D'Agostino is known as "I'll Fly With You", while the original title of the song is "L'amour Toujours". Note that the song is entirely in English, there's no Gratuitous French in the lyrics.
  • The Dandy Warhols' most well known song "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" is not called "I Never Thought You'd Be a Junkie" or "Heroin Is So Passé", the two often repeated lines in the chorus.
  • Reggae duo Dave & Ansell Collins had two big international hits with two Non-Appearing Title songs: "Double Barrel" (not "I am the Magnificent") and "Monkey Spanner" (not "Heavy Heavy Monster Sound").
  • Days of the New never recorded a song called "Finally Found a Reason" or "Time on My Hands", the song is called "Touch, Peel, and Stand" - words which never appear together in the lyrics only separately. They also don't have a song called "Bring Me Down", you're thinking of "The Down Town".
  • Dead or Alive's signature hit is not called "You Spin Me Right Round", but "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)". "Right Round" is the name of a Flo Rida song heavily based upon it, however.
  • Death Cab for Cutie:
    • A great many songs have their title only appear once, outside of the refrain, or not at all:
    • It's "Crooked Teeth", not "Nothing There All Along". The title only appears once in the lyrics.
    • "Marching Bands of Manhattan" is often mistaken as "Your Love Is Gonna Drown"
    • "Grapevine Fires" is not called "A Matter of Time" or "Before We All Burn".
  • Death from Above 1979's biggest American hit is called "Trainwreck 1979", not "I Want It All".
  • John Denver:
    • "Annie's Song", one of his biggest hits, never mentions the name Annie anywhere in the lyrics. People who don't know the real title tend to assume it's called "You Fill Up My Senses" or "Come Let Me Love You".
    • By the same token, "Annie's Other Song" is often assumed to be called "I'm Bringin' Me Home to You".
  • Eric Clapton project Derek and the Dominos never recorded a song called "I Don't Wanna Fade Away". It's "Bell Bottom Blues".
  • Devo's hit debut song was not titled "Are We Not Men? We Are Devo" which is the name of the album from where the song comes. It's called "Jocko Homo." (A tribute band, the Devotees, did a send-up titled "Jocko Bozo.")
  • William DeVaughn's only hit single wasn't titled "Diamond in the Back", which is often miscredited to Curtis Mayfield, but rather "Be Thankful For What You've Got".
  • Dinosaur Jr.'s "Start Choppin'" is sometimes mistakenly referred to as "I Ain't Telling You a Secret" or "Goodbye".
  • Dire Straits:
    • Their biggest hit is "Money for Nothing", not "I Want My MTV", "Chicks For Free", "Microwave Ovens", or "Colour TVs".
    • "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of the song is called "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies*", not just "(The) Beverly Hillbillies". And yes, both the title of the original and the asterisk are part of the title.
  • Even if you "Tell Me All Your Thoughts On God", the fact remains that the Dishwalla song that begins the chorus with those lyrics is actually called "Counting Blue Cars".
  • Disturbed:
    • "Meaning of Life" is often called "Get Psycho".
    • "Conflict" is often called "Enemy". Probably because "enemy" is every fifth word. To put it into perspective, the song is about 250 words long at 4:35. The word "Enemy" is used at least 52 times. So yes, this song is indeed made 1/5 "Enemy".
    • "Voices" is often called "Are You Breathing?" due to the line being said numerous times throughout the song and chorus. The title comes from the line: "I can the hear the voice."
  • DJ Sakin & Friends' Speedy Techno Remake of the Braveheart theme is actually titled "Protect Your Mind", despite the vocal version dropping the movie title in its intro.
  • You know that DMX party track "Up in Here"? How about "Y'all Gon Make Me Lose My Mind"? They don't exist. "Party Up (Up in Here)" does, however.
  • Alix Dobkin's "View From Gay Head" is much better known as "Any Woman Can be a Lesbian" in yet another case of a chorus line usurping a Non-Appearing Title.
  • Doja Cat:
    • There's a joke song about being a cow. It's called "Mooo!", not "Bitch I'm a Cow" as people tend to assume.
    • Her song for the ‘’Elvis’’ film is called “Vegas”, not “Ah, Get It”, which is basically the entire chorus sampled from “Hound Dog”.
  • Don Broco does not have a song called "Eight Days a Week". You’re thinking of "Pretty".
  • Donovan:
    • It's "Sunshine Superman", not "I've Made My Mind Up" or "You're Going to Be Mine." The Title Drop comes with the relatively unobtrusive line "Superman and Green Lantern ain't got, uh, nothing on me."
    • His song "Atlantis" (best known for its usage in the infamous Billy Batts scene in Goodfellas) is often known as "Way Down Below The Ocean" due to that being the first words actually sung in the song.
  • The Doobie Brothers never made a song called "Without Love". It's "Long Train Runnin'".
  • Doug And The Slugs' "Chinatown Calculation" got called "Chop Suey" on occasion, at least in Canada in the mid-80s when it was somewhat popular.
  • DragonForce:
    • It's just "Through the Fire and Flames", not "Through the Fire and the Flames", even though the lyrics say "Through the fire and the flames, we carry on!"
    • Even though the lyrics to one of their songs say "We stand before the dawn of a new world", the actual title is "Dawn over a New World".
    • "A Flame for Freedom" has a Non-Appearing Title. It is not called "Heart of a Nation" or any other line from the lyrics.
  • Drake doesn't have a song called "Kiki, Do You Love Me?", it's "In My Feelings".
  • What about when the most-known part of the song doesn't even have lyrics? That's the case for "Life in a Northern Town" by The Dream Academy, otherwise known as that song that goes "Ah hey ma ma ma hey ah". Unless it's "Sunchyme" by Dario G, which samples it.
  • "Bodies" by Drowning Pool tends to get called "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor".
  • Dr. Dre didn't have a song called "Smoke Weed Everyday" from his album 2001. It's called "The Next Episode".
  • Hilary Duff never did a song called "Let the Rain Fall Down". It's "Come Clean".
  • Bob Dylan was very fond of this trope for a while.
    • "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" from Blonde on Blonde is the title of the song better known as "Everybody Must Get Stoned". It's clear why the song couldn't be titled "Everybody Must Get Stoned" — it would have seriously hampered distribution of anything with that song on it; it's less clear why Dylan chose this decoy title. He claimed it was for two women who wandered into the studio the day the song was recorded... or "Rainy day woman" might be a slang term for a marijuana cigarette from the '60s.
    • While Don't Look Back is the Dylan documentary, the song is called "She Belongs to Me". And yes, the title is ironic.
    • "My Back Pages" from Another Side of Bob Dylan is occasionally credited as some variation on the chorus "I Was So Much Older Then/I'm Younger Than That Now".
    • "Ballad of a Thin Man" from Highway 61 Revisited is not "that Mr Jones song".
    • "Positively 4th Street" is not "You got a lotta nerve..."
    • The song is "I Don't Believe You", but due to the recurring line it's often called "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)".
    • In a slightly different way, most of the Dylan titles from his 1965-66 years have a -ly adverb; not only do they have Non Appearing Titles, it certainly looks like only the part after the adverb is the real title and the adverb is tacked on ("Positively 4th Street", "Obviously 5 Believers", "Queen Jane Approximately", "Absolutely Sweet Marie" and, probably the most blatant example, "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)")

    E-L 
  • Sheena Easton's hit song is not "My Baby Takes the Morning Train". Perhaps you are confusing it with "Morning Train (Nine to Five)". ("9 to 5 (Morning Train)" before it was retitled for the U.S. market to avoid confusion with the similarly titled Dolly Parton song.)
  • That Eels tune with the Jingle-esque refrain "before I sputter out" is properly called "Novocaine For The Soul" from Beautiful Freak. The latter phrase occurs immediately before the former; it's just not as memorable melodically.
  • Electronic:
    • They did not have a song called "I Don't Need You Anymore", that's the Non-Appearing Title song "Reality".
    • They don't have a song called "Living in Sin" either. That's called "Get the Message". This is an understandable mistake as the latter is another Non-Appearing Title, whereas the former is not only part of the chorus but also noticeably emphasized.
    • And "Getting Away with It" isn't called "All My Life" or "I Love You More Than You Love Me".
  • In 1977, did you listen to a song by Walter Egan and think it was called "Not Shy"? Guess again. It was titled "Magnet and Steel."
  • Eminem:
    • His breakthrough hit was not called "Slim Shady" but actually "My Name Is".
    • He never had a song called "Will The Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up", it's just "The Real Slim Shady".
  • Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Come Inside", sometimes referred to as "Welcome Back My Friends", is actually entitled "Karn Evil 9: First Impression Part 2", and it's actually only the second part of a four-part song that tells the story of a world in which all decadence and sin has been banished.
  • Enanitos Verdes has no song called "¡Por Favor, Déjennos Bailar!" The name of it is "Guitarras Blancas".
  • The (English) Beat's song "Save It For Later" is often misnamed "Sooner Or Later", as that is the first line in the chorus (Save It For Later does show up in the next line, but it's not nearly as prominent.)
  • "Oy yi hi oh why yi yi", or rather Enigma's "Return to Innocence" (and originally the Taiwanese "Jubilant Drinking Song") is best known by the parts of the song without lyrics.
  • Enya:
    • "Sail Away" was originally titled "Orinoco Flow". The song is sometimes listed as "Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)".
    • Thanks to Memetic Mutation, "Only Time" is more known as "Who Can Say".
  • Eppu Normaali's 1980 song "Suomi-ilmiö" ("The Finland Phenomenon") only has the titular words appear on the final line of the last verse, whereas the chorus prominently features the phrase "Uraani halkeaa" ("The Uranium Splits Up") several times, leading to an easily misinterpreted song title — The Autocrats even used it as the title of an episode.
  • Erasure:
    • They do not have a song titled "Take Me, I'm Yours"; that's "Breath of Life", whose title is absent from its lyrics.
    • "Chorus" has sometimes been called variations on "Fishes In The Sea" or "They Covered Up The Sun", two of the more memorable lines of the refrain. There is a title drop near the end of the bridge ("Just a distant memory, a dawn chorus"). Additionally, a single mix of the song was officially titled "Chorus (Covered Up The Sun)".
  • Evanescence:
    • "Bring Me to Life", despite being one of their most well-known songs, falls victim to this trope a lot. Even though "Bring me to life" is in the lyrics, everyone still seems to think it's "Wake Me up Inside" — including some serious academic books on pop culture.
    • The song in its various demo forms was titled "Wake Me Up Inside", though.
    • "Bleed" is more generally known as "I Must Be Dreaming". Admittedly, "bleed" is used only once, in the first verse.
    • Weirdly, it seems "My Immortal" doesn't get confused as much, maybe because the chorus is not very giving up of an in-song title. Or because of the fanfiction named after it.
    • "Whisper" is sometimes called "Don't Turn Out the Lights" for the last lyric in the chorus of the song.
  • Is Eve6's biggest hit called "Heart in a Blender"? Or "Rendezvous"? How about "Swallow My Pride"? No, it's "Inside Out".
  • Everclear:
    • "Santa Monica," which does not contain the title anywhere in the lyrics, tends to be called "Watch the World Die" (the last line of the chorus) or, occasionally, "Live Beside the Ocean" (from the first line of the chorus).
    • "Father of Mine" (which shows up at the beginning of the verses) is not called "Daddy Gave Me a Name" (from the chorus).
    • "Wonderful", the band’s biggest pop hit is not called "Everything is Wonderful Now".
  • Everything but the Girl never recorded a song titled "And I Miss You" or "Like The Deserts Miss the Rain" (which is often miscredited to Sade). The song is actually called "Missing".
  • Everything Else's song "Everything Else" would be a Title-Only Chorus if the title of the song was "Stereotypical".
  • Extreme had a hit called "Hole Hearted", not "Hole in My Heart"
  • The Faces had a song called "Ooh La La", not "I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now" (the first and third lines of the chorus).
  • That 90s club song that goes "I can't get no sleep"? It's actually called "Insomnia" by Faithless.
  • Faith No More's hit song is called "Epic", not "You Want It All".
  • The Fantasy Project song with the refrain "Stay, baby" is not the title track from the Stay album, but another song from that album called "Spirit"; the real title doesn't appear at all in the lyrics. Similarly, "Stay" may be mistakenly called "Don't Be Blind", since that appears in the refrain, while the title doesn't.
  • The rock band Fastball has multiple examples of each type:
    • "Damaged Goods" and "Sweetwater Texas" are the more traditional types (those phrases are never uttered during the song), while "Goodbye" technically falls into this category, as only the shortened phrase 'bye' is used in the song.
    • "The Malcontent (The Modern World)" and "We'll Always Have Paris (Everyday All of the Time)" fall into the "Phrase 1 (Phrase 2)" category.
    • "Warm Fuzzy Feeling" and "Red Light" each have a Title Drop once, during the first verses. The titular phrases are not repeated. "Mono to Stereo" is much the same, but with the title drop in the second verse.
    • Plenty of Fastball's other songs, including their biggest hit "The Way," drop the title multiple times, but never during the refrain. Although that does fit this trope, it also makes the title fairly easy to pick out, as it's hard to pick out a stand-out line in the chorus (like "The Road Paved in Gold" or "They Wanted The Highway") it's usually the only phrase repeated across every verse.
  • Fall Out Boy: The majority of their songs, due to a combination of Word Salad Title and Non-Appearing Title, to the point that the exceptions are noticeable on their early albumsnote :
    • Take This to Your Grave has two and a half songs with their own titles in the lyrics—"Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy Tonight" contains only the latter phrase.
    • Of thirteen songs on From Under the Cork Tree, only two have names that actually appear in the lyrics.note 
    • Infinity on High has four songs with more-or-less easily identified titles, and ten with titles that never appear in the lyrics.note  "I'm Like A Lawyer With The Way I'm Always Trying To Get You Off (Me & You)" is an obvious example, but none of the other nine are any easier to guess. "Thnks fr th Mmrs" plays with this as the track title is "Thanks for the memories" without the vowels (apparently an inside joke when FOB was informed that their track titles end up too long), which appears in the chorus.
    • Folie a Deux has only three songs with titles that appear, out of thirteen songs in total. And two of the exceptions could be easily misidentified; "America's Suitehearts" is sometimes thought of as "I'm In Love With My Own Sins" or the sound-alike "America's Sweethearts", and "What A Catch, Donnie" is mistakenly called simply "What a Catch",note  or "I Got Troubled Thoughts And the Self-Esteem To Match", which would fit their usual title style much better.note 
    • Finally (mostly) averted with their fifth and sixth albums; rumor has it that even the band themselves couldn't remember which title went to which song and it was giving them trouble in concerts. "Twin Skeleton's (Hotel in NYC)" is the one exception; "a hotel in New York City" appears repeatedly, but never "twin skeleton's" (with or without the apostrophe).
  • Fatboy Slim:
    • FBS has never recorded anything called "Funk Soul Brother". Or "Check It out Now". (Or "The Funk's Your Brother", nor "The Funk's So Rubber".) Try "The Rockafeller Skank". note  The CD single was sold with a sticker on it saying "Check It out Now, the Funk Soul Brother" so people would know that that was the song.
    • It's "Praise You" not "I Have To Praise You Like I Should" or "I Have To Praise You Like A Shoe".
    • "Star 69", another Non-Appearing Title, is not called "WTF".
    • "Weapon of Choice" is an unusual example, as it's more known as the "wah-wah-wah-wah" song or the Christopher Walken song, or that one song from Night at the Museum, even though the title is likely its most distinctive lyric. Or, to some, it's called "You Can Deal with This, or You Can Deal with That", after the song's distinctive hook.
    • He also never composed a song called "Push the Tempo"... that's in the track called "Ya Mama" (named for the sample "shake what ya mama gave ya").
  • That Fatman Scoop track that samples Faith Evans' "Love Like This" is called "Be Faithful", not "Put Your Hands Up".
  • Feeder:
    • The popular song "Buck Rogers" is sometimes referred to as "Brand New Car" or even "CD Player". The title does appear in the song but only as backing vocals between the chorus and verse.
    • "Just a Day" does not feature the title within the lyrics. It tends to show up on music sites with names like "All By Myself" or "I Blame Myself".
  • Fetty Wap's "679" has the title appear exactly once (in the third verse), but may be known as "Wonder When She'll Be Mine" or "Got This Sewed Up" (both lines in the chorus).
    • Similarly, Fetty Wap's "Trap Queen" is sometimes known as "Hey! What's Up? Hello!" (the opening that has been memed a lot) or "I Get High with My Baby" (the line that opens hook).
  • The Fifth Dimension song "Wedding Bell Blues" has been called "Bill".
  • Five For Fighting's "Superman (It's Not Easy)" doesn't contain the word "Superman" anywhere (it's sung from the point of view of Superman). Aside from the parenthetical part of the title, common names for this include "I'm More Than a Man in a Silly Red Sheet" or "I Can't Stand to Fly".
  • 5 Seconds of Summer's "She Looks So Perfect" is often known as the "American Apparel underwear" song.
  • The Flaming Lips song with the chorus that goes "You're invisible now..." is called "Riding to Work in the Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)". Yes, with that spelling mistake. And their first mainstream hit is called "She Don't Use Jelly", not "Vaseline".
  • Fleetwood Mac:
    • Some people refer to "Dreams" as "Thunder Always Happens When It's Raining" (or simply "Thunder"). The word "dreams" is buried in the lyrics, while the "thunder" lyric occurs at the start of each chorus.
    • "Isn't It Midnight" is sometimes called "The Face Of A Pretty Girl" The title actually does appear in the refrain but isn't as prominent.
    • It's just "The Chain", not "Never Break the Chain".
    • It's just "Little Lies" not "Tell Me Lies", "Sweet Little Lies" or "Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies".
  • Flight of the Conchords:
    • The song "Bowie" is often referred to as "Bowie's in Space", after its first lines.
    • The song officially titled "Robots" has been referred to as both "The Humans are Dead" (or just "Humans are Dead") after its chorus and "The Distant Future" after its opening line and the name of the album it appears on.
    • "Pencils in the Wind" is usually called "Sellotape".
  • Flobots' one hit isn't called "I Can Ride My Bike with No Handlebars" or "No Handlebars",note  but just "Handlebars".
  • Florence + the Machine's "Spectrum", to the point that when released as a single and a Calvin Harris remix, "(Say My Name)" was tacked onto the end of the title.
  • FloRida:
    • His song with Intercourse with You innuendos is "Whistle", not "Blow My Whistle Baby".
    • His biggest hit isn't titled "Apple Bottom Jeans", and T-Pain is not the lead artist either. It's actually named "Low".
  • Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero" is not called "One Guitar" or "Stars in His Eyes." The film, Rock of Ages, muddies the issue by having a character wear star-framed sunglasses as "Juke Box Hero" is being performed.
  • Christian metalcore band For Today do not have a song called "My King Is Alive". It's "My Confession."
  • The Format has a song called "The First Single (You Know Me)" (sometimes even with "Cause A Scene" in parenthesis instead) because it was the band's first single.
  • Foster the People's only hit is called "Pumped Up Kicks", not "All the Other Kids" or "Outrun My Gun".
  • The Four Seasons song "December 1963" is commonly known as "Oh What a Night". Album listings do use Title (Subtitle) format but don't agree on which phrase goes in the parentheses.
  • The Four Tops:
    • "I Can't Help Myself" is also known as "Sugar Pie Honey Bunch", since that starts the song and is considerably more notable than the true title. Some cover versions use the false title.
    • In addition, "Reach Out I'll Be There" contains no parentheses even though the title words are never sung consecutively. ("Reach out for me" is sung in between.) For that reason the song is often referred to as "I'll Be There".
  • You know the song "Freedom" by Aretha Franklin? It's actually called "Think".
  • The Fray:
    • "Over My Head (Cable Car)" was originally just "Cable Car", but Executive Meddling changed it before it was widely released. It's the band's first single; one presumes that they might have gotten away with just calling it "Cable Car" if they were more established.
    • For instance, now that they are established, "Never Say Never" does not have "Don't Let Me Go" as a subtitle.
  • The Fratellis' 2006 hit is not called "Just For the Hell of It" or "Back of My Hotel" or, most commonly, the "doo-doo-doo" song. It's called "Chelsea Dagger", which doesn't even show up in the song (the titular girl refers to herself as "Dagger" in the first verse and the narrator refers to her as "Chelsea" in the last verse, but the two words never appear together).
  • Dutch singer Rene Froger's "Alles kan een mens gelukkig maken" (everything can make a man happy) is often called "Een eigen huis" (a home of my own), because this particular sentence is featured far more prominently in the refrain than the actual title.
  • The Front 242 song with the repeated yelling of "Hey Poor!" is actually titled "Welcome to Paradise." Also, "Headhunter" is likely to be misnamed "Catch The Man".
  • fun.'s most well known song is called "We Are Young", not "Fire", "Tonight" or "I'll Carry you Home Tonight".
  • Nelly Furtado's 2006 hit featuring Timbaland isn't called "Promiscuous Girl" but just "Promiscuous".
  • Peter Gabriel:
    • His first hit was "Solsbury Hill", not "My Heart Going Boom Boom Boom" or "I've Come To Take You Home" (the latter two lyrics reoccur throughout the song, while the actual title only appears in the first line).
    • "Shock the Monkey" isn't "Watch the Monkey Get Hurt"; both phrases are repeated in the song.
  • Garfunkel and Oates's song "The Loophole" is often referred to by the first line of its refrain, "Fuck Me in the Ass 'Cause I Love Jesus."
  • Gary Glitter's most well known song "Rock and Roll Part 2" is not called the "Hey Song" or "Wuh-Huh-Huh-Huh...UGH! Da-Duh, Da-Duh." Interestingly, the words "rock and roll" are uttered somewhere in the song (some of the only real lyrics there are), but most public performances and movie/TV soundtracks cut the song down extensively, only playing the famous "grunting" chorus.
  • Ghost's "I Can Feel the Thunder" doesn't exist. "Cirice", on the other hand, does. Their follow-up, "From the Pinnacle to the Pit", tends to be called "Long Way Down", "Cast out of the Heavens", or "Blackened Feathers". And "Square Hammer" is not "Are You On the Square" or "Right Here, Right Now".
  • The Ghost Town DJ's have one song and it is not called "At Night I Think of You". It's called "My Boo" - the former phrase is the first line of the chorus, and the word "boo" is used two bars after and at the end of the first verse.
  • Debbie Gibson does not have a song called "Never Love Again" or "Now That We're Apart." It's called "Foolish Beat". The actual title only appears once in the song.
  • Ginuwine's 2001 hit "Differences" is better known by the name "My Whole Life" or "My Whole Life Has Changed", which comes from the first line of the chorus. The actual title only appears once in the song.
  • Girls' Generation do not have a song called "Bring the Boys Out". The song's title is simply "The Boys". (Also, while we're on the subject, the band's name is Girls' Generation, with a plural possessive, not Girl's Generation.)
  • In response to this trope, the song titled "Dance Floor Anthem" on Good Charlotte's Good Morning Revival album was retitled "Dance Floor Anthem (I Don't Want to Be in Love)" when it was released as a single (over time, the title and subtitle switched places, and eventually it became known only as "I Don't Want to Be in Love").
  • "Without Math" was the intended title of The Googols' song in a Mathnet installment; the record company exec changed it to the non-appearing title "Don't Leave, Just Stay, I'll Go" (because his scheme involved CDs with two commas in the titles).
  • The most iconic song from the Goo Goo Dolls is called "Iris", not "I Just Want You To Know Who I Am" or "I Don't Want The World To See Me". Though, to be fair, the title isn't mentioned anywhere in the song, nor does it have anything to do with the movie it was written for. And if you've been to Busch Gardens Tampa Bay and seen their ice skating show Turn It Up!, you might think the song that played at the end of said show was the same. Instead it's "Over and Over".
  • A lot of Gorillaz' songs are known for having non-appearing titles, so they tend to be misnamed:
    • "Clint Eastwood" being called "I Ain't Happy", "Sunshine in a Bag", or "My Future is Coming On", and "19/2000" being called "Get the Cool Shoeshine".
    • "Feel Good Inc." is sometimes mistakenly titled "Is Everybody In?", "Windmill for the Land" or "Love is Free".
    • There's also a surprising number of YouTube uploads of "Saturnz Barz" that not only call the song "All My Life", but also give featured artist Popcaan sole credit.
  • Grace Jones' signature song is often thought to be the title track off of Slave To The Rhythm, although this is a structurally-different version of the album's closing track, "Ladies And Gentlemen: Miss Grace Jones", which is often the version that people are looking for.
  • Josh Gracin's "Brass Bed" as titled on the album, was renamed "Stay With Me (Brass Bed)" upon release of the single.
  • The Grateful Dead:
    • The song known as "I Will Get By" (the main lyrics in the chorus) is actually titled "Touch of Grey" (a phrase that appears only in the second and fourth verse).
    • The song sometimes called "Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down" is actually called "Throwing Stones".
    • "Truckin" is better known as "What A Long Strange Trip It's Been".
  • Green Day:
    • "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)": People think it's just "Time of Your Life". When it was originally released, the media sometimes referred to it as "Time Of Your Life (Good Riddance)".
    • They also have "Platypus (I Hate You)".
    • The chorus of a certain song by them goes "There's no one else around / when you're the last gang in town / and your heart can even break / when it doesn't even pound". Many people call it "Last Gang In Town", which was its original title. Its actual title is "Rusty James", which doesn't appear in the lyrics, but is close to the line "pocket knives and rusty chains / where the hell is the old gang at?"
    • "Basket Case" has a Non-Appearing Title, so many wrongly believe it's called "Paranoid" after the line in the chorus that goes "Am I just paranoid?"
    • They also don't have any song called "All Wound Up" - try "Bab's Uvula Who?"
  • Lee Greenwood: The patriotic song "God Bless the U.S.A." is more often called "Proud To Be An American."
  • "Electric Slide" is the name of the popular line dance that you (or more likely your parents and grandparents) dance to Marcia Griffiths' hit single "Electric Boogie"; it is not the name of the song itself.
  • Haircut One Hundred never did a song called "Boy Meets Girl". They did, however, do a song called "Favourite Shirts".
  • "Ice Cream Freeze" is a song by Hannah Montana, but it leaked months before its release and most fans thought the title was "Let's Chill", so when it was officially released, it got the title of "Ice Cream Freeze (Let's Chill)".
  • The 2023 David Guetta song "Baby Don't Hurt Me", which sampled the chorus to Haddaway's "What is Love", has (likley as a result of the sample) often been mistited "What is Love".
  • PJ Harvey: Her song "Dry" ("you leave me dry") is not from the album Dry, but the follow-up: Rid of Me.
  • Harvey Danger's hit song, "Flagpole Sitta" apparently leads a bizarre triple life. It's often called "I'm Not Sick But I'm Not Well" because "Flagpole Sitta" doesn't appear in the song. The closest thing to it is the line I run it up the flagpole and see / who salutes, but no one ever does. It's also known as Green Day's "Paranoia". This isn't caused by the existence of three differently-titled covers; there's only one recorded cover, which is by Chiodos.
  • Hawkwind:
    • There's no song called "Disappear in Smoke," no matter what the chorus of "Psychedelic Warlords" wants you to think.
    • The full title is "Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke)".
    • And The Flying Doctor, despite appearances, is not called The (Drug) Cabinet Key
    • "This body of mine" is actually "Brainstorm".
  • Head East's '70s classic rock hit is not titled "Save My Life", "Going Down for the Last Time", or anything else found in the chorus. Rather, it's titled for the line that occurs two lines before the refrain: "Never Been Any Reason".
  • It's called "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap, not "Whatcha Say". Although there was a later song called "Whatcha Say" by Jason Derulo that used the original song as a sample. The fact that Derulo's song became a #1 hit made things only worse for the original tune.
  • The 1973 debut album by avant-garde rock pioneers Henry Cow is entitled The Henry Cow Legend. It has become so popular to refer to the album by the title Leg End — a practice that spoils the joke inherent in the cover art (the cover features an image of a sock, as did the covers to their next two albums) — that the remastered CD was actually entitled LEG END: Original Mix.
  • "Hate to Say I Told You So" by The Hives is not called "Because I Wanna".
  • "Escape" by Rupert Holmes was officially retitled "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" when the record label learned that just about everyone who asked for the song in record stores referred to it as "that piña colada song".
  • Hot Chocolate:
    • They named their song about a black woman/white man relationship "Brother Louie" (famously covered by Stories.) They probably did this to distinguish it from that other "Louie Louie" song. The word "brother" does appear once in the lyrics ("Brothers, you know what I mean.")
    • "You Sexy Thing" is known by some as "I Believe in Miracles".
  • Playing Whitney Houston videos after her unfortunate passing has probably led to at least one person's surprise to find out that "The Greatest Love of All", is not, in fact, called "I Believe the Children are Our Future".
  • Ben Howard's "Fly Me to the Moon" was originally called "In Other Words" after the first line of the chorus, but eventually due to the confusion it was changed to the first line of the song, which everyone knows it as.
  • The Jennifer Holliday/Jennifer Hudson song from the musical Dreamgirls with the lyric "I'm staying, I'm staying, and you, and you, and you... you're gonna love me." isn't called "I'm Staying" or "You're Gonna Love Me". The correct title is "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" (occasionly shortened to "I'm Not Going").
  • Hurt never recorded "No More Use in Trying", that would be "How We End Up Alone". Their biggest hit "Ten-Ton Brick" is also susceptible to this, being called "I’m To Blame" or "Atlas Slipped".
  • The Icicle Works' "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)": the phrase "Birds fly" appears once in the second verse, while "Whisper to a scream" is the last line of the chorus. And according to Arista Records, the subtitle apparently wasn't enough: they wouldn't put the single out in the U.S. unless it was retitled "Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)". It's been released multiple times under both "title 1 (title 2)" configurations, so both are correct, although technically "Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)" is supposed to refer to the mix of the song released as a single in the U.S.
  • Icona Pop's biggest hit featuring Charli XCX is titled "I Love It," not "I Don't Care," which is the first shouted line of the chorus (and the line right before "I Love It").
  • Inverted with iLOVEFRIDAY's infamous "Mia Khalifa". The song has a Title-Only Chorus, but is more commonly known as "Hit or Miss" which is said exactly once at the beginning of the most well-known verse.
  • The Immortals' Theme Tune for the Mortal Kombat movie is not called "Mortal Kombat". It's "Techno-Syndrome". Although adding to the confusion is the remix featured in the sequel which is called "Theme From Mortal Kombat (Encounter The Ultimate)."
  • Influential proto-Emo band Indian Summer's most well known song has to be one of the strangest examples of this trope. It is usually referred to as "Angry Son" after the ending where the vocalist breaks down screaming "I am the angry son!" repeatedly. (listen here). However Word of God is that NONE of their songs actually had titles, and the title is just a fan creation. Despite this a live recording exists where the band can be heard before playing it saying "This one is called Woolworm" which has led many to believe that "Woolworm" is the official title. note  Today it's a much less controversial issue and most agree that it is OK to refer to the song as "Angry Son" or at least "the song people call Angry Son".
  • "Drive" by Incubus is mistakenly-known as "Whatever Tomorrow Brings" (the first line of the chorus), "Water Over Wine" (a line from the second verse), and even "I'll Be There".
  • Interface's "Outside Looking In", one of his many songs with a Non-Appearing Title, is most likely to be misnamed "Where Are You Now?", after the main line of the chorus. And "It Begins Today" has a pre-chorus Title Drop, but may be mistaken as "Time Will Wait For No One" or "Never Be The Same", the beginning and end of the chorus respectively, whilst its Dark Reprise, "Square One", has "Gaining only to lose again" and "No desire to begin again" in its refrain, but only drops it's title once.
  • Over half of The Swing by INXS, including all four singles:
    • It's not "Dream On"; it's "Original Sin".
    • It's not "Great Expectations"; it's "Melting in the Sun".
    • It's not "I Miss the People" nor "She's My Only One"; it's "I Send a Message".
    • It's not "Watch the World Argue"; it's "Dancing On the Jetty".
    • It's not "What I Say"; it's "Love Is (What I Say)".
    • It's not "Tilt My Hat"; it's "Burn for You".
  • The IOSYS song that repeats "Overdrive" at the start is actually called "Stops at the Affected Area and Immediately Dissolves ~Lunatic Udongein~", not "Overdrive" or "Over Drive".
  • Iron Maiden:
    • This bootleg from the 1992 Fear of the Dark Tour is guilty of the above, as well as "Sanctuary" is referred to as "Sanctuary From the Law" (the fact that Bruce Dickinson is credited as a songwriter in that picture doesn't help either) and "The Clairvoyant" is "Time to Live Time to Die" (the only Maiden example here that's also a Non-Appearing Title). It's also funny how the bootleg is named "The Teenage Werewolf".
    • "Purgatory" isn't called "Please, take me away", "take me away", "so far away", or any combination.
    • "Drifter" can also be found online as "Gonna Sing My Song".
    • "The Evil That Men Do" is not called "Livin' on a Razor's Edge".
    • "Man on the Edge" isn't called "Falling Down" (though the movie that served as inspiration is).
    • They don't have a song called "Freedom", it's called "The Clansman".
    • "The Wicker Man" was once called "Your Time Will Come" on a request thread. (The phrase is said a lot, and "Whoa-oh Oh-oh" just doesn't make for as good of a song title.)
    • They also never did a song called "I'm On My Way". They did, however, do one called "Wildest Dreams".
  • Michael Jackson:
    • "Billie Jean" from Thriller is not "The Kid Is Not My Son".
    • "Smooth Criminal" from Bad is not "Annie Are You Okay". (This applies to Alien Ant Farm's cover, as well.)
    • Even though the words do appear in the song, one could be forgiven for thinking "Blood on the Dance Floor" is called "Susie Got Your Number".
    • He also didn't contribute a song called "Hold Me" to the Free Willy soundtrack. That song is actually titled "Will You Be There".
    • The breakthrough hit of The Jackson 5 was called "I Want You Back", not "Oh Baby Give Me One More Chance".
  • James' best-known song to American audiences goes "but she only comes when she's on top", but is actually called "Laid". It's not called, "You Think You're So Pretty," either. And it is not a Matt Nathanson song.
  • The Jane's Addiction song is called "Ted, Just Admit It..." not "Nothing's Shocking". It doesn't help it the album it's on is called Nothing's Shocking. "Sex And Violence" and "Sex Is Violent" are also common guesses — though the sorta-remix of "Ted, Just Admit It..." on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack is called "Sex Is Violent".
  • That Jefferson Airplane song about Alice in Wonderland isn't called "Go Ask Alice" or "Feed Your Head". It's "White Rabbit". It probably doesn't help that the "Go Ask Alice" line was used as the title for a very popular book about drug addiction and "Feed Your Head" is the title of a documentary about the Haight-Ashbury area of San Fransisco.
  • "Domino", by Jessie J, is often known as "Dancing in the Moonlight" or "Dirty Dancing in the Moonlight", the first line of the chorus.
  • Jilted John's most famous song is called "Jilted John" and not "Gordon is a Moron"...
  • Billy Joel:
    • "River of Dreams" is often referred to as "Middle of the Night". "(In the) middle of the night" is repeated throughout the song; "river of dreams" appears only once, near the end.
    • Some people think the Billy Joel album The Stranger is called Movin' Out. "Movin' Out" is the first song on that album, and a catchy one. "The Stranger" is a different, quieter song on the album. The correct title of the song is "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)", a rare instance where the item in parentheses is not the lyric people think is the title. Nor is it called "Heart Attack(-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack)."
    • There's a song on The Stranger called "The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie". The full Billy Joel single, however, is "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant", after the bookends; and only "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" appears in the official album listing.
  • Elton John's hit song "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" has occasionally been referred to as "Butterflies Are Free" due to the line being used occasionally throughout the song, despite the fact that the entire last minute or so is him constantly repeating the actual title. To compound the confusion, what he actually says in the song is "somebody saved my life tonight."
    • His 1989 big hit is called "Sacrifice", not "It's no Sacrifice" or "Cold Cold Heart" (although it was later part of the medley "Cold Heart").
    • His tribute to Marilyn Monroe is called "Candle In The Wind", not "Goodbye Norma Jean". And the version about Princess Diana is called "Candle In The Wind 1997", "Candle In The Wind '97" or "Candle In The Wind (1997 Version)" (all 3 are correct), not "Goodbye England's Rose".
    • The song released alongside CITW 97 is called "Something About The Way You Look Tonight", not "And I Can't Explain".
  • The George Jones song about a Corvette is not titled "Hotter Than a Two-Dollar Pistol". It's "The One I Loved Back Then (The Corvette Song)".
  • "Don't Mind" by Kent Jones is not called "The Hola Coma Esta Song" or "I Love Em' All".
  • Journey:
    • "Don't Stop Believin'" is often referred to as "Midnight Train" or any variant on the first line "just a small-town girl"... It's also referred to as "Streetlight People" from the refrain. Also, the song's title was originally written as "Don't Stop Believing" on the album. Later re-releases and covers have used "Don't Stop Believin'".
    • It's "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)", not "One day, love will find you". That song's title makes it an inversion of what the title makes you expect. "Worlds apart" is heard once in a verse, "separate ways" is repeated multiple times in the chorus.
    • It's "Faithfully", not "I'm Forever Yours."
  • Joy Division does this a bit:
    • "Dead Souls" isn't "They Keep Calling Me".
    • "Transmission" isn't "Dance To The Radio".
    • "Day of the Lords" isn't "Where Will It End?"
  • Judas Priest usually averts the trope. However:
    • It's "Deceiver", not "Forever."
    • "Tyrant", not "Ev'ry Man Shall Fall."
    • "Killing Machine", not "I've Got a Contract on You."
    • "Rapid Fire", not "Second to None."
    • "Private Property", not "Hands Off."
    • "Demonizer", not "Out, Demons, Out."
  • Justice's song with the repeated refrain of "Use your imagination, as a destination" is named "Pleasure".
  • Kansas's "Carry On Wayward Son" gets mislabelled as "Carry On My Wayward Son" so much that it even comes up on YouTube autocomplete when searching for the song.
  • Kasabian's Breakthrough Hit is not called "Tell You I Want You", or anything else from the lyrics. Instead, it has the Non-Appearing Title "Club Foot".
  • Anssi Kela's probably most well-known song is not named "Meistä tuli muurareita" ("we became bricklayers"), which is the first line of the chorus. The name of the song is "1972", something that never appears in the lyrics.
  • Ke$ha never wrote a song called "Glitter in my Eyes", "Hot and Dangerous", "Tonight We're Going Hard", or "DJ Turn it Up". The song with those phrases is called "We R Who We R" (not "We Are Who We Are"). And in this case the title is actually prominent on the song, appearing twice on the chorus.
  • "What Goes Around, Comes Around" was never released by Alicia Keys. The song in question is called "Karma".
  • Wiz Khalifa's 2015 mega-hit about Paul Walker is called "See You Again", not "It's Been a Long Day Without You".
  • The Pitch Perfect song "Cups (When I'm Gone)" by Anna Kendrick is often called "The Cups Song". However, the song is not actually called "You're Going To Miss Me When I'm Gone" or "When I'm Gone".
  • It's easy to think that Kid Rock's song "American Bad Ass" is called "Cowboy", since that word is heard prominently every time the chorus is repeated. Oddly enough, there is another Kid Rock song with "cowboy" heard frequently therein, and that one is called "Cowboy." Confusing.
  • There is no song by The Killers titled "(I've Got) Soul but I'm Not a Soldier" or "Gotta Help Me out". The song with both those lines (repeated in the bridge and chorus, respectively), is named for the last line, "All These Things That I've Done".
  • King Crimson has a thoroughly confusing example. On the album Red, there is a song entitled "Starless", which contains the phrase "Starless and Bible Black", which leads people to think that is the name of the song. It gets especially confusing because on their previous album, entitled Starless and Bible Black, there is a song with the same name that is simply an instrumental. Slightly less confusingly, the "title song" from the album In the Court of the Crimson King is actually called "The Court of the Crimson King". No "in".
  • KISS:
    • "Detroit Rock City" is an interesting case. The title is in fact well-known thanks to its use in the 1999 film also called Detroit Rock City. However, anyone unaware of the movie and listening to the song for the first time would probably think the song was called "Get Up" or "Get Down", since those phrases are used more frequently in the chorus than "You gotta lose your mind in Detroit Rock City" (which is uttered only once, near the beginning). The Detroit Red Wings used the line "Get Up!" from the song as their promotional theme for their 1997 Stanley Cup runnote , which used a cover of "Detroit Rock City" that itself was titled "Get Up!" (albeit with the second and fourth verses, about drinking and smoking before driving and then dying in a horrible crash, respectively, removednote ).
    • The first track on their 1984 album Animalize sounds like it should be called "Into the Fire", because the chorus begins with "Out from the cold, into the fire" - and, in fact, that is the secondary, parenthesized title. But the main title is "I've Had Enough", and the track listing is "I've Had Enough (Into the Fire)". An odd case, since here the song title is taken not from the chorus, but from the very last line of each verse ("Before it's all over, it's gonna get rough / I've had enough") - though, since the chorus begins immediately after each verse wraps up, it can be hard to tell.
  • A well known German example (in Germany, that is): "Fahr mit mir den Fluß hinunter" by Knut Kiesewetter, which is almost always labeled as "Sie sind grün", since that part refers to the (somewhat anvilicious) message of the song.
  • There's a song by J-Pop artist Hirose Kohmi whose memetically mutated chorus prominently features the English words "Get down!" The song is, however, called "Promise".
  • Korn:
    • "Freak On A Leash" is often known as "Something Takes A Part Of Me". Granted, the song's title is only dropped once in the second verse, whereas the latter line is used prominently over the course of the whole song.
    • "Falling Away from Me" (the title of which ends each verse and briefly shows up in the bridge) is commonly referred to as "Beating Me Down" (after the repeated line from the chorus).
    • "Oildale (Leave Me Alone)" was first introduced to fans in concert as simply "Oildale", named after one of the areas the band members grew up in but having no relation to the lyrics. It was most likely just a working title that they never intended to use (as they've been known to do), but the fans grew attached to it, and there was backlash when there were reports that the song was going to be released as "Leave Me Alone", the most prominent line in the chorus. They eventually settled on the "Phrase 1 (Phrase 2)" format as a compromise.
    • No, "I'll Never Love Again" isn't the song's title. It is titled "Never Never", however.
  • A television commercial for a cover album by Cristy Lane lists one of the songs on the album as "I Believe in Angels". Except that the song is actually called "I Have a Dream". The song has also been mistitled "I cross the Stream" (which is said right before "I Have A Dream")
  • L.A. Guns' biggest hit isn't titled "What a Shame", it's "The Ballad of Jayne".
  • Zara Larsson:
    • She doesn't have a song called "All Night, All Summer". She does have one called "Lush Life", however.
    • Her first hit song (and only success stateside) isn't called "Till' The Day I Die," it's called "Never Forget You".
  • That song by Led Apple that repeats "Yesterday" in Gratuitous English quite a lot in the lyrics is actually titled (translated from Korean) "Someone Met by Chance".
  • Led Zeppelin have a few songs like this, since so many don't have the title in the lyrics at all.
    • The most obvious is "Black Dog" ("Hey hey mama said the way you move gonna make you sweat gonna make you groove...") It's named after a stray black dog that was wandering next to the studio.
    • "You Don't Have to Go" is actually "D'Yer Maker" (pronounced like "Jamaica").
    • They did in fact have an entire album with No Title. (variously known as Led Zeppelin IV, Four Symbols, Zoso, etc.)
    • One could be forgiven for thinking that "Fool in the Rain" is titled "The Love That I Found".
    • The honky-tonkish song with the bridge that consists of "Hey Babe" over and over is called "Boogie With Stu."
    • You know that catchy song from Physical Graffiti that sounds vaguely like Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle"? It's called "Trampled Under Foot"...but you may know it as "Talkin' 'Bout Love" or "I Can't Stop Talkin' About Love."
    • A downplayed case with "Over The Hills and Far Away"; the song actually was called "Many, Many Times" originally as seen on a picture for the initial master, but the title was changed right before the album released.
  • Legião Urbana's "Eu Sei is titled after its chorus, but is very often called by its opening words, "sexo verbal".
  • Lemon Demon's song "The Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Planets" is not called "Nobody Knows What You Did". The song title itself is never mentioned in the lyrics, and the title just describes the lyrical content.
  • John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Christmas/anti-war song "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is sometimes mislabelled as "So This Is Christmas", after the first line of the refrain. You can catch the title of John Lennon's "Instant Karma!", as it's the first words of the song. But as it is sung rather fast, a lot of listeners pick up on the first words of the chorus instead: "And We All Shine On".
  • Like A Storm's 2015 hit "Become the Enemy" is often referred to as the "Jesus Christ with Devil's Horns" song.
  • The official anthem of English football performed by The Lightning Seeds is not called "It's Coming Home". It's "Three Lions (Football's Coming Home)", and even then, it was just "Three Lions" for many years; the subtitle is a much later addition and semi-official at best.
  • Live:
    • A very early song tends to be called "Give It Up" or "Let It Go" due to the words being uttered frequently during it. It's actually "Operation Spirit (Tyranny of Tradition)". Only one word of the actual title is used in the song, and it's in the first verse.
    • That song that many people think is called "Lay Me Down"? It's actually called "All Over You". Both phrases appear in the chorus, but the former gets more emphasis than the latter.
    • For that matter, the band's best-known song is not entitled "Oh Now Feel It Coming Back Again"; it's entitled "Lightning Crashes" (which are actually the first words in the song).
  • Ll Cool J's big hit is not "Don't Call It a Comeback" or "I'm Gonna Knock You Out", but "Mama Said Knock You Out."
  • The Life Size Humans tune that appears in the current Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercials is not called "Spread a Little Joy" or "Spread a Little Love". It's called "Something to Remember".
  • Several Linkin Park songs, such as "Qwerty", "Figure.09", "Papercut", "Point Of Authority" and "Debris" have no mention of the title in the lyrics. Also non-appearing is "Faint", although what appears to be the word "faint" in the chorus is actually "feel". In "Qwerty"'s case, many referred to the song as "Lies" before it was officially released. But the mistake isn't so justified when you accidentally call "What I've Done" "Mercy" or "In This Farewell". Or refer to "New Divide" as "Give Me Reason". "Crawling" is often known as "Crawling In My Skin".
  • Lit's most well known song isn't called "Sleeping With My Clothes On" or "And You're Gone". The song you want is "My Own Worst Enemy". The former two both appear in the chorus, while the latter only appears in the second verse and the outro.
  • LMFAO's biggest hit "Party Rock Anthem" is not called "Everyday I'm Shuffling". The words "party rock" do appear in the chorus, but no mention of an anthem anywhere. In fact, the "Anthem" in the title refers to the kind of musical piece being sung, not a word in the song.
  • "Bound for the Floor" by Local H is often referred to "Born To Be Down" or "Copacetic" — this is one of those Non-Appearing Title examples.
  • Loggins And Messina's oft-covered big hit "Danny's Song" never mentions Danny and is probably best known for its "Even though we ain't got money" chorus.
  • Lorde's collaboration with Disclosure is known as "Magnets", not "Let's Embrace The Point of No Return".
  • Lords of Acid's Signature Song isn't called "Sit On My Face" or "Fuck Me Up The". It's called "I Sit On Acid".
  • Many people don't know that, as opposed to what it's called in the Need For Speed Underground soundtrack, Lostprophets' "Ride" is actually named "To Hell We Ride".
  • Remember Love and Rockets' trippy '80s love letter to '70s glam rock and heavy metal with the resounding chorus "All aboard the Express Kundalini"? Its official title is "Kundalini Express". Tricky bastards.
  • The Stephen Lynch tune about a hideous infant is just called "Baby". Not "Ugly Baby", no matter what YouTube would have you believe.

    M-R 
  • You'd think Macklemore's first hit song is named "Pop Some Tags" or perhaps "This Is Fucking Awesome" or the "Grandad's Clothes" song. It's actually titled "Thrift Shop". And he never did anything called "She Keeps Me Warm", "Off-Black Cadillac" or "The City Never Looked So Bright". The first one is "Same Love" and the other two are "White Walls". That said, Mary Lambert, who sings "Same Love"'s chorus, did actually build a whole song around it called "She Keeps Me Warm".
  • Madness's debut single is properly called "The Prince" (which appears once, at the very end... and not at all in the version which appears on most of their hit compilations), not "Orange Street" (which appears three times). It's available on One Step Beyond Album.
  • Madonna never did a song called "Spanish Lullaby"; you're looking for "La Isla Bonita", from True Blue. Also, many people misattribute it to Gloria Estefan.
  • Major Lazer featured Ricky Blaze and Nina Sky on "Keep It Goin' Louder", not "Party With You".
  • Man Man has "Head On (Hold On to Your Heart)". Given their fondness for unusual Non Appearing Titles, there are probably several more cases of mistaken song identity in their discography; "Head On" just happens to be their most famous one.
  • Barry Manilow's "Weekend in New England" is generally remembered by those who aren't fans of his as "When Will I Hold You Again?" It doesn't help that New England is mentioned only once in the lyrics, and the word "weekend" is never said at all.
  • The song by Marina Diamandis and Charli XCX is not "The Other Foot," despite the phrase repeated throughout the song, but "Just Desserts." An unnamed, unfinished version of the song that was leaked long before the song's actual release did not help.
  • Marianas Trench has a song with the refrain "Try a little more, little more, little more/Slap me like a bitch, and you take it like a whore/Upside-down and around and around/Just another piece till you need another sound." The song, however, is not called "Try A Little More". It's called "Shake Tramp" after a line in the second verse: "And you need that stamp, little handshake tramp."
  • Bob Marley
    • "Three Little Birds" from Exodus is often called "Don't Worry About a Thing" or "Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright". The "three little birds" of the title technically get mentioned twice, because both verses of the song are identical, but the chorus is still what sticks in most people's minds more.
    • Also from Marley, "Is This Love?" from Kaya is often called "I Wanna Love You".
  • The song "Grenade" by Bruno Mars is not actually called "Catch A Grenade".
  • Looking for The Mars Volta's "Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)"? Better search for a song called "Exo Skeleton". That isn't the line either, it's "Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed".
  • The Matchbox Twenty song "Real World" isn't titled "I Wonder What It's Like", "Please Don't Change" or "The Rainmaker." Especially confusing because there was a movie based on a John Grisham novel called "The Rainmaker" released just a few years before "Real World" was recorded. Also, it's 'Unwell', not 'I'm Not Crazy'.
  • John Mayer did not write a song called "Top of My Lungs", "Halls of the High School", or "Invincible", but he did write a sing called "No Such Thing".
  • MC Hammer's most famous song is called "U Can't Touch This", not just "Can't Touch This".
  • Tim McGraw did a track titled "Something Like That" — and called "Barbeque Stain".
  • Erin Mc Keown's "Queen of Quiet" is better known for its refrain, "What kind of lover am I?" The title is spoken only once, as the last of many lead-ins to the more repeated phrase.
  • Sarah McLachlan:
    • "Angel" is not called "In the Arms of the Angel", nor "Adopt an Animal Or You Have No Soul," despite what the ASPCA would have you think.
    • There is no song titled "I'll Take Your Breath Away." The title is "Possession."
  • Don McLean:
    • "American Pie" from American Pie is often mistakenly called "The Day the Music Died", although that title is often used for the plane crash that inspired the song.
    • "Vincent", from the same album, is not titled "Starry Starry Night".
  • Meat Loaf:
    • "You Took the Words Right out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)", from Bat Out of Hell, often gets the second part omitted when being referenced.
    • "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" from the same album is sometimes called "Barely Seventeen", from the line "We were barely seventeen and we were barely dressed".
    • "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" is the title. Not "Maybe We Can Talk All Night," and not "I Want You, I Need You."
  • John Mellencamp:
    • That famous song isn't called "Ain't That America?". It's called "Pink Houses", and those words do actually appear in the chorus. It doesn't help at all that John invites the audience to sing "ain't that American" with him, while he sings "little Pink Houses for you and me" as low key as possible during concerts.
    • Nor is his other famous song called "Life Goes On" (or a variant). It's "Jack and Diane".
  • Men at Work:
    • Their third-biggest hit is called "Overkill", not "Day After Day".
    • "Down Under" is not "Land Down Under".
  • Metallica
    • "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" (only "Sanitarium" appears in the chorus).
    • "Disposable Heroes" is not called "Back to the Front" (the band has been known to make fun of this confusion in their own live shows)
    • "Enter Sandman" is not "Exit Light, Enter Night" or "Off To Never-Never Land".
  • MF Doom's "Hoe Cakes" is not titled "Super" or "Supa".
  • MGMT's "Kids" is not called "Take Only What You Need". Other people recognize it by its synth hook rather than any of its lyrics.
  • M.I.A.'s best-known song is not called "All I Wanna Do *Bang* *Bang* *Bang* *Bang*" nor is it called "Paper Airplanes", or "I Fly Like Paper, Get High Like Planes". It's "Paper Planes".
  • That saxophone-heavy song by George Michael (credited as "Wham! featuring George Michael" in the U.S., and covered by Seether in 2009) is not titled "I'm Never Gonna Dance Again" or "Guilty Feet Have Got No Rhythm". It's titled "Careless Whisper", which appears only once in the lyrics in a single verse.
  • Bette Midler's "The Rose" (title from the last words of the song) is sometimes misnamed "Some Say Love" (title from the first words of the song).
  • It's "Lez Be Friends" by The Midnight Beast, not "She Must Be a Lesbian".
  • Midnight Resistance:
    • "Recall These Days" is not called "Heaven Is Crying My Tears".
    • "Phoenix", which has a Non-Appearing Title, may be falsely assumed to be titled "Rise Again" by the refrain.
    • "Broken Flowers", which has just one Title Drop ("Take a piece of this broken flower"), during the first verse, will likely be mistaken as "Fall Into the Sky" or "My Sanctuary" from the chorus.
    • "Under Glass", like the above, has an obscure verse Title Drop("Standing under glass"), while the chorus lyric "Time Is The Hunter" is much more prominent.
  • "The Impression That I Get" by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones is sometimes mistakenly called "Never Had To Knock On Wood". Both phrases are in the chorus, it's just that the latter is the catchier part of it.
  • MIKA's first hit is called "Grace Kelly", not "I Could Be Brown, I Could Be Blue" or "Why Don't You Like Me?" The former is repeated in the lyrics, but not nearly as much as the latter two, which are both in the chorus.
  • Mineral's "Gloria" is sometimes referred to as "Mud In Your Eyes" or "Clay In Your Hands". What makes this a rather strange example is that the title does appear once near the end "Cause Gloria is silent/And glory is a silent thing"...and this is the ONLY SONG on either of their two full length albums where the title appears at all (Unless you count "The Last Word Is Rejoice", while the title does not appear in the lyrics, the final word of the song is in fact "Rejoice"). Even this one sometimes gets it and is sometimes referred to as "How Can I Drink From That Stream"
  • The Nicki Minaj collaboration with Drake and Lil Wayne is not called "Thinking Out Loud". Even though that is the first thing in all three of the members' verses, it is called "Truffle Butter". Some people have suggested that the reason they did not give the song the aforementioned name was because Ed Sheeran's release was recent and a hit then.
  • Happens often to Kylie Minogue songs with any airplay:
    • "Better Than Today" is not called "Feel It, See It", even though the title is dropped a grand total of once.
    • "Red Blooded Woman": the phrase is sung unintelligibly in the chorus and said once as background, making quite a few stations to name it "Freakin' Around".
    • The duet with Robbie Williams is named "Kids" not "Jump On Board".
    • Her most famous song, "Can’t Get You Out Of My Head", is better known as "La La La, La La La La La "
  • Happens with several songs from Argentine group Miranda!. They don't have a song called "La Guitarra de Lolo"note . The name of the song is "Don"note . Similarly, there is no song called "El Disco de tu Corazón"note . The real name is "Hola"note .
  • Joni Mitchell:
    • Almost nobody seems to know that the oft-covered song is called "Big Yellow Taxi". Understandable, considering the phrase only appears once in the entire (quite lengthy) song, towards the end. Some people end up calling this something along the lines of "You Don't Know What You've Got 'Til It's Gone". Including Janet Jackson. Others refer to the song as "They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot" (or just "the parking lot song"), which is the line that starts the song and ends each chorus.
    • "Both Sides Now" is an inversion; it's also known as "Clouds" (the name of the CD and subject of the first verse) despite "Both Sides Now" being in all the choruses. In at least one live performance of the song, Mitchell herself introduced the song saying, "Here's a song that has two titles — 'Clouds' and 'Both Sides Now' — and both are correct." So, there you have it.
  • Moby's once-obscure B-Side, later revived by a viral exercise challenge, "Flower", more widely, but wrongly, known as "Bring Sally Up". Which isn't even the title of the song "Flower" Sampled Up — that's "Green Sally Up". "Bring Sally Up" is a mondegreen.
  • Moby Grape recorded a song called "Omaha," which is actually a Non-Appearing Title. This leads many to call it "Listen My Friends."
  • Hardly anyone remembers Domenico Modugno's that "Volare" started out as "Nel blu dipinto di blu" (the line immediately following the "Volare, oh-oh, cantare, oh-oh-oh-oh" bit). Neither do most people know that it premiered at the 1958 Eurovision Song Contest, and that it only went third on the night.
  • The first big hit for R&B singer Monica was not titled "Just One of Dem Days". That it only its subtitle. The full title is "Don't Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)".
  • The Monkees and their members:
    • "Daydream Believer" is not called "Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean."
    • The end theme of the TV series is called "For Pete's Sake", not "In This Generation".
    • The opening theme of the TV series is called "(Theme from) The Monkees", not "Hey Hey, We're The Monkees!"
    • Micky Dolenz wrote the song entitled "Randy Scouse Git" (or, in the U.K., "Alternative Title" as people there actually knew what the phrase meant; most people in the U.S., and Micky himself (who had heard it on a British TV show), did not). If you didn't know the title, you might be forgiven for believing the title to be "Why Don't You Cut Your Hair?" Since the show in question (Till Death Us Do Part) was later adapted for American TV as All in the Family, had Mickey been a Brit visiting the US a few years later, the title might have been "Pinko Polack Meathead".
    • Oh, so very, very many Michael Nesmith songs, from before, during, and after his time with The Monkees:
      • "Papa Gene's Blues", "Nine Times Blue", "Daily Nightly", "Auntie's Municipal Court", "Tapioca Tundra", "Writing Wrongs", "Never Tell a Woman Yes", "Admiral Mike", "The Crippled Lion", "Hollywood", "Carlisle Wheeling", "Propinquity", "Some of Shelley's Blues", "Cruisin'" (a.k.a. "Lucy and Ramona")....
      • At one point his record label supervisor told him to knock it off and write songs that were "just good clean fun," so Nez wrote a song called "Good Clean Fun" that still didn't have those words in the lyrics. Nez is awesome.
  • The Monster Magnet song is not "Space Lord Motherfucker," it's just "Space Lord" (which censors "motherfucker" on the official studio version, even explicit copies). And "Negasonic Teenage Warhead" is not called "I Will Deny You".
  • of Montreal's songs, particularly from their later albums, invoke this frequently. "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse"? "Requiem for O.M.M. 2"? "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (and Other Games)"? None of those phrases even appear in the lyrics. Many contain words that aren't in the dictionary. Averted by their song "Coquet Coquette".
  • The Moody Blues:
    • "Tuesday Afternoon" was truly and originally given the much better, more poetic and evocative title "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" in its original recording. Apparently misnomers became so common that it ended up causing officially released compilations to have the song be called "Tuesday Afternoon" or occasionally "Forever Afternoon".
    • It's "Legend of a Mind", not "Timothy Leary" or "Timothy Leary's Dead".
    • It's "Your Wildest Dreams", not "Once Upon a Time"
  • Alanis Morissette:
    • She didn't do a song called "Isn't It Ironic" or "It's Like Rain On Your Wedding Day" on her album Jagged Little Pill. It's called "Ironic".
    • Similarly, "You Owe Me Nothing In Return" from Under Rug Swept isn't called "No Strings Attached". The former line ends every chorus, the latter begins every chorus.
    • "You Oughta Know" isn't called "I'm Here (To Remind You)".
  • That song by Van Morrison is not called "I'm In Heaven When You Smile", but "Jackie Wilson Said".
  • Mr Scruff's Non-Appearing Title song is "Get a Move On", not "You've Got to Keep Moving".
  • Mudvayne:
    • "Determined" is commonly mislabeled as "Fucking Determined".
    • Their signature song "Happy" is not called "Peel Me From The Skin".
  • Muse:
    • That song with the chorus that goes "I want it now... I want it now..." is not called that, it's called "Hysteria". "I Want It Now" is the song's subtitle in its American release. However, "I Want It Now" was the song's working title.
    • First, the song that goes "It's a new dawn, it's a new day" is called "Feeling Good". Second of all, it's a Nina Simone cover. Thirdly, Nina Simone covered the song from a musical by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse called The Roar Of The Greasepaint The Smell Of The Crowd of which all but that song appears to have sunk without trace.
    • Their The Resistance single "Uprising" is not called "Victorious", (or "We Will Not Fall", or "The Paranoia is in Bloom") as Entertainment Weekly Magazine seems to think. This mistake was caused by the last verse of the chorus being "We will be victorious", with the last word being given a very clear intonation. Also, the song's actual title is a Non-Appearing Title.
    • "Madness" is not called "I Have Finally Seen The Light".
  • My Chemical Romance:
    • It's "Helena", not "So Long and Goodnight". The latter title has been used as a subtitle, though.
    • Subverted: They do have a song called "It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Fucking Deathwish". The confusion comes from how the song is listed on the back of the Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge CD, wherein song titles are normally censored if they contain profanity.
    • "Thank You for the Venom" is not called "Give Me All Your Poison".
    • "I Never Told You What I Do for a Living" is apparently sometimes referred to as "You Don't Know What I Do for a Living". This is probably more of Title Confusion, since neither line appears in the lyrics.
    • People sometimes omit the subtitle when talking about "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)".
    • "Carry On" is actually called "Welcome to the Black Parade".
    • The amount of MCR songs from their first three albums that have the title in the song can be counted on one hand.
  • My Friend The Chocolate Cake's "A Midlife's Tale" is commonly known by the refrain "(He's got to) Get it back now".
  • Some of Miyuki Nakajima's albums come with translation booklets. Normally, the title is translated directly from Japanese into English in said booklets, although some song names follow this trope. For instance, the translation of "Alone, Please" is re-titled "Leave Me Alone, Please", and the translation "Hitori de umarete kita no dakara" is re-titled "Jasmine".
  • Matt Nathanson:
    • Are you having trouble finding "Rattle My Bones"? Of course you are, because it's really "Faster".
    • You might also have trouble finding the Sugarland collaboration because you're searching "I Run to You", which is actually a song by another band.
  • Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog" is more commonly known as "Son of a Bitch", thanks to its prominent use in the chorus. The band wanted to name the song "Son of a Bitch" from the start, but their label wouldn't allow it. To get around this, Nazareth decided to name the song something that, phonetically, comes very close to "Heir of the Dog", which is another term for...
  • The band Neon Trees has had two big hits:
    • Their first is not called "I Want Some More", "What Are You Waiting For", "Say Goodbye to My Heart Tonight", or "Take a Bite of My Heart Tonight". It's called "Animal".
    • Their second hit is not called "It Started With a Whisper" or "Everybody Talks Bad". It's just "Everybody Talks".
  • The Newsboys' Signature Song is not called "Breakfast Clubbers" or "They Don't Serve Breakfast In Hell". It's simply "Breakfast".
  • Ne-Yo never did anything called "I Just Can't Stop". It's "Closer" you want.
  • "All Downhill from Here" by New Found Glory narrowly averted this trope. The original title was supposed to be "Catalyst" (which does appear in the refrain but is more difficult to understand than the title phrase), but their manager suggested to use the more recognizable line "All Downhill from Here" instead.
  • "Political Science" by Randy Newman is incorrectly known by many by its oft-repeated line "Let's Drop the Big One Now".
  • New Order seems particularly fond of song titles that appear nowhere in the lyrics:
    • "Bizarre Love Triangle" is popularly known as "Every Time I See You Falling".
    • "Blue Monday" isn't "How Does It Feel" (which was the title of a hit by Electroset that sampled it).
    • "True Faith" isn't "I used to think that the day would never come..."
  • New Radicals' only hit song is called "You Get What You Give", not "You Got The Music In You" or "You Only Get What You Give".
  • The New Seekers most well known song is called "I'd like to Teach the world to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)", not "I'd Like to Build the World a home".
  • The Nice: An inversion, in that the album Five Bridges is often mistakenly given the title "Five Bridges Suite", which only refers to the long piece on side/track 1.
  • Nickelback:
    • They don't have a song called "Are We Having Fun Yet?" That's "How You Remind Me".
    • "Look at this Photograph" is just called "Photograph".
    • "Nobody Wants To Be The Last One" is actually "Gotta Be Somebody".
  • Who thought that the Stevie Nicks song "Edge of Seventeen" was named "Just Like the White Winged Dove"? Of course, the latter (often used as a subtitle) appears in the chorus, while the former, and actual title, only appears once or twice throughout the song, and only in the verses.
  • The Night Ranger song "Sister Christian" is not called "Motoring", or as some people believe, "Motorade".
  • Nightwish:
    • "Escapist" is not called "A Nightingale in a Golden Cage" or "Reality's Maze" or "Bring Me Back to Life" or any other phrase from the chorus. The title does appear once in the lyrics, in the second verse ("This is who I am, escapist, paradise seeker").
    • The first song on Dark Passion Play is "The Poet and the Pendulum", not "Getaway, Runaway, Fly Away" or any other line from the chorus. The actual title never appears in the lyrics — they refer to a "poet", and the title refers to Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Pit and the Pendulum", which is also alluded to many times in the lyrics. The word "pendulum" never appears in the lyrics either, though it is alluded to with lines like "Swaying blade my lullaby" and "The blade will keep on descending".
    • Despite "Those meadows of heaven" being a line in the song, "Meadows of Heaven" is a completely different song.
    • Imaginaerum:
      • The single is titled "Storytime", a Non-Appearing Title. It might be mistakenly called "I Am the Voice of Never Never Land", which is the first line of the refrain.
      • "The Crow, the Owl and the Dove" is not titled "Don't Give Me Love"
      • "Song of Myself" (the penultimate song) also has a Non-Appearing Title, though "song of me" is mentioned in the lyrics many times.
      • "Scaretale" is a Non-Appearing Title, though it's hard to pick anything that WOULD be mistaken for the title of that song, since it doesn't really have a chorus or any repeating lines or phrases. It might be titled "Once Upon a Time in a Daymare" or some variation, after the first line of the song.
  • Nile:
    • There is a song called "Kafir", which is the Arabic word meaning "infidel", and while it does include the word itself, is sometimes mistakenly referred to by the main refrain of the chorus, "There Is No God".
    • They have a song on the album Amongst The Catacombs of Nephren-Ka that includes that very phrase, but in fact is titled "Beneath Eternal Oceans of Sand".
  • Harry Nilsson’s biggest hit wasn’t called “Live,” or "Can't Live," but “Without You.”(Both phrases occur in the chorus, but “Live” is more prominent.)
  • Nine Days' "Absolutely" gets called "Story of a Girl" or "When She Smiles". "Story of a Girl" is the official subtitle, but there are people who use it while ignoring the main title completely.
  • Nine Inch Nails:
    • "Head Like a Hole" (whose title is dropped as the chorus' first line) is sometimes referred to "Bow Down" or "The One You Serve" or "Got Money" (itself a mishearing of the line "God money").
    • "Wish" is prone to being mistakenly called "The First Day of My Last Days".
    • "Closer" is sometimes referred to as "Help me" (the most repeated line in the song) and "I wanna fuck you like an animal" (the most obvious and memorable line in the chorus). "You get me closer to God" (the chorus' last line, which is closer to the actual title) is also included, which is not helped by the fact that the single featuring remixes of the song (plus one of said remixes) is called Closer to God.
    • While "Wish" and "Closer" at the very least contain their titles somewhere in the lyrics, "Heresy" is most applicable to the trope, as it does not contain the word anywhere in the song and often gets referred to by a line from the chorus — "God is dead" (or "Your god is dead").
    • "Piggy" prominently repeats the line it's commonly misattributed as its title ("nothing can stop me now") at least twenty times, and only utters the actual title twice in the first verse. "Nothing can stop me now" is also used as a subtitle in a remix of the song.
  • The 1975 have a song that you might think is called "Never Gonna Quit It" or "Guns Hidden Under Our Petticoats", but it's actually called "Chocolate".
  • Nitty Gritty Dirt Band never recorded a song called "Coconut Grove" or the like. The song is actually called "An American Dream".
  • Nirvana:
    • They never did a song called "Entertain Us", nor "Waif Me". The first one's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from Nevermind (yes, even that song is called by the wrong name sometimes), the last one is "Rape Me" but the title was altered for Walmart to sell In Utero.note 
    • "Come As You Are", not "Memoria" or "Don't Have a Gun".
    • "Lithium", not "I'm Not Gonna Crack", or "I'm So Happy, 'Cause Today I Found My Friends..."
    • "In Bloom", not "Don't Know What It Means"
    • "Territorial Pissings", not "Gotta Find a Way, a Better Way"
    • "All Apologies", not "In the Sun, Buried".
    • Nirvana invokes this trope by titling a song "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" when the song is actually titled "In the Pines."
  • No Comment: They don’t have a song called “Mind in Pain”. It’s “Downsided”. Making this especially strange is that, even though it’s the Title Track of their Downsided EP, it has a Non-Appearing Title. Meanwhile, the phrase “Mind in Pain” is said thrice.
  • No Doubt:
    • The hit song they recorded for the 1999 indie film Go is not called "You're So New". It's simply called "New".
    • They do not have a song called "Keep on Dancin". It's "Hella Good," which is sung in the chorus right before "Keep on Dancin'"
    • "Spiderwebs" is sometimes mistaken as "Walking in the Spiderwebs", "(I Will) Call You Back", "A Likely Story", or "Screen My Phone Calls".
  • Nothing More has "Do You Really Want It", not "Everybody Wants To Change The World". And "Mr. MTV" by them is not "I Want My MTV" or "Coroporate Fathers".
  • Krautrock band "Novalis" did a song which could be described as a Heavy Metal Ice-Cream Koan about the theme "time". Why it's called "Frühsport im Sachsenwald" note  is anyone's guess.
  • *NSYNC's "Pop" is often mislabeled "Dirty Pop", due to the frequent repetitions of the phrase throughout the song.
  • Gary Numan's biggest hit was called "Cars", not "Here in My Car". And it is not by The Cars. (This is a surprisingly common error, even though Gary Numan and Ric Ocasek sound nothing alike...)
  • The Gary P Nunn song (also associated with Jerry Jeff Walker) with the "I wanna go home with the armadillo" chorus is called "London Homesick Blues."
  • The Offspring:
    • "Come Out and Play" is often mistaken as "Keep 'Em Separated". That's its subtitle, though.
    • It's called "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid", not "Right Between the Eyes" or "Hit 'Em Right Between the Eyes".
    • "My Friend's Got a Girlfriend" is actually "Why Don't You Get a Job?".
    • "Pretty Fly For a White Guy" might as well be called "Give It To Me Baby (Uh-huh, Uh-huh)"; after all, that line is used about a dozen times in the song, far more than the actual title. If not that, then you might hear "Gunter Glieben Glauchen Globen".
    • "Self-Esteem" is often known as "Laa, Laa, Laa-Laa-Laa" or "Oh, Yeah Yeah Yeah"
    • "Days Go By", their 2012 #2 rock hit, is not called "All Your Anger, All Your Hurt".
    • Their 2015 #1 hit "Coming for You" is often called the "Donkey Kong" song.
  • Of Mice and Men's biggest hit is called "Would You Still Be There?", not "If I Could Find the Words".
  • Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks". The phrase appears once, in the middle of the second verse. It's more likely to be referred to as "Don't Listen to a Word I Say" (from the prechorus) or "Though the Truth May Vary" or "Safe to Shore" (from the chorus).
  • Oingo Boingo:
    • The song "No One Lives Forever" is often thought to be titled "Hour of the Wolf". Seeing as the former appears in the song twice as often, the only logical explanation is "Hour of the Wolf" is just a cooler title.
    • A newcomer might think that "Dead Man's Party" is called "Leave Your Body At the Door" or "It's Only Me."
    • "Little Girls" is simply called that, not "I Love Little Girls".
  • OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" is not named for the more emphasized line that comes after the title in the chorus, "When the morning comes".
  • OMC's one hit is not called "Every Time I Look Around", but "How Bizarre". How bizarre, how bizarre.
  • One Direction:
    • Their first big hit isn't "You Don't Know You're Beautiful". It's actually "What Makes You Beautiful". The confusion is caused by the fact that the former appears twice in the chorus and the actual title only once.
    • Zayn's solo debut is called "Pillowtalk", not "Piss off the Neighbors", "Paradise" or "War Zone".
  • "One Man Army" by Our Lady Peace is commonly mistaken as "Falling" or "I Remember Falling", even though the title and the secondary titles are repeated an almost equal number of times.
  • Roy Orbison did not have a hit called "Pretty Woman". The song you're thinking of is actually called "Oh! Pretty Woman". This is invoked in a classic trivia question which catches everyone out the first time they hear it: Complete the title of the Roy Orbison hit "Pretty _____". The correct answer is "Paper".
  • "Pandora's Box" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark isn't called "It's a Long, Long Way", although that was its subtitle in North America.
  • Joan Osborne's lonely hit is called "One of Us", not "What if God Was One of Us". It doesn't help that several covers of the song use that title instead of the real one.
  • Outkast:
    • When you heard the song "Rosa Parks" for the first time on the radio, chances are you thought the song was called "Back of the Bus". Parks' name is never mentioned in the song making it a Non-Appearing Title.
    • Many people mistake their song "Roses" as "Caroline".
  • Many people do know by now that the "Numa Numa" song is "Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone; but, for a long time, it was just "Numa Numa" or "Mai Ya Hee" to everyone. And Memetic Mutation has kicked in so firmly on this one that for many, it may remain "Numa Numa" forever. Plus, "Numa Numa" is easier (for English-speakers) to say and people are lazy.
  • "Eyes, Radio, Lies" by Orgy is often misnamed "Eyes in Your Radio" after the chorus.
  • Robert Palmer does not have a song called "Doctor Doctor", the song is actually called "Bad Case of Loving You", although the former has been used as a subtitle.
  • Panic! at the Disco:
    • Almost none the songs on their first album, A Fever You Can't Sweat out, have their titles in their lyrics. The titles often rhyme with the choruses. "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", for example, half-rhymes with the end of the chorus, "poise and rationality". Then there are titles like "There's a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered, Honey, You Just Haven't Figured It out Yet".
    • A lot of their song titles are drawn from literature and movies, mostly for completely unrelated reasons; "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes off" comes from the movie Closer, as does "But It's Better If You Do".
  • Parachute has "Something to Believe In", not "Just For a Little".
  • That song by Paramore with the hook "Badada-badada-dada!" is not "Bury the Castle". It's "Brick by Boring Brick". (And the lyric is actually "Parapa-para-pa-para".)
  • Pavement: "Silence Kit" is often mistakenly referred to as "Silence Kid" or "Silent Kid." These titles come from both a smudge on the back of the album that makes the "t" difficult to make out as well as the first two words of the song being "Silent kid".
  • Pearl Jam's waltz-tempo ballad with the refrain "Hearts and thoughts, they fade, fade away" is called "Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town".
  • Thanks to Eddie Murphy's hilarious impression of Teddy Pendergrass in Delirious, many people mistakenly believe his song "Only You" is called "You Got, You Got, You Got What I Need".
  • Michael Penn (Sean’s younger brother) did not have a late-'80s hit called "Romeo In Black Jeans" or "Someone To Dance With". The actual title, "No Myth", is dropped in the line between the two containing those phrases.
  • A Perfect Circle doesin't have a song called "Did It All for You". That's "Judith".
  • Pet Shop Boys' "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)" is typically known just by the bit in brackets. "Opportunities" appears in the song, but it doesn't stand out as a title.
  • The Tom Petty song frequently referred to as "Last Dance with Mary Jane" is actually called "Mary Jane's Last Dance", a phrase that doesn't appear anywhere in the song.
  • Pink Floyd:
    • "We Don't Need No Education", or "Leave Those Kids Alone", is actually "Another Brick in The Wall, Pt. II", from The Wall.
    • "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" isn't the intro to "Another Brick in The Wall, Pt. II", despite commonly being paired up with it.
    • "Dirty Woman" is actually "Young Lust", from The Wall.
    • "Riding the Gravy Train" is actually "Have a Cigar", from Wish You Were Here (1975).
    • "The Dark Side of the Moon" (for the Album Title Drop that is part of the song's only repeated line) is actually titled "Brain Damage" (which doesn't appear in the lyrics). On radio stations, the latter song is often played with "Eclipse".note  This is to say nothing of those who may further mistitle the song as "The Lunatic" or "Lunatic" (which opens all of the song's verses).
    • "Tongue Tied and Twisted" is actually "Learning to Fly", from A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
  • Pitbull's 2015 hit with Ne-Yo is called "Time of Our Lives", not "Time of My Life" like the usage of the latter phrase in the chorus might leave you to think. They may have used the former title as to avoid ripping off Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes.
  • Placebo:
    • Most people refer to one song as "Every Me and Every You" because that's how the chorus seems to go. On the back of the CD case, it's called "Every You, Every Me" and if you listen to the choruses carefully, you'll hear the end of the chorus goes "every me and every you, every me." Other people think it's called "Sucker Love" after the first two words of each verse.
    • Few people appear to know that the song "Pure Morning" is not called "A Friend In Need", even though the latter line is sung at the start of every verse. (while the actual title is both the bridge and the closing lines)
  • "The Damned" by The Plasmatics is often referred to as "Prisoners of the Damned".
  • Rachel Platten's 2015 smash "Fight Song" is often incorrectly called "This Is My Fight Song".
  • The Police:
    • They never did a song called "Many Miles Away." The actual title is "Synchronicity II" from Synchronicity.
    • They do not have a song called "I'll Be Watching You". The actual title is "Every Breath You Take", also from Synchronicity. This is because the Puff Daddy song that sampled it, "I'll Be Missing You," takes its title from the parallel part of the chorus. (And while we're at it, it's not a romantic song either.)
    • "Message in a Bottle" from Reggatta de Blanc is not "Sending out an SOS"; the former is the title and is in the chorus, with the latter being repeated in the end.
  • The Polyphonic Spree apparently subscribes to the serial-number school of song titling, meaning that very nearly their entire repertoire falls under this trope. Outside of album track listings, they do refer to their songs by the subtitles; "Section 9 (Light & Day/ Reach for the Sun)", for example, is just "Light & Day" on the single or when Tim DeLaughter speaks in person. Also, songs that aren't on their main albums don't have section numbers ("I'm Calling" or assorted concert-only pieces). The only really tricky thing is that Sections 20 and 21 are both called "Together We're Heavy"; 20 is the title track for their 2nd album, while 21 is the prologue to their 3rd.
  • Pop Evil doesn’t have "When You’re High and You’re Feeling Low”, they have "Deal with the Devil". They don’t have "Erase This Monster I’ve Become", they have "Monster You Made". They don't have "Half The Man You Wanted Me To Be", that's "Torn to Pieces". And "I Feel Like Waking Up" is actually "Footsteps".
  • Porcupine Tree song "Anesthesize" is NOT "Only Apathy"
  • Portishead gets this a lot as well. Off of their debut album Dummy, we have:
    • "Sour Times" mistaken as "Nobody Loves Me".
    • "Strangers" mistaken as "Did You Realize" and "Done It Warning".
    • "Glory Box" mistaken as "Give Me a Reason" and occasionally "Woman".
  • Portugal. The Man did not gain popular recognition with "Rebel Just For Kicks", "1966" or "1986". The song you're thinking of is "Feel It Still". While all of these lines are in the chorus, the former three are all much more prominent than the latter.
  • "White Iverson" by Post Malone isn't called "Saucin' On You". The title is referenced once in the pre-chorus, but nowhere else in the song.
  • Mike Posner's 2016 comeback hit is not called "High Like Me", "Sad Songs", "All I Know Are Sad Songs" or anything like that. It's called "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" (or simply "In Ibiza"), which is the very first line of the song and said nowhere else.
  • The song sometimes referred to as "Please Don't Let them Hurt Your Children," is actually called "Dear Mr. Jesus" by Power Source/Sharon Batts.
  • The Pretenders:
    • Some think "Brass in Pocket" was called "I'm Special" or "Gonna Make You Notice". It's been listed on Don't Forget the Lyrics! as "Brass in Pocket (I'm Special)".
    • There's no such song as "Ohio", or even "Back to Ohio". It's "My City Was Gone".
  • Primus:
    • One of their earliest songs is called "The Heckler" (recorded live on Suck On This; a studio version wouldn't be done until 1999, as a Hidden Track on Antipop); however, it's often referred to as the "Just A Matter Of Opinion" song.
    • It's not "The Nature Of Things"; the official name is "Glass Sandwich".
  • Die Prinzen's first hit was called "Gabi und Klaus", not "Das Leben ist grausam", the phrase that's the beginning of the chorus and was subsequently used as the album title.
  • The Proclaimers don't have a song called "500 Miles" or "I Would Walk 500 Miles". They do, however, have a song called "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)".
  • The Prodigy: "Music Reach (1/2/3/4)"
  • Puddle of Mudd:
    • Their most famous song is not called "Take It All Away". It's called "Blurry", but since the title is only the third word in the song (and only appears that one time), and "Can you take it all away?" is the refrain, it's no wonder why "Take It All Away" is a secondary title.
    • Their second best known song is not "She Fuckin' Hates Me", but merely "She Hates Me", the former was the song's original title though, but changed to make it more acceptable to the public.
    • They don't have a song on Come Clean called "Away from Me", that's "Basement". "Away from Me" wouldn't appear until their next album, Life on Display. And by the way, "Away from Me" is not called "I'm Always Afraid".
  • Queen:
    • Queen did not perform a song called "We'll Keep on Trying". The song is called "Innuendo". The title does appear, all of once, in the song.
    • They also did not perform a song called "I Want to Ride My Bicycle". That song is called "Bicycle Race", which is said several times in the bridge, but very quickly and weirdly stressed, and once at the end.
    • "You're My Best Friend" from A Night at the Opera is often referred to as "Oooh, You're Making Me Live"; they're both in the refrain, but the latter is said more.
    • As surprising as it may seem (being that it's easily one of their most popular songs), there are people who refer to "Bohemian Rhapsody" from A Night at the Opera as either "Nothing Really Matters" or occasionally "Mama" after the only lyric repeated throughout the different parts of the song and the lyric said repeatedly in what's the closest thing to a chorus in the entire song, respectively. Of course, there's also "Galileo", "I'm Just a Poor Boy", "Can't Do This To Me Baby", etc. We would be here all day if we were to list all of the titles the song could potentially be mislabeled; alas the curse of popular music.
    • There is no song called "Don't You Hear Me Calling". It is "'39".
    • An inversion/zig-zag: "We Will Rock You", one of their most famous songs, was the B-side to "We Are The Champions", and the two are almost always played together on the radio. This is also how they are arranged on News of the World (Queen), and were also typically played back-to-back in concert. This leads to some people assuming "We Are The Champions" is the title of one big song, and incorrectly assuming that other people are incorrectly assuming the title to the second part is "We Will Rock You"; or vice versa.
    • They don't have a song called "Supersonic Man" or "Havin' a Good Time," those are lines from "Don't Stop Me Now."
  • '60s psychedelic rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service never recorded a song called "Have Another Hit". You're thinking of "Fresh Air".
  • Quiet Riot have an interesting case. Their song "Metal Health" is often referred to as "Bang Your Head" due to the chorus repeating that line (with the second line being "Metal Health will drive you mad"). Eventually, the band simply titled the song "Bang Your Head"(Metal Health) which is how it's listed on Greatest Hits CDs and compilations (the song has also gone under the title "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)".
  • Radiohead:
    • "Just" from The Bends is sometimes appended with "(You Do It to Yourself)". Former: 3 times. Latter: 15. Its often called this by American alternative radio disk jockeys.
    • "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" from The Bends often gets shortened to "Fade Out" as "Fade out again" is repeated throughout the chorus, whereas the phrase "street spirit" isn't sung once.
    • Their biggest hit "Creep" from Pablo Honey often appears on filesharing sites as "So Fucking Special" after its best known lyric.
    • "Karma Police" from OK Computer isn't called "This is What You Get" or "I Lost Myself".
    • Kid A doesn't have a track called "I'm Not Here, This Isn't Happening" but it does have one called "How to Disappear Completely". Since the latter is a Non-Appearing Title while the former is the chorus, this is an understandable mistake.
  • A lot of people seem to think the Ramones' best-known song, "Blitzkrieg Bop" from Ramones, is called "Hey Ho Let's Go".
  • Rancid made the song "Brad Logan" for South Park's Chef Aid episode and album. It is frequently and incorrectly referred to as "California Sun" as the song begins with the line "California sun has sunk..."
  • Lou Rawls’s 1976 hit is called “You’ll Never Find(Another Love Like Mine),” not “You’re Gonna Miss My Lovin’”.
  • Redgum's "A Walk in the Light Green" is commonly known as "I Was Only Nineteen", as the real title is a Non-Appearing Title. The cover by The Herd is listed as "I Was Only Nineteen".
  • Reef's "Place Your Hands" is very often referred to as "Put Your Hands On" due to its chorus consisting entirely of that line. The lyric "place your hands" is only said twice (both at the beginning of the song) while "put your hands on" is repeated many times.
  • Reel Big Fish:
    • "You Don't Know" sometimes gets referred to as some variation of "Fuck Off" or "The Fuck Off Song". It must be the profanity, because the line "You Don't Know" is said more than "Fuck Off" in the song by a good margin.
    • "Cheer Up" has been called "I Got a Funny Feelin'". The words "Cheer up" only occur once, at the very end of the song.
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers:
    • "By the Way" has been called "Under the Marquee", or "Standing In Line".
    • "Under the Bridge" is called quite a few different things. These include "City of Angels", which occurs fewer times in the lyrics than the title but is enunciated more clearly. There's also "Take Me To The Place I Love."
    • "Dani California" is often called "California Rest in Peace". The former is the actual title, and appears once in the second verse. The latter is the first line of the refrain.
    • "Scar Tissue" is not called "With Birds I Share This Lonely View".
    • "The Adventures of Raindance Maggie" runs into this, one could call it "Make it Rain Somehow". The titular character is referred to as Maggie only in the chorus.
    • "Battleship" used to be called "Blowjob Park" but the record company made them use a non-obscene title, even though they kept the original lyrics.
    • "Special Secret Song Inside" is a similar situation to "Battleship", except that it reverted to its original title "Party On Your Pussy" on the 2004 remaster of The Uplift Mofo Party Plan. It is likely the band wanted it changed back out of respect to the song's late guitarist Hillel Slovak, who loved the song.
    • "Otherside" (with no space) is often called "Take It On The Other Side", "The Other Side", or "Other Side". Also the opening lyrics are "How long, how long..." not "Hello, hello..." which a lot of people will think that's the title of the song.
  • R.E.M.:
    • "Supernatural Superserious" was named by a member of Coldplay, helping it avert this trope (it was originally called "Disguise", which would have been difficult to guess from the lyrics).
    • "Losing My Religion" was frequently known as "That's me in the corner" or "Oh life", especially in areas with large religious populations where the original title might be considered blasphemy.
    • "The Great Beyond" was frequently miscredited as "I'm Pushing An Elephant Up The Stairs".
    • "Imitation Of Life" was known by just about every line in its chorus including "That Sugar Cane", "Come On, Come On" or "No One Can See You Cry". The actual title only appears once in the entire song.
    • Also, they don't have a song called "Stand in the Place Where You Live". It's just called "Stand".
    • The One I Love has been known as "This One Goes Out To The One I Love" or "Fire". The band were probably aware of the fact that people would have referred to it by the title "The One I Love" when they wrote it. Interestingly, they did title it "This One Goes Out" on a live B Side.
    • "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" is not called "Call Me When You Try To Wake Her" (or "Calling Jamaica", for that matter). The full title is never heard in the song, though the lyrics "the sidewinder sleeps in a coil" and "the sidewinder sleeps on its back" do occur.
  • Rihanna has a song called "Diamonds", not "Yellow Diamonds", "Diamonds in the Sky", or "Shine Bright like a Diamond", even though "Diamond" by itself is not heard. The song "We Found Love" is also not called "Love In A Hopeless Place" or "We Found Love In A Hopeless Place".
  • Rick Astley's song "Whenever you Need somebody" is often misremembered as being called "I'll bring My Love to You" (the line right after the title).
  • Rise Against:
    • "The Good Left Undone" is not called "All Because of You".
    • Despite the heavy repeated use of the line in the bridge and near the end, "Savior" is not "I Don't Hate You".
    • They don't have a song called "Don't Hold Me Up" or "I Don't Need Your Help". It's "Prayer of the Refugee" (another case of Non-Appearing Title).
  • The Rolling Stones:
    • Luckily, the band has fans who know the real titles of "Pleased to meet You," "You Make a Grown Man Cry" and "Take me down, Little Suzie." They are respectively "Sympathy for the Devil," "Start Me Up" and the less-memorable "Dead Flowers."
    • They don't have a song called "I Hear Every Mother Say". That's actually "Mother's Little Helper".
  • Although you have probably heard Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars mega smash "Uptown Funk", which has since become one of the biggest songs of all time, more times than you can count, some might refer to the song as "Don't Believe Me, Just Watch", which it is notnote . Even then, many people are inclined to call it "Uptown Funk You Up" rather than "Uptown Funk".
  • Several of David Rovics' songs do not actually feature the song title in the lyrics. A casual listener without access to the sleeve notes would forgiven thinking that "Song for Eric" is called "Every time I see that street, I think of you" or that "Deadhead in Prison" is called "A Life Up in Smoke".
  • Zig-zagged to hell and back with "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)", which has been officially and unofficially referred to by three different titles derived from lyrics in the chorus. The original recording by Merry Clayton, titled "It's in His Kiss", faded into obscurity after failing to chart. The most well-known version by Betty Everett released a year later as "The Shoop Shoop Song" to avoid losing sales to Ramona King's version which had released just a week prior. Then it went back to being known as "It's In His Kiss" when Linda Lewis released her disco version in 1975; it wasn't until Cher's 1990 cover for the Mermaids soundtrack that the world finally settled on "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)" as the definitive way to refer to the song. That doesn't stop people from erroneously mistaking one version's name for the other, however.
  • Runrig's "Protect and Survive" is often called "Once in a Lifetime", because that's the line Audience Participation belts out and was the title of a live album.
  • Even many die-hard Rush fans will mistakenly refer to "Red Barchetta" as "Ride Like the Wind".
  • Did you think Patrice Rushen's sole hit was called "Send Me Forget Me-Nots"? Well, it's actually called "Forget Me-Nots".

    S-Z 
  • Adam Sandler's novelty song "Ode To My Car", as opposed to the less album-liner-friendly "Piece of Shit Car".
  • Savage's "Let Me See Your Hips Swing" is actually just "Swing".
  • Savage Garden:
    • "I Want You" is almost exclusively remembered as "Chica Cherry Cola" (or some spelling variant), despite the fact that "I Want You" is most of the chorus and "Chica Cherry Cola" is in the bridge once. This is likely because "Chica Cherry Cola" is distinctive, and "I Want You" is more generic. (The Savage Garden song doesn't have a "She's So Heavy" section, does it?)
    • It's "Affirmation", not "I Believe".
    • And "Truly Madly Deeply" is not called "Stand With You on a Mountain".
  • No, Say Anything... don't have a song called "Molly Connolly". They do, however, have a song called "Every Man Has a Molly". "I Won’t Let Them Take You" doesn’t exist either; you’re thinking of "Alive With the Glory of Love".
  • Leo Sayer's first hit was "Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)", not "I Know I Can Dance".
  • Joey Scarbury's most famous song is only subtitled "Believe It or Not". It's more properly known as the "Theme to The Greatest American Hero".
  • Discussed in "If Love Is Real" by Peter Schickele:
    This song's refrain is obviously "Oh my, oh me,"
    And yet that's not the title of the song;
    The title happens to be "If Love Is Real,"
    Which is really quite hard to believe,
    'Cause usually the title of the song is the refrain, you see.
    Oh my, oh me!
  • That S Club (S Club 7 at the time of recording) song is just called "Reach", not "Reach for the Stars".
  • The techno tune with the Looped Lyrics "I've got the hots for you" is "Theme from S-Express" by S-Express, which Sampled Up a song actually titled "I've Got The Hots For You" by TZ.
  • Robin Schulz:
    • He has a song with Lilly Wood and The Prick, but it is not called "Don't Think I Will Forgive You". Or "Don't Think You Will Forgive You" or what not. It's called "Prayer In C".
    • The song he did with Mr. Probz is not called "Wave After Wave", "Drifting Away", or "Pulling Against The Stream". It's just "Waves".
  • The Script's big hit is "Breakeven," not "Falling To Pieces." Also from The Script, the title of "The Man Who Can't Be Moved" (which is not, in fact, called "I'm Not Moving") never appears in the chorus- the Title Drop occurs three times, all in quick succession during the bridge near the end of the song.
  • Semisonic doesn't have a song called "I Know Who I Want To Take Me Home" or even just "Take Me Home". That's "Closing Time" you're thinking of.
  • Senses Fail don’t have a song called "Stuck in a Coma". You’re probably thinking of "Can’t Be Saved".
  • September's best-known song is "Cry For You", not "You'll Never See Me Again".
  • Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla, bing bang...you surely remember that but the title is "Witch Doctor" by Dave Seville.
  • Shakin Steven's Christmas song was called "Merry Christmas Everyone", not "Snow Is Falling".
  • Ed Sheeran:
    • His 2015 #2 hit is called "Thinking Out Loud", not "People Fall in Love in Mysterious Ways" or "We Found Love Right Where We Are". The words of which are uttered as the last line of the chorus.
    • Another Ed Sheeran song, "Shape of You", is not called "I'm In Love With The Shape of You" or "I'm In Love With Your Body".
  • Sheila on 7's piano ballad is often titled, and mistaken for, "Aku Pulang"note , when it's actually "Berhenti Berharap"note .
  • Shinedown didn't record a song called "4:03". They did, however, record "If You Only Knew".
  • Shiny Toy Guns:
    • "Le Disko" is not called "Supersonic Overdrive".
    • "We Are Pilots", not "Who I Am".
    • "When They Came for Us", not "When They Took the Beach" or "Shiny Toy Guns".
  • Shiv-r's song "Arise" is not called "Breathe". It doesn't help that 'arise' is only said once, while 'breathe' is basically most of the chorus.
  • Sick Puppies’ most well-known song is not called "Long Time Coming" or "One Of Us Is Going Down", but "You’re Going Down". And their big 2011 rock hit is "Riptide", not "The Water is Fine".
  • Sigue Sigue Sputnik's only song of note (debatable) is called "Love Missile F1-11," not "Shoot It Up."
  • "Wind Beneath My Wings" by Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley is often called "Hero" (or some other variation on "Did you ever know that you're my hero", the first line of the chorus). A cover version by Gladys Knight And The Pips actually did use the title "Hero", but the official title is still "Wind Beneath My Wings" (which appears at the end of the chorus).
  • Simon & Garfunkel:
    • "Kathy's Song" never mentions Kathy in its lyrics (though she is mentioned in a different song of theirs, "America", just to add to the confusion).
    • "The 59th Street Bridge Song" is better known as "Feelin' Groovy". In listings on Simon & Garfunkel CDs and the like, it's usually listed as "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)". Covers of that song are often listed under the false title.
    • That "Lie la lie - [BOOM!] - lie la lie lie, lie la lie" song? "The Boxer". There is one mention of "a boxer" in the lyrics, but that's it.
  • Simple Plan's "Untitled" is commonly referred to as "How Could This Happen to Me?" or "Untitled (How Could This Happen to Me?)", but when the album was originally released, it was simply "Untitled". Also, the song is actually an anti-drink-driving song, despite what many people on the internet will tell you — the music video makes it clear what the song's really about.
  • Frank Sinatra's "Theme From New York, New York" is often referred to as "Start Spreading the News". It didn't help that the "start spreading the news" part of the song was featured in a Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial. Nor does it help that many people miss out the "Theme From" part, since there are other songs titled "New York, New York", the most notable one being from the musical On the Town, whose film version featured Frank Sinatra. That song is often mistakenly called "It's a Hell of a Town", Also "Forget Domani" is often called "Let Forget About Tomorrow"
  • Skid Row's "I Remember You" (the end of the refrain) is occasionally labeled incorrectly as "Remember Yesterday" (The start of the refrain).
  • Skrillex's remix of I See MONSTAS' "Holdin' On" is not called "I Keep Holding On" or "My Hope Will Never Die".
  • Slade's famous christmas song is called "Merry Xmas Everbody", not "So Here it is, Merry Christmas" or "It's Christmas!!!!".
  • The Small Faces' lone U.S. hit was "Itchykoo Park", not "It's All Too Beautiful" (or "We'll get high," which is unsurprisingly the part most people remember, both for being a drug reference and the fact that the lead singer practically screams it).
  • The Smashing Pumpkins:
    • "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is better known as "some variation on 'Rat in a Cage'". "The World is a Vampire" is quite common too.
    • "Disarm" from Siamese Dream, another one of their biggest hits, gets quite commonly labelled as "(The) Killer in Me (is the Killer in You)". The title is dropped in the first line ("Disarm you with a smile") which also has the tendency to be used as the title itself.
    • No, the song is not "We Must Never Be Apart", but rather "Ava Adore" from Adore.
  • Smash Mouth:
    • They did not do a song called "All That Glitters" or "Shooting Stars"; that's "All Star". For extra irony, most people who aren't familiar with Smash Mouth associate that song with the 2001 animated movie Shrek (since it plays over the opening credits), even though that song was heard two years earlier over the closing credits of Mystery Men.
    • Many people think "Then the Morning Comes" is titled "The Way That You Are."
  • The Smiths:
    • The song that was (in Covered Up form by Love Spit Love) used as the theme for Charmed? Its name isn't "Shut Your Mouth" or "I Am Human". It's "How Soon Is Now?" from Meat Is Murder.
    • If you want to find "Panic", you're better off searching for a fictional song called 'Hang The DJ'. And it's just "Panic", not "Panic on the Streets of London" (or whatever place in Great Britain).
  • Social House' collaboration with Lil Yachty is called "Magic in the Hamptons," not "Handshakes in the Hamptons."
  • Popular DJ Sonique never had a song called "Your Love It Feels So Good". Nor did she ever have a song called "And That's What Takes Me High." It's called "It Feels So Good". Likewise, "Sky" is not "Touch The Sky" or "Fly So High".
  • Soul Asylum's "Misery" is misnamed "Frustrated Incorporated".
  • Soul II Soul's big hit isn't "However Do You Want Me" it's "Back To Life", although it was originally A Cappella and the house-y remix does have "However Do You Want Me" as a parenthetical subtitle.
  • The Soundtrack of Our Lives' most famous song is called "Bigtime", not "Welcome to the Future" (the title is repeated in the chorus, but is somewhat drowned out by the instrumentation, while "welcome to the future" is repeated throughout the verses, and is more clearly audible).
  • The classic Spice Girls song is just called "Wannabe", not "If You Wanna Be My Lover" or "I'll Tell You What I Want". Nor is it 'Zig-a-zig-ah' or anything like that.
  • Spin Doctors:
    • The song featuring the line "I've got a pocket full of kryptonite" is entitled "Jimmy Olsen's Blues." Made more confusing by being on an album called Pocket Full of Kryptonite.
    • Biggest-ever hit for this band, same album: It's widely thought to be called "Just Go Ahead Now" or after the phrase that ends each line in the chorus. It's not called "If You Want to Call Me Baby", either. It's actually called "Two Princes", which appears in the opening line of the first verse.
  • The Spinto Band's "Japan Is An Island" is sometimes identified as "Atari". Atari is frequently mentioned in the chorus, while the phrase "Japan is an island" is just sung once in the first verse. It doesn't help that it's a Hidden Track, or that an early version of the song that the band themselves once released as a free MP3 was in fact called "Atari". Possibly they changed the title for its commercial release as a way of Writing Around Trademarks.
  • Split Enz never recorded a song called "Sometimes I Get Frightened". It's "I Got You" (the very first words uttered in the song).
  • Bruce Springsteen:
    • That song which has also been covered by The Hollies is not named "Sandy" but "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)". The "(Sandy)" part is sometimes omitted altogether, despite being the only bit of the title that actually appears in the lyrics.

      The Hollies compilation album Epic Anthology lists the title as simply "Sandy". However, the album on which their version originally appeared, Another Night, gets the title correct.
    • "America" is often mistakenly called "Coming to America"; the Eddie Murphy movie with that title adds to the confusion. That song, of course, shares its title with the old patriotic hymn "America" - which it quotes at great length - but, ironically, that one gets called "My Country 'Tis of Thee."
  • Squeeze have a song called "Black Coffee in Bed". Black is not added until near the end. This song might also be called "Stain on My Notebook".
  • Billy Squier's first hit is called "The Stroke," not "Stroke Me."
  • The Dave Stamey song "Blackjack" is about a mule who, per the refrain, "worked in the syndicate mine."
  • Lisa Stansfield's biggest hit is called, "All Around the World" (a phrase which never appears in the lyrics), not "Been Around the World" (which is the first line of the chorus). To add to the confusion, The Notorious B.I.G., Sean Combs and Mase had a hit song which prominently interpolates the melody and parts of the lyrics - and actually is called "Been Around the World".
  • Edwin Starr's anti-war anthem is simply titled "War", not "War, What's It Good For?". Compare with the Cannon Fodder example in the Video Games section below.
  • Steely Dan's song is called "Peg", not "Your Favorite Foreign Movie".
  • Stereophonics did "Dakota", not "Make Me Feel Like The One".
  • "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" by Ray Stevens is commonly assumed to be called "The Day the Squirrel Went Berserk", which is the first line of the chorus.
  • The The Steve Miller Band:
    • Inverted with "The Joker". "I'm a Joker" actually is in the refrain, but its name is often confused with "Space Cowboy", a completely different song that was being referenced in the first verse exactly one time, along with like, five others. It's not called "Midnight Toker," either. The song just has so many factors working against it, from a teenaged Homer Simpson (very poorly) singing it as he drives to school in the 1970s flashback episode "The Way We Was" and being cut off long before he can get to the "Joker" part, to an indie movie in the late 1990s called The Pompatus of Love, which is based on one of the other monikers in the song.
    • There is a song named "Fly Like an Eagle", not "Time Keeps on Slippin'" (both are said often).
  • Rod Stewart: "Young Hearts, be free tonight..." for whatever reason is named "Young Turks".note  Also, Rod has never had a song called "I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now" or any variation of that. The song featuring the chorus repeating "I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger" is called "Ooh La La".
  • Sting: Thanks in large part to its use in numerous YouTube Anime Music Videos related in some way to the color red, "Desert Rose" is often known as "I Dream of Red"...which aren't even the right lyrics. (It's "I dream of rain", if you were wondering).
  • Stone Sour's hit song "Tired" is not called "Too Young to Care".
  • Stone Temple Pilots is infamous for this trope.
    • Many of their songs like "Plush" (AKA "Where You Goin’ For Tomorrow"), "Interstate Love Song" (not "Leavin’ On a Southern Train") and "Big Empty" don't have anything remotely close to the title anywhere in the lyrics. And then you have songs like "Sour Girl" (sometimes mistakenly called "What Would You Do") and "Creep" (AKA "Half the Man I Used to Be"), which do have the title in the lyrics, but only once or twice in on of the verses, not in the refrain.
    • The band’s final big hit with Scott Weiland is not "Like It When We Talk About Love" or "Even When We Used To Take Drugs", but rather "Between the Lines". The actual title is only mentioned in the first verse (which is later repeated as the third).
  • George Strait's "Love Without End, Amen" is often mistakenly referred to as "A Father's Love".
  • The Style Council don't have a song called "No Matter What I Do" or "Don't Matter What I Do". The title is "Long Hot Summer", which only appears in the middle eight.
  • The Sugarhill Gang don't have a song called "Jump On It", the song is actually called "Apache". The confusion is understandble as the phrase "Jump on it" is repeated way more times than Apache.
  • Music/{{Sum 41}
    • "88" (a Non-Appearing Title) is not called "I Feel Like a Prisoner", "I Hope Someday You Have It All" or any other phrase that appears in the refrain.
    • It's "Fat Lip", not "Waste My Time" or "El Nino" or "Don't Count on Me" or "Should've Had an Abortion".
  • Sunny Day Real Estate's signature song is called "Seven", not "You'll Taste It" or "You'll Taste It In Time."
  • You know that Super Junior song that everyone thinks is called "Bonamana"? That's only the subtitle. The official title is "Beauty (BONAMANA)", with the "BONAMANA" written in capitals (and in English letters, while the "Beauty" part is written in Hangul, in Korean). Since most people outside of Korea can't read Hangul, they just refer to the song as the part they can read.
  • The title of Supertramp's Breakfast in America never appears in that specific form in the lyrics. Most people seem to think the title is "Take a Look at My Girlfriend".

    The very same wrong title is often mistakenly given to Gym Class Heroes' popular single "Cupid's Chokehold", where the Supertramp song's first few lines are sung as a chorus by Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump.
  • While The Supremes have sung the words "I was bitten by the love bug," the title is "Love is Like an Itching In My Heart."
  • Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran's duet isn't called any variation on "I Just Wanna Know You Better Now", which is repeated several times before the chorus, it's called "Everything Has Changed."
  • Taylor Swift also has a few other examples despite the fact that every single one of her commercially released songs features a Title Drop.
    • The song with the goat screams remix? That's not "Trouble", but "I Knew You Were Trouble" - also not "I Knew You Were Trouble When You Walked In".
    • She has no song called "Cory's Song", "Cory's Eyes" or "You're Beautiful", it's actually called "Stay Beautiful". It's also not "Beautiful Eyes", a different Swift song.
    • "Love Song" is by Sara Bareilles, Swift's biggest hit is "Love Story" (also not "Romeo & Juliet" or any variation thereof).
    • "New Romantics" is not called "The Best People In Life Are Free".
    • Played with in that she has several songs about staying. They are called "All You Had To Do Was Stay" and "Stay Stay Stay", neither are "Stay".
    • "Breathe" and "Clean" are both different but similar Taylor Swift songs, from "Fearless" and "1989" respectively.
    • "Mary's Song (Oh My, My, My)" is, when not forgotten, sometimes called "My My My My My" or "Stars that Shine".
    • "How You Get The Girl" isn't called "That's How It Works", "How You Lost The Girl", etc.
    • "I Know Places" isn't called anything to do with foxes, hunters, or running (They are the hunters we are the foxes/And we run/Ba-by, I know places we won't be found/And they'll be chasing their tails trying to track us down/Cause I, I know places we can hide).
    • "Blank Space" is not "Darling I'm a Nightmare Dressed Like a Daydream" or "Starbucks Lovers".
    • "Shake It Off" isn't "Haters Gonna Hate", despite the internet's best intentions of renaming it.
    • The lead single on "evermore" is called "willow", not "That's my man."
    • The song about "Dressing for Revenge" on "Midnights" is actually called "Vigilante Shit."
  • System of a Down has this problem with several of their songs, since a lot of them are named different then the prominent lyrics (and a lot of the verses are hard to understand).
    • At no time are the words "chop suey" ever mentioned in "Chop Suey", which may well explain why it's been called "When Angels Deserve to Die". Those words are the last line of the refrain, though; and it seems to be part of the central meaning to the song's lyrics. Also there's "Wake Up!", "I Don't Think You Trust," and "Self-Righteous Suicide" for that song. The working title was "Suicide", hence the engineer saying "We're rolling 'Suicide'" at the start of the recording. Still, it isn't "Self-Righteous Suicide".
    • Even though the words "toxicity" appears in the song "Toxicity", common mislabels for it include "Disorder" and "What, Do You Own The World?".
    • While "B.Y.O.B." fits with the party-themed allegories, the phrase doesn't appear at all on the song, so people tend to assume it might be called "Why do they always send the poor?" or "Blowing up the sunshine".
  • Talking Heads:
    • The song "Once in a Lifetime" is not called "Letting the Days Go By" or "Same as It Ever Was". The line "Once in a lifetime" is said once at the end of the chorus, the other two are repeated over and over.
    • "Life During Wartime" is not "This Ain't No Party, This Ain't No Disco, This Ain't No Fooling Around" or any variation of that. It isn't even "I Ain't Got Time for That Now" (the line that ends each chorus).
  • A bizarre inversion: Rob Cantor's song about Shia LaBeouf is often referred to as "Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf". This comes from a lyric sung exactly once in the song. The actual title is simply "Shia LaBeouf", which is the refrain.
  • That Temple Of The Dog song that goes "I'm going hungry" is actually called "Hunger Strike".
  • Tesla's biggest hit is called "Love Song", not "Love Is All Around You" or "Love Will Find a Way".
  • Jan Terri's "Losing You" is not called "Lose You Tonight".
  • Theory of a Deadman
    • Their biggest crossover hit is called "Not Meant to Be", not "One Step Forward and Two Steps Back ".
    • "Drown" is not called "Another Sunny Day"
    • "Savages", their collaboration with Alice Cooper, is not "Apocalypse is on Its Way" or "Shame on all of Us".
  • They Might Be Giants:
    • "The Guitar" is often mistaken as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" for its sampling of that song. They were required to use "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" as a subtitle though, as it is more or less the same song but with different lyrics.
    • They never did a song called "I'm Insane", it's "Absolutely Bill's Mood". The title refers to their first producer, Bill Krauss, and the title is meant to mock the above-mentioned Bob Dylan titling scheme.
  • Third Eye Blind
    • They never did a song called "I Want Something Else". It's really "Semi-Charmed Life" - which itself is confusing, because "semi-charmed life" isn't exactly what's in the lyrics, but rather "semi-charmed kind of life." (Another candidate for the title was "Doot-Doot-Doot, Doot-Doot-Doot-Doo", because those were the lyrics people most remembered.)
    • "Can You Put the Past Away?" is really called "Jumper". It's not called "I Will Understand," either.
    • Their final hit was "Never Let You Go", not "Turn Around".
  • Thirty Seconds to Mars:
    • That song is not called "This is a Fight to the Death" or "Rise Again" or "Say a Prayer". It's called "Conquistador".
    • You know "I'll Attack"? It's actually just called "Attack".
    • "Come Break Me Down" doesn’t exist, that’s "The Kill". And "Bury Me" is its subtitle, but not its actual name.
    • That song that repeats "It's a brave new world" at the end of each chorus? It's called "This Is War" (which appears in the verses).
  • For all the Canadians out there, "Ontario Sucks" is actually called "The Toronto Song." And it wasn't recorded by the Arrogant Worms either, it's actually by Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie. Which makes sense anyway, seeing how the Arrogant Worms are from Kingston, ON, not Alberta.
  • Three Dog Night:
    • There is no such song as "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog". It's called "Joy to the World". Yes, the same title as the Christmas carol. (The confusion isn't helped by the fact that the chorus has ended up in several cover versions of that Christmas carol...)
    • They never did a song called "How Does Your Light Shine". It's called "Shambala".
    • "Black and White" is usually referred to as something along the lines of "A Child Is Black, a Child Is White". The words "black" and "white" appear constantly throughout the song, but "black and white" never appears as an unbroken phrase.
  • 3 Doors Down's most famous song is not called "Superman," nor is it called "If I Go Crazy." It's actually called "Kryptonite".
  • The Timelords' 1988 UK number one "Doctorin' The Tardis" was titled as an incredibly lame pun on a then-recent hit single "Doctorin' The House", but is otherwise known simply as "Doctor Who". The creators even lampshaded this in their book The Manual, saying that they should have realised people would just call it "Doctor Who" and that the obscure Non-Appearing Title was needlessly confusing and probably cost them sales.
  • Tism have a tune called "(He'll never be an) Ol' Man River" as opposed to some variation on "The Drug", "I'm on the Drug" or "I'm on the drug that killed River Phoenix." It is debateable whether the actual title makes the song any more or less tasteless.
  • Toadies' "Possum Kingdom", which doesn't contain the title phrase anywhere in the song, tends to get called "So Help Me Jesus" for the last line of the chorus, or less often "Do You Wanna Die?" for the bridge. Other common titles include "Make Up Your Mind" or "Be My Angel".
  • Though it's tempting to think otherwise, Tommy Tutone's 1982 one-hit wonder is called "867-5309/Jenny", not simply "867-5309."
  • Mel Torme and Bob Wells' soothing, mellow Christmas song that everyone knows as "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" is actually titled, simply, "The Christmas Song."
  • The Pirate (subverted at the end) theme song "Unter falscher Flagge" (beginning of the 2nd verse) by Die Toten Hosen is not called "Schnapsinsel" (the refrain).
  • "Hold the Line" by Toto is often called "Love Isn't Always on Time".
  • Remember the "Lemming Show" (and watch them suicide) by Frank Tovey (Fad Gadget)? Sorry, but that song is named "Bridge St. Shuffle".
  • Toy-Box's song about Tarzan is called "Tarzan & Jane", not "Tarzan" or "The Jungle Song" or "Ride an Elephant".
  • Train:
    • There is no Train song called "I'm All out of Lies" or "Ways to Say You Died". It's "50 Ways to Say Goodbye", a Non-Appearing Title.
    • They did not record "Tell Me". It's called "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)".
    • Their first hit? "Meet Virginia", not "She Wants to Be the Queen" or "I Don't Really Wanna be the Queen"
  • The Trammps' most famous song is called "Disco Inferno," not "Burn Baby Burn" (which is the line right before "Disco Inferno")
  • Trick Pony's second single included the lyric "that's just what you/I need" in both verses, and at the start and end of the chorus. So of course it was titled "On a Night Like This".
  • Shania Twain invoked this trope with "Love Gets Me Every Time". The song was originally titled "Gol Darn Gone and Done It", and that line is more prominent in the song, but she changed it at the last minute because she thought the original title would be too hard to pronounce.
  • Twenty One Pilots' biggest hit is called "Stressed Out" not "Turn Back Time", "Good Old Days" or "Blurryface" (although Blurryface is the name of the album it's from).
  • The The Tubes' biggest hit was not called "Don't Fall in Love" nor "One in a Million Girls". The song's title is "She's a Beauty".
  • Bonnie Tyler:
    • The song that goes "turn around... {lyrics lyrics}, turn around... {lyrics lyrics}, turn around, bright eyes... {lyrics lyrics}, turn around..." and on and on like this is called "Total Eclipse of the Heart". (Not "I Need You More Than Ever" or "Forever's Gonna Start Tonight", either) Though this is at least guessable, being the punch line of the refrain.
    • Her other big hit is not called "I Need a Hero". It's called "Holding Out for a Hero".
  • Brooklyn based doom / gloom / goth / sludge metal band Type O Negative's faux-live album The Origin of the Feces plays with this trope by naming the songs as if they were from a bootleg. Most of the titles are the first line of the chorus or the most repeated word: "Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 x 10-8 cm-3 gm-1 sec-2" becomes "Gravity" and "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity" is retitled "I Know You're Fucking Someone Else."
  • U2:
    • The song "Pride (In the Name of Love)" (just "Pride" on some pressings of The Unforgettable Fire) is more referred to by the part in parentheses.
    • Their breakout hit in 1985 was a live performance of "Bad" at Live Aid. If you don't recognize the title, you probably think the song is called something like "Let it go" or "I'm wide awake" from the song's refrain.
  • While Ultravox avoid this trope on their two biggest hits ("Vienna" and "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes"), their third-biggest hit, "Hymn", has a Non-Appearing Title and can lead to it being called any number of lines from the chorus, mostly because it can and will get stuck in your brain:
    "Give us this day all that you've shown me,
    The power and the glory, 'til my kingdom come
    Give me all the story book told me
    The faith and the glory, 'til my kingdom come..."
  • The Used:
    • They don't have a song titled "I'll Be Just Fine Pretending I'm Not". Its actually titled "All That I've Got", which comes after the chorus.
    • Their biggest hit is not called "Crawls like a Worm from a Bird", but rather "The Bird and the Worm".
    • "The Taste of Ink" (whose title only appears once in the first verse) is often known as "Here I Am" or "Savor Every Moment of This".
  • Usher and wil.i.am's famous song is not "Oh My Gosh" but simply "OMG". Also, his newer track isn't called "Ooooh Baby Baby", which is repeated many times in the verses and choruses, just "Scream", which is said at the beginning of the chorus.
  • The famous theme by Vangelis that everyone associates with the movie Chariots of Fire isn't called "Chariots of Fire"; it's called "Titles". There is a song called "Chariots of Fire" on the soundtrack, but it's a much longer piece that was played over the end credits and mostly just shares certain elements with the main theme.
  • Van Halen:
    • They titled their song "Love Walks In" even though "Love Comes Walkin' In" is repeated throughout the chorus and the title never actually appears.
    • The song where the phrase "higher and higher" is repeated throughout the chorus is actually called "Dreams", although the line "That's what dreams are made of" is sung four times during the song.
    • One of their songs has a chorus that might make a first time listener guess the title is "Meet You Half The Way". That song is actually called "5150", from the album of the same name.
    Oh, when I draw the line and meet you half the way
    But you don't know what that means
  • In "Funk Phenomena" by Armand Van Helden, the Looped Lyrics say "the funk phenomenon" instead.
  • Wilfrido Vargas doesn't play any song called "El Negro", or "Qué Será lo que Quiere el Negro". The name of the song is "El Africano".
  • Suzanne Vega's most famous song is not "My Name Is Luka", it's just "Luka".
  • Velvet Revolver
    • Their most well known song is not "Here Comes the Water". It's named "Slither".
    • No, their 2007 hit is not called "Roll Over Right" or "Right Through Your Spotlight". It's "She Builds Quick Machines".
  • The "Weird Russian Singer" of YouTube fame is known as Vitas. His viral hit is called "The 7th Element", not "Chum Drum Bedrum", "Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah", or "Blblblblbl".
  • Rufus Wainwright's "Greek Song" is sometimes referred to as "You Turn Me On" after the phrase repeated seven times in the first verse.
  • Tom Waits' "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)" from Small Change is often erroneously called "Waltzing Matilda" because it uses that song as its chorus. Waits is fond of concept albums, and the title only makes sense in that context; it's just never explained in the song itself. Most of the songs on that album also have alternate or expanded titles in parentheses.
  • Alan Walker's hit is not called "Where Are You Now", but "Faded" (most likely to avoid confusion with the Jack U/Justin Bieber hit "Where Are U Now").
  • The most famous song from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds is "Forever Autumn", not "Cause You're Not Here" or "Now You're Not Here".
  • The Weeknd does not have a song called "Half Past Five" or "The Real Me". It's called "The Hills". He also never had a song called "Blinded By The Light". It's actually called "Blinding Lights".
  • Weezer's "Island in the Sun" is not titled "Hip Hip".
  • The best-remembered song from Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson's Knickerbocker Holiday is titled "September Song," not "May to December" or "It's a Long, Long Way", etc.
  • Kurt Weill's "Alabama Song", popularized by The Doors on their album The Doors, may get called "Whiskey Bar" if you just heard the song. (And, more ridiculously, that phrase comes from the first verse, not the refrain, which starts: "Oh, moon of Alabama...")
  • This is true of several of "Weird Al" Yankovic's parodies. In general, whenever the phrase he replaces the original song's namesake with doesn't make for a good title, it probably isn't.
    • His parody of "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor (a major theme of Rocky III) is called "Theme from Rocky XIII (The Rye or the Kaiser)", not simply "Rye or the Kaiser". On the album cover, the part in parentheses doesn't even appear.
    • "The Plumbing Song", combined parody of Milli Vanilli's hit singles "Baby Don't Forget My Number" and "Blame It on the Rain", is sometimes known as "Baby Don't Forget My Plumber" and/or "Blame It on the Drain".
    • His Flintstones-flavored Red Hot Chili Peppers parody is named "Bedrock Anthem", not "Yabba Dabba Doo Now" or any variation thereof; the mistake is probably due to the repetition of Fred Flinstone's catchphrase in place of the semi-Title-Only Chorus from "Give It Away".
    • His parody of Crash Test Dummies' "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" has the same mmm's in the chorus as the original, but is listed as "Headline News".
    • "Cavity Search" has been misnamed as "Numb Me, Drill Me, Floss Me, Bill Me", being a dentistry-themed parody of U2's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me".
    • Al's second Star Wars-themed parody is "The Saga Begins", not "My, My, This Here Anakin Guy".
    • Poodle Hat is noteworthy for having not even one parody where the title is a perfect substitute for the original's. His parody of "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne is not called "Constipated", "Related", or "Decapitated", with which Al replaces the word "complicated" in the first, second, and third verses, respectively; it's called "A Complicated Song". Rumor has it that the three verses are actually the beginnings of three different attempts at a parody of "Complicated" that were loosely tied together into a single song. His song about Spider-Man, sung to the tune of "Piano Man", is called "Ode to a Superhero" for legal reasons. "Couch Potato" was a parody of Eminem's "Lose Yourself" (the title line of which was "lose your mind", which would be misleading out of context). "Trash Day" parodied Nelly's "Hot in Here" ("it's getting hot in here" became "there's something rotten here", among other things), but the title phrase does at least appear in the first line. Finally, his parody of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" is simply called "eBay", not "What I Bought on eBay".
  • Kanye West doesn't have a song called "Diamonds Are Forever". It's called "Diamonds from Sierra Leone". Granted, the song did famously sample the theme of the same name from the film, and the original title of the song was "Diamonds Are Forever". He also never did anything called "Ball So Hard" or "That Shit Cray". It's "Niggas in Paris" you want.
  • Keith West's "Excerpt from a Teenage Opera" is often called "Grocer Jack". On the Teenage Opera CD (released many years later), it's called "Grocer Jack: Excerpt from a Teenage Opera".
  • It's called "When You Say Nothing at All", not "The Smile on Your Face" or "You Say it Best". And Keith Whitley, not Alison Krauss or Ronan Keating, sang it first.
  • White Zombie does not have a song called "Devilman". It's called "Super-Charger Heaven".
  • White Lion's biggest hit is called "When the Children Cry", not "Little Child".
  • Whitesnake's biggest hit is "Here I Go Again", not "Here I Go Again On My Own". Also, their Led Zeppelin soundalike song is not called "In The Still Of The Night", but just "Still Of The Night".
  • The Who:
    • "Baba O'Riley" is more commonly known as "Teenage Wasteland". Some even call it "Out Here In The Field" after the first line. iTunes actually calls it "Teenage Wasteland" as well, which is misleading, to say the least. "Baba O'Riley" does recycle some lyrics from an earlier song legitimately called "Teenage Wasteland", but that one only exists as a Pete Townshend demo and was never recorded by The Who. Freaks and Geeks references this confusion. When the main character calls it "Teenage Wasteland", her friend gets annoyed and corrects her. Never Mind the Buzzcocks had a subtle nod to this as well during an Intros Round for one episode. Rufus Hound recognized it almost immediately when fellow panelists Phill Jupitus and James Blunt sang the opening riff, and even sang along at one point:
      Rufus: "Don't cry / Don't raise your eye / It's only teenage wasteland …
      Phill: Except the song is called …
      Rufus: "Baba O'Riley", by The Who.
    • Joe Pera Talks With You also comments on this. After hearing the song for the first time, Joe calls the radio station to find out the name of the song, and the DJ mentions that the song is called "Baba O'Riley", even though they say "Teenage Wasteland" a million times and "Baba O'Riley" zero times.
    • It's only one letter out, but that other synth-heavy rock anthem from Who's Next is "Won't Get Fooled Again", not "Don't Get Fooled Again", even though the latter is what they actually sing. And it's not called "Meet the New Boss", either.
  • Don Williams does "Believe In Love" but the song is actually called "I Believe In You"
  • Wings never had a single called "I Love You". It's "Silly Love Songs". The title lyric is sung in the opening and closing verses.
  • The Wombats don't have a song called "Dancing with the Beasts" or "Bar in Tokyo" or anything like that. Try "Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)".
  • Stevie Wonder's classic song isn't called "You Can Feel It All Over" (which is basically the entire chorus); it's "Sir Duke" (which appears exactly once) from Songs in the Key of Life.
  • "Bad Connection" by Yazoo is not "Can You Hear Me". The real title is a Non-Appearing Title. Also, you won't find a song called "Move Out". It's "Situation".
  • A radio station once made a pre-song sweeper of a listener calling in to ask "Who sings that new song, American Girl?" to which the DJ responded "Well nobody, but Trisha Yearwood sings X's and O's." "X's and O's" is the second half of the second line of the chorus, while "She's an American Girl" is the last two repeated lines of every chorus... But, "X's and O's" gets repeated about 4 times at the very end of the song. And just to confuse things further, the song's official title is "XXX's and OOO's (An American Girl)". Yes, three X's and three O's.
  • The Yeah Yeah Yeahs 's 2003 song with Karen O crying while performing? It's called "Maps", not "They Don't Love You Like I Love You".
  • The name of Ylvis's viral hit is not "What Does the Fox Say?". At first, it was just called "The Fox," but confusion was so common that "What Does the Fox Say?" was eventually added as a subtitle.
  • Neil Young has an anthemic song about dying early, from his Rust Never Sleeps album. Most people would guess that the song is called "Look Out Mama" or something similar (the song has no particular chorus, and begins thusly: "Look out, mama, there's a white boat comin' up the river...") when, in actuality, it's called "Powderfinger". This phrase doesn't appear in the lyrics — however, the last verse, sung after the character's rifle has backfired and killed him, begins: "Shelter me from the powder and the finger". This is in reference to the gunpowder and the finger that pulled the trigger. Probably.
  • Frank Zappa:
    • Zappa's "Absolutely Free" is not a song from Absolutely Free, but his next album, We're Only in It for the Money.
    • "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" from Over-Nite Sensation is usually played on the radio in an edit, compiled from both that song and the one that immediately follows afterwards: "Nanook Rubs It". Nevertheless everybody calls it "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow".
  • Zeromancer's "Dr. Online" is known as "1-800-Suicide", after the lyic that starts the chorus, "Doctor Online" appears in the next line, but it's not as prominent. The fact that there's a famous Super Smash Bros. fanvid called "1-800-Kirbycide" doesn't help. There also is a completely different song called "1-800-Suicide" by Gravediggaz ("Suicide, it's a suicide").
  • "Kernkraft 400" by Zombie Nation. Most people think "Zombie Nation" is the name of the song because it's mentioned in the song and the title is not. Being listed as "Zombie Nation" on several compilations doesn't help matters. Neither is the true title looking foreign. Others just know it as "Woah-oah-oah-oah" or just by the main melody.
  • Manic Street Preachers have a song actually called "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next". Due to the lengthy title, most refer to it as "Tolerate" or "Your Children Will Be Next" or any other phrase from the title. And the lyrics say "If you tolerate this then your children will be next", causing further confusion.

Other

    Other Music 
  • The song "Twist and Shout" is an interesting combination of both this trope and Covered Up. It was originally titled "Shake It Up, Baby" (or "Shake It Up, Babe") and recorded by a rather unknown band called Top Notes (or The Topnotes or Topnotes or The Top Notes, they weren't too sure on how they wanted their name to be spelled). After their version of the song failed to be a hit, the original writer of the song gave the lyrics to The Isley Brothers, who recorded the first popular version of the song as "Twist and Shout". Later on, The Beatles recorded a cover of the song on their debut album Please Please Me with John Lennon on vocals, which many believe is their original.
  • Older Than Radio: It's not "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" or "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah" or "that song mentioning the Grapes of Wrath". The actual title of the song is "Battle Hymn of the Republic" (and its tune is borrowed from the Civil War-era folk song "John Brown's Body"). It's not helped that many hymnals list it with different titles.
  • The American patriotic song with the first line is "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" is actually titled "America" and the theme is adapted from the British national anthem "God Save the King/Queen". Similarly, it's "Pomp and Circumstance March No.1" note  a piece by Edward Elgar, not "The Graduation Song" (in the US, where the music is used for college and university graduations). In the UK, the piece was adapted With Lyrics as "Land of Hope and Glory" - but not "The Land of Hope and Glory". There isn't even a "The" in the lyric - nor is there space for one, as the famous tune starts right on the word "Land".
  • The Philippine national anthem is NOT titled "Bayang Magiliw" ("Beloved Country"). It's called "Lupang Hinirang" ("Chosen Land").
  • Three's a Catholic hymn that says "We shall be changed" numerous times throughout, including twice in the chorus alone. The song is actually called "On the Wings of Change", which is never actually said anywhere in the lyrics themselves.
  • The Christian hymn "Colours of Day" is frequently referred to as "Light Up the Fire".
  • Here's a strange one: the classic tune so often referred to as "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" by Mozart actually goes by the official and less memorable name of "Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K. 525" (or just "Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major".) The title also properly translates to "A Little Serenade", not "A Little Night Music".
  • Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" is properly called "Symphony No. 9 in D minor" (and "Ode to Joy" is only the final movement of said piece)
  • "Für Elise"'s official title is "Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor for solo piano". It's no wonder people use the shorter titles to refer to these pieces...
  • The one exception is Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor", which despite being a fairly well-known tune (being a Standard Snippet) doesn't go by any other name than that.
  • Stephen Foster didn't write a song called "(Way Down Upon the) Swanee River". He did, however, write one called "Old Folks at Home". Part of the problem is that George Gershwin came up with a tune inspired by its lyrics called "Swanee." "Alexander's Ragtime Band" also has "Swanee" mentioned as their Shout-Out to Foster's tune.
  • The calypso tune popularly known as "Day-O" is more properly called "The Banana Boat Song". Also, one of its earliest arrangements was done by a calypso group fronted by future Academy Award-winning actor Alan Arkin. "6 Foot 7 Foot" also became a common mistake thanks to Lil Wayne.
  • The song "Beer Barrel Polka" (by Jaromír Vejvoda) is usually called "Roll out the Barrel."
  • The popular children's song about fruit and vegetables isn't called "Cauliflowers Fluffy". It's called "Paintbox" and the title doesn't appear anywhere in the song.
  • Another children's song example: It's "Autumn Days" not "I Mustn't Forget".
  • "Das Deutschlandlied", the (former) German national anthem, often mistakenly referred to by its opening line, "Deutschland Über Alles". The official anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is only the third stanza of the former anthem, is still called "Das Deutschlandlied" or "Das Lied der Deutschen" and not "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit".
  • The University of Nebraska's fight song is frequently called "There is No Place Like Nebraska", but the actual title is "Dear Old Nebraska U".
  • The "Notre Dame Victory March" (famously used in Airplane!) is often mistakenly called either "Wake Up the Echoes" or "Cheer, Cheer For Old Notre Dame."
  • The infamously memetic song that lodged "All your base are belong to us" into the minds of so many is titled "Invasion of the Gabber Robots". The Laziest Men on Mars used to distribute a version of the song that was tagged "Invasion of the Gabber Robots (all your bass are belong to us)" back when MP3.com actually sold MP3s.
  • "Zadok the Priest", sung at British coronations, was often called "God Save The King/Queen" after its chorus — until the song now known by that name became popular in the 1740s.
  • That ragtime/jazz duet that Bing Crosby did with his son Gary was called "Play a Simple Melody", not "Play Me Some Rag" or "I Wanna Listen to Rag."
  • To take another famous neo-ragtime song, Teresa Brewer's biggest hit was "Music! Music! Music!" - even though it's more popularly known as "Put Another Nickel In, In the Nickelodeon."
  • The Christmas carol with the refrain "O tidings of comfort and joy" is called "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". People also very commonly get the intonation of the title incorrect - it's not "God rest ye, merry gentlemen" as many believe, but "God rest ye merry, gentlemen". God is commanding gentlemen to be merry, He isn't commanding gentleman who are already merry to stop.
  • Speaking of Christian music, a lot of hymns mistakenly get misnamed based on their refrain as opposed to their first line (which is the far more common nomenclature); for example, "Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy" is frequently misnamed "I Will Arise".
  • The World War II era Protest Song (most famously covered by The Andrew Sisters in 1945) with the refrain "Working For The Yankee Dollar" is actually called "Rum And Coca-Cola".
  • The song often known by its opening line "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" actually has the rather generic title "The Christmas Song".
  • The traditional folk song usually known by its much repeated phrase “Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care,” is actually titled “Blue Tail Fly.”
  • It's "Daisy Bell" not "A Bicycle Built For Two" or "Daisy, Daisy".
  • The traditional folk song from East Nusa Tenggara is often titled "Maumere" when in actuality it's the name of the city. The actual song's title is called "Gemu Fa Mi Re".
  • That educational song about polygons? It's actually called "The Polygon Song", not "Just a Boring Square".
  • The classic Nursery rhyme about the cake seller is simply called "The Muffin Man", not "Do You Know The Muffin Man" or "Have You Seen The Muffin Man".
  • The christmas carol about the Kings traveling to Bethlehelm is called "We Three Kings", not "Star of Wonder".
  • French nursery Rhyme "Frère Jacques" is known in English as "Brother John", not "Are You Sleeping?".

    Advertising 
  • The song "Hitachi No Ki", used in a commercial for Hitachi, is often refered to by the refrain "Kono Ki Nan No Ki", because the official title is a Non-Appearing Title.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Fist of the North Star:
    • The first opening theme by Crystal King is often referred to as "You wa Shock," as that line comes up quite a bit in the lyrics. It's actually titled "Ai o Torimodose," a line which appears far fewer times (twice in the album version, only once in the TV edit).
    • DGM's cover of "Ai o Torimodose!" is actually titled in the album as "You Wa Shock! (Ai o Torimodose)". Many bands that cover this song tend to title it like that or as "Ai o Torimodose (You Wa Shock!)".
  • Naruto:
    • It's frequently mistaken to be titled "Fighting Dreamers" after a bit of Gratuitous English in the refrain, but it's actually called "GO!!!" (punctuation included), which is said once in the entire song (after the part with "Don't forget your first impulse ever" and "Let's keep your adventurous ever"). It does sound like it's said in the chorus, but that lyric is actually "Burn!"
    • The first opening of Naruto Shippūden is called "Hero's Come Back!!" by nobodyknows+, though sometimes you will also find it under the title "Speed Hunter".
    • The fifth Shippuden opening, "Hotaru no Hikari" (Light of the Fireflies), is often incorrectly called "Sha la la".
  • The memetic "Akane's Baka Song" from Ranma ½ soundtrack, so called because of the repetitive "baka baka baka" chorus, is actually titled Yasashii, Ii Ko ni Narenai ("I Cannot Become a Gentle, Good Girl").
  • One of the songs from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is often referred to as "Row Row Fight the Powah" (which is also a mishearing, the actual lyric is "Raw! Raw! Fight the power!) or just "Fight the Powah", but is actually called ラップは漢の魂だ! 無理を通して道理を蹴っ飛ばす! 俺たち大グレン団のテーマを耳の穴かっぽじってよ~く聴きやがれ!!": "Rap wa Kan no Tamashii da! Muri o Tōshite Dōri o Kettobasu! Ore-tachi Dai-Gurren-dan no Tēma o Mimi no Ana Kappojite Yo~ku Kikiyagare!!", or "Rap is a Man's Soul! We Kick Reason to the Curb to Make the Impossible Possible! Open up Your Ears and Listen to Our Team Dai-Gurren Theme!!" in English.
  • A certain The Prince of Tennis ending song is sometimes referred to as "Glory Days," due to this being the last two words of the chorus as well as one of the only English phrases in the song. The title is actually "White Line" (with this phrase only appearing if you translate the song).
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • The first theme song for the English dub is simply called "Pokémon Theme Song", not "I Wanna Be The Very Best", nor it is "Gotta Catch 'Em All!".
    • Team Rocket's theme song is called "Double Trouble" not "Team Rocket's Rockin'" or "Team Rocket's Rocket".
  • The ending theme of Sound of the Sky can easily be mistaken to be titled as "Aijou Yuujou" due to the song starting with those words and are repeated a couple of times throughout the song, which becomes all the more memorable due to the cheery nature of the song becoming increasingly dissonant with the mood of the series as it gradually reveals the full extent of its Crapsaccharine World setting. Its actual title is a Non-Appearing Title, "Girls, Be Ambitious."
  • Russian Songstress Origa never recorded a song for Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex called "We Rise Above". She did however record a song titled "Rise".note 
  • The Japanese opening to Sonic X is called "Sonic Drive", not "S-O-N-I-C" or "Inside Outside".
  • Ryuko's Leitmotif in Kill la Kill is often called "Don't Lose Your Way", when it's actually "Before my body is dry".
  • The song "Ping Pong Circulate" is actually "犬Kあ3L" (read as "Inu ka Saru", meaning "Dog or Monkey"). In fact, the assumption goes beyond the title; it's generally believed this is Aikuro's theme since it plays whenever he's around, when the "Inu" in the title indicates it to be Inumuta's theme (or at least the first half, with the second half being Sanageyama's themenote ).
  • "aLIEz" from Aldnoah.Zero is often referred to as "I Say Cry". This is doubly wrong because that part actually says "Ai same CRIER" (Love same crier).
  • Happens to both Sailor Moon openings (Actually three but the second is a cover of the first). The first opening is called "Moonlight Densetsu", but often appears as "Miracle Romance", and The Stars season opening is called "Sailor Stars Song" not "Makenai". Ditto for the Mexican dub song, as many fan sites lists it as "El Milagro del Amor" while in official releases the song is either called "Leyenda de luz de luna" (Direct translation) or simply "Tema principal de Sailor Moon" (Sailor Moon main theme)
  • The original English opening theme for Dragon Ball Z was not officially called "Rock the Dragon" at the time it was used, with the official soundtrack simply calling it "Main Title"; however, Funimation would retroactivley use this fan name when they released the "Rock the Dragon" DVD set in 2013, which came with a lyric sheet for the theme. And if YouTube is anything to go by, plenty of fans seem to believe the insert song played several times during Dragon Ball Super's Tournament of Power is titled "Ka-Ka-Kachi Daze"; it's actually called "Ultimate Battle". Many anime cover singers who took on the song early on usually either used the mistaken title or use both the actual and mistaken titles.
  • The theme song from Kinnikuman Nisei is officially called "Hustle Muscle," not "Do the Muscle."
  • In-Universe, in Gundam Build Divers, Ruck Arge, the in-series real person behind Shahryar, mentions wanting to sing "Genki no G" for karaoke. Problem is, there is no "Genki no G" — the actual song is "G no Senko", the ending theme to Gundam: Reconguista in G
  • Tenchi Universe’s theme song is usually misidentified as “Love Will Leave You Crying”. Believe it or not, the song is actually identified as “Tenchi Muyo”.
  • The track in the Jormungand anime commonly known as "Her name is Koko she is loco I said 'oh no'", even in at least one upload of the song on YouTube, is actually called "Time To Attack".
  • 4Kids' One Piece theme is commonly referred to as the "One Piece Rap", while the credits and digital album use the more generic "One Piece Theme".
  • Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: the soundtrack preview, "Theme for Scanty and Kneesocks" was called "I Want You" by the fandom, given that was the song's original name before it was remixed for the show.

    Films — Animated 
  • A song from Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman is called "The Monster's Out in You", not "Little Brother, Mr. Hyde".
  • Beauty and the Beast
    • The opening song is called "Belle", not "Bonjour", "Provincial Life", or "Little Town.”
    • The Title Theme Tune is by far the most misnamed song from the movie, with "Tale as Old as Time” being the more common title.
    • The Exactly What It Says on the Tin names of “Belle (Reprise)” and “The Mob Song” are also known as “Madame Gaston” and “Kill the Beast,” with the latter being the more common of the two.
  • The Brave Little Toaster: The song sung by the modern appliances to the protagonists is called "The Cutting Edge", not "More" or "More More More".
  • Lady and the Tramp: The song the cats sing is "The Siamese Cat Song", not "We are Siamese".
  • The Finnish version of "One of Us" from The Lion King II: Simba's Pride is not called "Tänne hän kuulu ei" note , as the refrain would suggest, but "Maanpako" note  as revealed in the credits. The English version also gets frequently mislabeled as "Not One Of Us" (which does, to be fair, more accurately represent the song's context), even on its Disney wiki page, despite the movie soundtrack listing it as "One of Us."
  • The Training Montage song from Mulan is called "I'll Make a Man Out of You", not "Be a Man". When Disney Channel aired the song as a music video for filler, they misidentified it as "Dark Side of the Moon". The Brazilian version gets hit even worse in that regard, given there's only one Title Drop compared to the three in the English version (the name is the rendition of the first, "Não Vou Desistir de Nenhum" note ).
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas: "Jack's Lament" is sometimes referred to as "The Pumpkin King" or simply "Jack's Song", the latter making no sense as most of the songs are sung by Jack!
  • The trio in The Prince of Egypt between Moses, Rameses, and God is not called "Thus Saith the Lord" or "Let My People Go"; it's "The Plagues".
  • Steven Universe: The Movie is a full musical and a few of its songs are oddly titled.
    • The recap song, which starts every verse with “once upon a time” and ends every verse with “here we are in the future” is in fact called "Happily Ever After", which only appears in the first and last verses. Making it extra confusing, a shorter version of the song is used as a theme for Steven Universe: Future, which replaces the eponymous line with the new title.
    • Pearl’s explanatory song upon being rebooted is "system/BOOT.PearlFinal(3).info", which obviously appears nowhere in the lyrics.
    • Steven’s reassuring song to the villain, after her backstory is revealed, isn’t called "You’ll Love Again", as one might expect, but rather "Found".
    • The ending is just called "Finale".

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey: "Daisy Bell" is the song HAL sang (or rather, covered), not "Daisy, Daisy" or "A Bicycle Built for Two". It was the first computer synthesized tune, in 1961.
  • Annie (1982): The song where the girls sing, "Betcha they're X, betcha they're Y", is actually titled "Maybe", not "Betcha".
  • The theme music from the movie Arthur (1981) is called "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)". However, it is best known by the first line of the chorus, "When you get caught between the moon and New York City", and is therefore often referred to as "The Moon and New York City".
  • Prince's 1989 Batman album, which was also heard at length in the original Tim Burton movie:
    • The song that plays on the boombox during the museum sequence is called "Partyman", not "All Hail the New King in Town." Understandable, since the name "Partyman" is so mushily pronounced in the song that it's easy to interpret it as something else, and some variation on "Hail the new king in town" is heard in the song no less than three times (four times, if you count the music video Prince did for MTV).
    • The song in the parade scene is called "Trust." It's not "I Put This Question 2 You", or "W-X-Y-Z" (the song's opening lyrics).
  • You know that song that was used in Ghost Rider (2007)? The one about "ghost riders in the sky"? The full title is "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend". Note that the "ghost" is in parentheses. It should also be mentioned that the song is very old, and Ghost Rider was hardly the first instance of it being used in a movie.
  • The Italian Job (1969) has a song performed by the cast that plays over the end of the final chase. But while you might think it's titled "Self-Preservation Society" (as some do), it's actually titled "Getta Bloomin' Move On".
  • Navras (a.k.a. the fight song for Neo vs. Smith in The Matrix Revolutions) has three lines, and "navras" isn't in any of them. Though Navras was also the name of the Hindu mantra the lyrics came from.
  • The Nightwish song that was used in the movie Alone in the Dark (2005) is titled "Wish I Had an Angel". Not, as many think, "I Wish I Had an Angel".
  • Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has a song named "June Bride." Anybody who hears the song without knowing the title might easily assume the title to be something like "They Say When You Marry in June."
  • Singin' in the Rain: It's "All I Do is Dream of You", not "All I Do the Whole Day Through is Dream of You" or "The Cat's Meow".
  • Inversion: The theme of The Spy Who Loved Me is titled "Nobody Does It Better", although the movie title is in the lyrics.
  • The Wizard of Oz:
    • "We're Off to See the Wizard" is the name of the song. "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" is just part of the verse, though it's the only part of the verse used in the movie. (The rest goes: "Follow the rainbow over the stream / Follow the fellow who follows a dream.") Oddly, the first time the song appears (as Dorothy is leaving Munchkinland and the Munchkins are singing the song), it is titled "Follow the Yellow Brick/You're Off to See the Wizard".
    • It's simply "Over the Rainbow", not "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." (Everyone gets this one wrong.)
  • How many times have you heard Clint Mansell's "Lux Aeterna", which has no lyrics, simply referred to as "Requiem for a Dream"? (Requiem for a Dream being the name of the movie in which it appeared.) Some people don't even know the song by that title and just recognize it as that stock "epic" song.
  • The Muppet Christmas Carol, the song "When Love Is Gone" is often misremebered as being called "The Love Is Gone"

    Literature 
  • In Väinö Linna's The Unknown Soldier, Sgt. Rokka asks Pvt. Vanhala to play the Russian song called "Yokkantii". It is actually "Kalinka". It begins "Oh-kaa-lee-nkah", with heavily palatalized "l", almost sounding like "t".

    Live-Action TV 
  • The opening theme to The Big Bang Theory made famous by the Barenaked Ladies isn't titled "It All Started with a Big Bang" or just "Big Bang" or any variation on that line, it's called "History of Everything". (Or, as the Barenaked Ladies label Raisin' Records says it is, "Big Bang Theory Theme.")
  • The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme is one of the most famous TV themes of all time, yet few people know its actual title: "Yo! Home to Bel-Air!" On the Greatest Hits album, however, it was simply listed as "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air".
  • The theme to Kamen Rider BLACK RX is just called "Kamen Rider Black RX", not "Wake Up the Hero".
  • A rare tokusatsu theme example: The opening theme to Kyojuu Tokusou Juspion is not "COME ON BOY", it's "Ore ga Seigi da, Juspion!"
  • Liv and Maddie: In "New Year's Eve-a-Rooney", the song Liv performs at the end is addressed as "You and Me, and the Beat", as mentioned in the chorus; however, the soundtrack gives it the official title "You, Me, and the Beat".
  • The opening to Malcolm in the Middle is simply titled "Boss of Me", not "You're Not the Boss of Me Now".
  • In an episode of Married... with Children, Al is trying to figure out the title of a song. All he knows is "huh huh him". Later he hears the song on the radio, and the chorus is "Go With Him". Then the DJ comes on and says "I know you think that song is called "Go With Him", but it's not!" and then neglects to mention what the title actually is. (It's "Anna" by Arthur Alexander.)

    Every line in the song begins with the word 'Anna', while 'Go With Him' is only the refrain. The song itself was later covered by The Beatles, under the title "Anna (Go to Him)". It causes quite a bit of confusion among listeners (at least those who know the title).
  • The song Ronnie Dobbs (David Cross) sings in a Mr. Show episode (also sung by Mandy Patinkin in The Movie Run Ronnie Run) is actually called "How High The Mountain", not "Y'all are Brutalizing Me."
  • In The Price Is Right, one of the pricing games, "Punch-a-Bunch", is frequently called "Punchboard". It is a punchboard; the contestant can earn up to four punches to win lots of money ($10,000+ during the Bob Barker era, $25,000+ during the Drew Carey era, and even more in special circumstances like prime-time or anniversary episodes). But the original version has both the prominent "Punch-a-Bunch" title, and the simpler "Punchboard" on the board.note  The revision, introduced in 1996, removed "Punchboard" from the game display. But people still sometimes refer to the game as "Punchboard".
  • Saturday Night Live did a sketch involving a rewritten version of Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe." A summary of the sketch on a website called the original song "Choctaw Ridge."
  • The Signature Song of musical comedienne Victoria Wood is called "The Ballad of Barry and Freda". Even lyrics sites call it "Let's Do It".
  • The theme song to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is called "Won't you be my Neighbor", not "It's a Beautiful day in the Neighborhood".
  • The theme song to Barney & Friends is called the "Barney Theme Song", not "Barney is a dinosaur". And the Iconic song sung at the end of the show is simply called "I Love You", not "I Love You, You love Me".

    Poetry 
  • Francis Scott Key titled his poem "Defense of Fort McHenry". The first person to publish it along with sheet music called it "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the name stuck. note 
  • In a similar vein, while the hymn/anthem may be called 'Jerusalem', William Blake's original poem was definitely entitled 'And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time.' Indeed, Sir Hubert Parry (the first man to set the poem to music) always referred to it by the original title.
  • The poem opening "How doth the little busy Bee ..." is actually titled "Against Idleness and Mischief".
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's most well-known poem is known as Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh (Above all peaks there is quiet), after its first line, or Wandrers Nachtlied (The Wanderer's Night-Song). However, at its first publication Goethe merely entitled it Ein Gleiches (A Similar One), with reference to an earlier poem entitled Wandrers Nachtlied) which was printed above it on the same page.
  • Prussia's inofficial national anthem, Üb' immer Treu und Redlichkeit (Always practice loyalty and honesty), which is sung to the tune of Papageno's aria Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen from Mozart's Magic Flute, is actually entitled: Der alte Landmann an seinen Sohn (The old countryman (peasant) to his son). The poem was writen by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty.
  • The opening line is "'Twas the night before Christmas", but the poem was titled "A Visit From St. Nicholas".
  • The poem that begins "You are old, Father William" (the original version, not the Lewis Carroll parody) is actually titled "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them".
  • The name of one of Juan de Dios Peza's most famous poems is "Reír Llorando"note , although is commonly referred to as "Garrick".
  • When it was originally published by Sarah Josepha Hale, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was titled "Mary's Lamb".
  • Philip Larkin's poem usually known by its opening words "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" is properly titled "This Be The Verse".

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Sheamus's pre-2015 theme is called "Written in My Face", not "Too Many Lies" or "These Words Are True" or "Now It's Time to Bleed" or "You Wear Your Cowardice Well." (Or "Too Many Limes", or "It's A Shameful Thing, Lobster Head".) The title is uttered at the song's intro ("Read the words that are written in my face) and the second verse (It's written in my face).
  • Antonio Cesaro's pre-Real Americans theme, "Miracle", has lyrics that are just about indecipherable, not helped by constantly switching between French and German. The word 'miracle' does actually feature prominently in the chorus, albeit with French pronunciation. That aside, one of the lines sounds vaguely like "What's wrong with this chair?"
  • Booker T's entrance theme was not called "Can You Dig It?"; it was called "Rap Sheet." Listeners were often misled because Booker could be heard bellowing "Can you dig it...sucka?!" just before the music started up. And strangely enough, Booker T did record a rap titled "Can You Dig It?" for the WWE Originals album.
  • This most commonly happens with the Raw or SmackDown themes (the only theme tunes in WWE to be regularly played in their entirety, or close to their entirety).
    • "Across the Nation" (the Raw theme during the years when WWE was slowly transitioning from the Attitude Era to the current TV-PG era, and appropriate for a show that appears in a different part of North America every week) has the actual words "across the nation" in its lyrics, but they are slipped in so casually that it's easy to miss them. A newcomer was more likely to think the song was titled "Let's Get It On" or "Move to the Music" or even "Play That Fuckin' Music", since those are the lines that are uttered most often by the performers.
    • "To Be Loved", the Papa Roach number that replaced "Across the Nation" in 2006. Although "I just wanna be, wanna be loved" is featured prominently in the chorus, the tempo of the overall song is so absurdly fast that it's easy to miss most of the lyrics; about the only thing that the first-time listener could be expected to make out would be the echoing "Whoa-oa-oa-oa" sound effect at the beginning of the chorus, so you'd be forgiven for referring to "To Be Loved" as "that 'Whoa-oa-oa-oa' song."
    • "Rise Up", the SmackDown theme for many years, did have the words "rise up" spoken just before the chorus, but in a cartoonishly evil voice that sounded more like "RAAAUUGH!" The chorus itself prominently features the phrase "Break it up, break it down" - and so that was how first-timers tended to refer to it. Of course, they were probably thinking of the D-Generation X theme, which is called "Break It Down."
    • The SmackDown theme during the show's 10th anniversary was titled "Let It Roll" - not "You're Goin' Down", which is the name of the Sick Puppies song used as the 2009 Extreme Rules theme.
    • The 2014-2015 SmackDown theme was called "Born to Run" - which is obviously going to confuse a whole lot of viewers over the age of 30, since that is more famously the name of a Bruce Springsteen song (and no, the WWE "Born to Run" isn't a cover). You'd never know it if you're just a casual WWE fan, though, since the chorus is better known for the lines "The sky turns black, it don't matter" and "Now the sun is comin' up" - and the final word of "We were [not "I was"] born to run" itself is drawn out and deliberately mispronounced as "reh-un", probably to avoid sounding too much like Springsteen.
    • The 2012-2016 Raw theme was just called "Tonight", not "Tonight Is the Night" (despite what you may think if you stumble upon a stream of Video Game Championship Wrestling, where the chatroom will "sing" along with some of the lyrics, especially the full "Tonight is the night" line that opens the song). An actual song called "Tonight is the Night" by Outasight had just been a hit, and in fact was used for the Raw 1000 episode one week before "Tonight" was first used.
    • The 2016-2018 RAW theme by Shinedown was called "Enemies" (the very last word of the chorus), not "You Want More" "20 to 1" or "Down On Your Knees"
  • Rich Swann's theme song in the Cruiserweight division is called "Around the World", not "Can You Handle This?"
  • "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's Disturbed theme from his 2001 Heel run is not called "I'm Breaking the Limit Inside You", but "Glass Shatters". On the other hand, "Glass Shatters" is not the name of the instrumental song he used for most of his career (both songs open with a glass shattering sound effect). That song is called "I Won't Do What You Tell Me."
  • AJ Styles' theme song since debuting WWE is titled "Phenomenal", not "They Don't Want None".
  • Dusty Rhodes' theme song is called the "Common Man Boogie", not "American Dream".
  • Eddie Guerrero's theme song during his feud with Rey Mysterio isn't titled "Gangsta Lean", it's "I'm Your Papi", the words of which are never uttered at any point during the song.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Donkey Hodie:
    • The theme song is often referred to by fans under the title "Here Comes Donkey Hodie". It is officially titled "Donkey Hodie (Theme Song)".
    • The song many people call "Blow Your Troubles Away" is officially titled "Take A Deep Breath".
    • The song from the episode "Hoof Dancing Is Hard" is claimed by many to be titled "Practice", because the chorus uses that word a lot. According to the credits, its' actual name is "Grampy's Secret Recipe".
    • The recurring song in "Panda Hodie" is not called "Oh, I Am Purple Panda", but rather "I'm Purple Panda".
  • "Gorgs in Glory" from the Fraggle Rock episode "Boober Gorg" does not have the title in the lyrics at all, but it sometimes may be referred to as "The Most Magnificent Thing in the World".
  • Gonzo sings a song about Camilla the Chicken in the Leslie Uggams episode of The Muppet Show. It's listed on lyrics sites as "Camilla", but is officially titled "Gonzo's Song".
  • Sesame Street:
    • Inversion — the song the cow sings is called "Achoo", not "The Sneezing Song", which is the name of a separate song about sneezing.
    • The song about baby animals is called "What are Kids Called?", not "Cats Have Kittens".
    • The song about the pros and cons of rain is called "Rainy Day Song", not "It's a Rainy Day", "Rainy Day", or "The Rain Song".
    • The song Humphrey sings to Natasha is called "Natasha's Lullaby", not "Goodnight, Natasha".

    Theater 
  • Because opera songs rarely have official titles, the established convention is for an aria's first line to serve as an unofficial title. This is useful for the singers/orchestra so that everyone knows that they are all (literally) on the same page. However, the first line generally isn't the most memorable, making it confusing from the audience's perspective.
    • From Pagliacci: the crying clown aria is called "Vesti la giubba (Put on the Costume)", not the soaring, climactic lyrics "Ridi, Pagliaccio (Laugh, Clown!)".
    • Tosca:
      • The original Scarpia Ultimatum is actually called "Tre sbirri, una carozza (Three cops, one carriage)". It's usually either referred to as "Va, Tosca" or "the one with the Te Deum".
      • Averted with "Vissi d'arte (I lived for art)", which actually is the part everyone remembers.
  • The works of Gilbert and Sullivan are operettasnote  (also called "comic operas" or "light operas") so they unsurprisingly follow the operatic naming convention. Very few of their songs are named after the best-known line of their refrain, because they're all named after the first line of the song's opening verse.
    • The Pirates of Penzance:
      • The Pirate King's song, best known by the refrain, "I am a Pirate King/You are, hurrah for the Pirate King!/And it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King!" is of course titled, "Oh, Better Far to Live and Die".
      • The trio known by the refrain, "A paradox/A paradox/A most ingenious paradox!/With quips and quibbles heard in flocks/None can beat this paradox!" is naturally called, "When You Had Left Our Pirate Fold".
      • The refrain, "I am an Orphan Boy/An Orphan Boy/An Orphan Boy/How sad, an Orphan Boy/For he is an Orphan Boy/He is, hurrah for the Orphan Boy!/And it sometimes is a useful thing to be an Orphan Boy" is part of a song titled, "Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate".
      • "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" is an aversion. The line both starts and ends the song, and it's difficult to imagine how anyone might think the title was anything other than some variation on "Modern Major General".note 
    • The Mikado: The song that most people think is titled "I've Got A Little List" is actually called, "As Some Day It May Happen".
    • H.M.S. Pinafore: Sir Joseph's song explaining how he climbed the ranks and became the "ruler of the Queen's Navee" is actually called "When I Was A Lad". (...I ate four dozen eggs?)
  • In Legally Blonde: The Musical, the song "There! Right There!" is probably known best as "Gay or European?". Like the example from A Chorus Line, it's probably for the purpose of making the joke more of a surprise.
  • For the thousandth time, "What is this Feeling?" is not entitled "Loathing!"
  • The musical Little Shop of Horrors has quite a few of these. Two prominent examples are "Skid Row" (often referred to as "Downtown") and "Git It" (more popularly known as "Feed Me").
  • "By My Side" from Godspell is not called "Where Are You Going", although this is the first line said and the actual Title Drop doesn't come in for a long time.
  • Hair: "The Flesh Failures" is simply legendary. You don't remember "The Flesh Failures"? It's the one that ended with a long refrain of "let the sun shine in, let the sun shine in..." This is made worse because this refrain was released at the end of the 5th Dimension's "Age of Aquarius" single as "Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine in."
  • Chicago
    • You know that number that goes "He had it coming, he had it coming, he only had himself to blame..."? Well, it isn't called "He Had it Coming", as it can be found on certain file sharing sites as. It's called "Cell Block Tango".
    • And that ragtime-like song? It's "Press Conference Rag", not "They Reached For the Gun." (Actually, it's a bit of a complex example. It was originally called "Press Conference Rag" (and that should still be the title if you're a purist), but so many people mislabeled it that "We Both Reached For the Gun" became the new title.)
  • In A Chorus Line, "Dance: Ten; Looks: Three" is named after the first line of the verse. The original title, "Tits and Ass," is the actual refrain, was changed to keep from giving away the joke (and/or avoid offending those casually inspecting the list of numbers).
  • It's fairly common for musicals to include at least one song where the title is either a joke or a reference to the staging and not actually part of the lyrics.
    • The opening song in Guys and Dolls is called "Fugue for Tinhorns," but everybody knows it by its first and last line, "I Got the Horse Right Here" (or perhaps as "Paul Revere," the name of the horse in question).
    • Bye Bye Birdie has "The Telephone Hour" (the "Hi Margie/Hi Alice" song) and "Hymn for a Sunday Evening" (the "Ed Sullivan" song).
    • "A Hymn to Him" from My Fair Lady is sometimes referred to by the first line of its refrain, "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?" The real title never appears in the song.
  • RENT:
    • The famous show tune is actually called "Seasons of Love", not "525,600 Minutes".
    • "Another Day" is sometimes referred to as "Me and My Guitar" after the first lines of the song.
    • And the song at the end is called "Finale B", not "No Day But Today". The version of the song performed at Life Support isn't called "No Day But Today" either, it's called "Life Support".
  • Grease:
    • That tune sung by both Danny and Sandy early on is not called "Summer Loving" or "Tell Me More". It's called "Summer Nights" (which is actually the refrain).
    • One of the songs that plays in the background during the dance contest in The Movie (and is actually sung by Doody in the original play) is "Those Magic Changes", not "What's That Playing On the Radio?"
  • In Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier, The duet between Ja'far and Sherrezade is called '1001 Nights' and not 'I Want to Know Your Story.' Honestly though, the latter title would make more sense, as its sung consistently more than the former phrase.
  • In City of Angels, the title of "Double Talk" is not the song's melodic hook, which is instead provided by the first line of both Stone's refrain and Stine's refrain: "This job is not to be believed." The words "double talk" do occur once in both, and describe the context of the verses.
  • Jesus Christ Superstar has three notable examples:
    • Judas' opening number is called "Heaven On Their Minds", not "Listen, Jesus".
    • The song that begins "I only want to say..." is called "Gethsemane", though it's sometimes labeled as "Gethsemane (I Only Want To Say)".
    • The final number is not "Jesus Christ Superstar" — it's simply "Superstar".
  • Amy's Patter Song in Company is just "Getting Married Today", not "Not Getting Married Today".
  • There are videos circulated on the Internet about Russian dancers performing "Beriozka dance", but Beriozka is the name of the group, plus their signature number. The type of dance they perform is called khorovod.

     Toys 
  • The Teddy Ruxpin song "The Picnic Song" is often called "Barefoot Kind Of Saturday" by fans.

    Video Games 
  • Non-lyrical example: The main musical motif that plays in the Ace Attorney games when pressuring a witness or discovering the culprit is called the "Pursuit" theme for that game. The theme in the first game is titled "Pursuit ~ Cornered", leading some fans to refer to the songs in subsequent games as their "Cornered" theme.
  • Cannon Fodder's theme song, titled "War!", is commonly called "War Has Never Been So Much Fun."
  • Crazy Taxi has the song "All I Want" by The Offspring. It's often referred to as "Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya" after its opening line which always plays when you first start out.
  • This manages to happen to every song from Daytona USA.
    • "The King of Speed", the music to the Beginner course, is much more commonly known by the title "Rolling Start", as these two words are belted out twice at the very beginning and the rest of the lyrics are a series of vocalizations by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. Confusingly, there actually is a song in the game called "Rolling Start"... and it's a truncated remix of "The King of Speed" played during the course's post-race replay and staff roll.
    • The Advanced course's music is well-known for its vocalization of "DAYTONAAAAAA!", to the point that it's mistaken for the song's name. The actual name is the very next lyric: "Let's Go Away".
    • "Sky High", the Expert course's theme, is occasionally misnamed as "I Wanna Fly Sky High" or "Blue Blue Skies", though it doesn't get this as commonly as the other two.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening:
    • The song at the credit roll is titled "Devils Never Cry", although a lot of people still call it "The Devil's Cry", after the last words of the song.
    • While most people call the two battle themes that play in DMC3 as "Taste the Blood" and "Divine Hate", their actual titles according to the official Devil May Cry 3 Original Soundtrack list are "Battle-1 (Battle Music 1)" and "Battle-2 (Battle Music 2)" respectively.
  • Vergil's battle theme in Devil May Cry 5 is titled "Bury the Light", not "I Am the Storm (That Is Approaching)", despite said line being the first line in the chorus, and despite being featured a lot in memes.
  • When EarthBound Beginnings was originally released, it was accompanied with a soundtrack containing lyricised versions of several songs from the game. Some familiar with the lyrics tend to assume that the name of the first (and most famous) song on the album is "I Believe in You." Some unfamiliar with the lyrics tend to call it "Pollyanna's Theme." Turns out both groups are wrong — the name of the song is simply "Pollyanna" (though to be fair, the full title for the lyricised version is technically "Pollyanna (I Believe in You)"), and there is no character by that name in any game in the series. (There is a "Paula" and an "Ana", but neither character is closely associated with the song in question.) "Pollyanna" is simply a term used to describe the kind of extremely positive person the song is about.
  • The theme song of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is "Dragonborn", not "Dovahkiin". The latter is a completely different song. Both songs have Non Appearing Titles. Confused yet?
  • The main theme of Fire Emblem Fates that Azura sings is frequently referred to as "You Are the Ocean's Grey Waves", from the opening line, rather than its actual title, "Lost in Thoughts All Alone". The title is from the chorus, but the opening is heard more frequently.
  • The main menu theme of Grand Theft Auto is titled "Gangster Friday". "Grand Theft Auto" is the first song on the game's N-CT FM station, and thanks to the repeated hook "Let's go for a joyride", it's called "Joyride" by some.
  • A case where it comes from dialogue rather than lyrics: in Kirby Super Star, a beach stage theme from Revenge of Meta Knight is often misnamed "Grape Garden", which is mentioned in dialogue while the song plays. Its official name is simply "Sea Stage". Grape Garden is a cloud level from Kirby's Adventure, completely unrelated other than being a Call-Back.
  • Some background tracks in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask are commonly referred to by the ocarina song that they derive from such as "Lost Woods" being called "Saria's Song", "Lon Lon Ranch" being called "Epona's Song" and "Windmill Hut" being called "Song of Storms". However, in Super Smash Bros. at least, the Lost Woods theme is named "Saria's Song" (and same for the Windmill Hut being "Song of Storms"), potentially making it the reverse.
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: "It Has to Be This Way (Platinum Mix)" is not called "Standing Here, I Realise", despite what the memes using that song (or rather, the specific section of the song that goes "Standing here, I realise/You were just like me/Trying to make history") may lead you to believe.
  • Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit II: The licensed song by The Buzzhorn is titled "Ordinary", not "Your Life" or "Find Yourself At Home". Likewise, Pulse Ultra's "Build Your Cages" is not titled "Sacrifice".
  • Persona:
    • The battle music from Persona 3 is just called "Mass Destruction", not "Shadows of Mass Destruction" or "Baby Baby Baby".
    • And the one from Persona 5 is "Last Surprise", not "You'll Never See It Coming".
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • The Japanese/European opening song of Sonic the Hedgehog CD is called "Sonic - You Can Do Anything", not "Toot Toot Sonic Warrior." The credits song is "Cosmic Eternity - Believe in Yourself", but neither of the lyrics appear in this order, so it is sometimes misnamed "Cosmic Eternity" or "Believe in Yourself" individually.
    • The actual song that was used as the ending theme for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is called "Sweet Sweet Sweet", not "Sweet Dream" (though the English version of the song released later was actually titled "Sweet Dreams").
    • The main theme from Sonic R, "Super Sonic Racing", is sometimes misnamed "Everybody's Super Sonic Racing". Likewise, the ending theme, "Number One", is much more commonly called "You're My Number One".
    • Shadow's theme from Sonic Adventure 2 is erroneously titled by some as "All of the Darkness," based on the lyric "All of the darkness that dozes in the dusk" — except, close as that sounds, those aren't the actual lyrics (that'd be "Oh dark, the darkness that dozes in the dusk"). The song's actual title is the immediately following line, "Throw It All Away."
    • Similarly, Dr. Eggman's theme is not titled "I Am the Eggman," it's actually "E.G.G.M.A.N.", which is actually in the song, though it's hard to spot (it's chanted by robotic voices in the background). Amy's theme is "My Sweet Passion," not "Hearts on Fire" or "Sweet, Sweet, You're So Sweet" or any variation. Knuckles's theme is titled "Unknown from M.E.", not any variation of "Born on an Island in the Heavens" or "Here I am, tougher than the rest of them..." Big's theme is "Lazy Days ~Livin' in Paradise~", not "Welcome to Our Paradise." Tails' theme is not "I Wanna Fly High" but "Believe in Myself".
    • And moving away from character themes, the song that plays during Shadow's fight against the Biolizard is called "Supporting Me", not "To the Pressure" or "Losing You."
    • The theme to the level City Escape is actually titled "Escape from the City," which does appear in the lyrics, but possibly as an inversion of this trope some think it's also called "City Escape." It's also sometimes incorrectly titled "Follow Me".
    • Knuckles's level songs all have a Non-Appearing Title: Wild Canyon ("Kick the Rock!"), Pumpkin Hill ("A Ghost's Pumpkin Soup"), Aquatic Mine ("Dive into the Mellow"), Death Chamber ("Deeper"), Meteor Herd ("Space Trip Steps"). The stage names, however, all appear in the lyrics.
    • White Jungle's theme is titled "Rhythm and Balance," not "Shadow, Don't Make Me Upset."
    • Team Sonic's theme in Sonic Heroes is titled "We Can (Theme of Team Sonic)", not "We Can Make It" or any variation on "So Much Better Than Alone."
    • The main theme of Shadow the Hedgehog is not titled "I Am." It's actually "I Am... All of Me", despite those two phrases never actually appearing in that order until the very LAST line of the song. And it's not "I Am All of Me" or even "I Am (All of Me)" either, the actual title does contain an ellipsis. Although, the title is still referred to as "I Am" in the game's music player.
    • In Psyguy of Fireball 20XL's parody dub of Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, Knuckles complains "Aww, I hate 'In His World'" when the tune starts playing during Sonic's first battle with Metal Sonic. The song is actually called "His World." (And "In his world" doesn't even appear in the lyrics, the line goes "In this world (His world!), where life is strong...")
  • When it was revealed, the vocal theme for Super Mario Odyssey was variously known as "1-Up Girl" or "Let's Do the Odyssey" thanks to its lyrics. Its official name is the Non-Appearing Title "Jump Up, Super Star!".
  • That oddly epic song that plays throughout Super Smash Bros. Brawl is not called "Audi Famam Illius". The title actually is "Super Smash Bros. Brawl Main Theme."
  • The credits theme of Skullgirls is a solemn jazz tune named "In a Moment's Time". Due to the lyrics, however, most people instead call it "In Just a Moment's Time".
  • In-Universe in Spiritfarer: Several residents in Edgeborough Lane argue over whether the song is called "The Autumn End" or "Lover's Myth" because while the former is its actual title, some residents call it by the latter title because it's repeated in the lyrics. Since they believe that they're two different songs, the tall orange resident asks Stella to buy the sheet music for "The Autumn End" at Nordweiler, and then play it on her guitar for them to prove the others wrong.
  • "I'm Here Now" from Tekken 5 is the name of the instrumental song that plays during the first half of the opening sequence (when Kazuya and Heihachi are fighting the Jack robots). It is not the name of the lyrical song from the second half of the intro that begins with the words "I'm here now". That song is called "Sparking!", which appears right at the very end of the song (once before the first verse and once more before the song ends, along with "Super King").
  • Pig With The Face Of A Boy's Tetris song is called "A Complete History of the Soviet Union Through the Eyes of a Humble Worker, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris," not "I Am the Man Who Arranges the Blocks." And the melody itself isn't "Tetris song"; it's from Russian folk song "Korobeiniki" (which itself is a victim of this trope — it's not "Oy polnym polna mоya korobushka").
  • "Baka Mitai" from Yakuza is sometimes referred to as "Dame Dane", the first line of the chorus, though usually in a joking manner. The actual title of the song is found in the very first line of the song. Even the lip-syncing app wombo.ai lists the song as "Dame Dane" rather than the actual name.

    Web Videos 
  • Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog:
    • The first song in Act II is officially titled "My Eyes", but is often referred to as "On the Rise". There was a gap of several months between the release of the video and the release of the soundtrack and song titles.
    • Most of Doctor Horrible has that problem, due to the aforementioned gap between the release of the musical and the release of official titles for the songs.
    • "Penny's Song" or "Story of a Girl"? And just how are you supposed to name the Bad Horse Choruses? And despite "Brand New Day" being the closer of Act II, the opener of Act III, "So They Say", ends on "Or is this a brand new day?" The official titles (according to the soundtrack albums) are "Penny's Song", "Bad Horse Chorus" and "Bad Horse Chorus (Reprise)".
    • Reportedly, Joss Whedon will break down and cry if you call it "Laundry Day". It's "My Freeze Ray".
  • The Undertale theme remix playing in the memetic "Fingers in his Ass" video doesn't go by that name.note  That's the name of Triple-Q's remix of "#FreeTriple-Q", which was named after the refrain; the song in the video is BotanicSage's own remix, "ASSGORE (Fingerfückung)".

    Western Animation 
  • The theme song to Arthur, made famous by Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, is actually "Believe in Yourself", not "What a Wonderful Kind of Day", "And I Say Hey" or simply "HEY!", no matter how many times the latter nickname is used in the song.
  • In BoJack Horseman, Sextina Aquafina's gleefully pro-abortion song is not called "Brrap Brrap Pew Pew" (the title of the episode it comes in) but "Get Dat Fetus Kill Dat Fetus." Lampshaded when Diane only remembers the song by its distinctive onomatopoeia, and even she gets it wrong.
  • Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines is not called "Stop the Pigeon".
  • Family Guy:
    • Looking for that song that you probably know as "The Bird Is the Word"? Well, you won't find it under that name, it's actually called "Surfin' Bird", by The Trashmen, although it is based partly on an R&B song called "The Bird's the Word" by The Rivingtons. ("Papa-Ooh-Mau-Mau" is another popular "title.", and the name of the other Rivingtons songs used as the base).
    • The episode the song was featured in ("I Dream Of Jesus") actually mentioned that the song was called "Surfin' Bird".
  • The closing music for "Fireball XL5" was originally called "Fireball", but was commonly called by its first line, "I Wish I Was a Spaceman". The latter has now become the official title, probably at least partly to avoid confusion with "Fireball" by Deep Purple.
  • The Villain Song sung by Dirk Dinkum in The Garfield Show episode "Lion Queen: Welcome to Africa" is commonly known by the repeated line "Go Away". The official English title of the song is "Bad Boy".
  • "Awaken" by Dethklok is not called "Mustakrakish." It doesn't help that in the episode of Metalocalypse where the song first appeared Nathan calls it "Awaken, Awaken Mustakrakish The Lake Troll." But really, on the album it's simply called "Awaken."
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Find a Way" only has its title sung once, and the refrain is "Oh, why?"
    • The title song from EQUESTRIA GIRLS, also known as the "Cafeteria Song", is usually mistaken as "Helping Twilight Win the Crown". The title doesn't even appear in the film version's lyrics.
    • "Time To Come Together", also from Equestria Girls, is also commonly called "Fix It Up" after the line that starts the chorus.
    • Twilight's song as she tries to fit in at Canterlot High is not called "Strange New World", it's "This Strange World", as the credits say. She never says the latter title once.
    • Two songs from the first two seasons, commonly referred to as "Giggle at the Ghosty" and "Smile Smile Smile" were later given the titles of "The Laughter Song" and "The Smile Song" respectively in the first album.
    • A second season song where Rarity sings about enjoying high society was named "Becoming Popular", and not "The Pony Everypony Should Know" as many viewers thought. Later, to help with the confusion, the two titles were officially combined into "Becoming Popular (The Pony Everypony Should Know)".
    • In "The Mane Attraction", Countess Coloratura's song, "The Magic Inside", was previously called "I Am Just a Pony" by fans.
    • The song the Flim Flam brothers sing in "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" is called "Flim Flam Brothers" or "The Flim Flam Cider Song", not "The Cider Song", "Opportunity in This Community", or "Flim Flam Brothers' Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000".
    • The song from "Bats!" is called "Bats", not "Stop the Bats".
  • The iconic Vince Guaraldi piece associated with the Peanuts cartoons is usually referred to as "Peanuts" or "The Charlie Brown Theme" — or, sometimes, just "that kinda African-sounding jazz tune." It's actually called "Linus and Lucy" — because it was originally just the leitmotif for, well, Linus and Lucy. It was first composed for A Boy Named Charlie Brown (the unreleased TV documentary, not the film), and later appeared in memorable scenes in A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Since it's also by far the catchiest tune from the cartoons, it's basically become the series' main theme. This tends to bring a lot of confusion, as there is already a song called "Charlie Brown Theme", which is Charlie Brown's leitmotif.
  • Phineas and Ferb:
    • The song Stacy's relatives sing in "Summer Belongs to You" is officially titled "J-Pop (Welcome to Tokyo)", not "Welcome to Tokyo".
    • A good number of P&F songs fall under title confusion. Some songs are given titles on the wiki before the episode comes out, only these titles are different from the official BMI titles, which are sometimes different from the titles the writers and creators use. However, the song's unofficial, incorrect titles tend to spread fairly quickly over the Internet and YouTube. Three examples: "History of Rock" not "Danny's Story", "Big Ginormous Airplane" not "The Paper Pelican Floor Show", and "Baliwood" not "Destroyed Dreams".
    • The general, "official" rule is to go by whatever the creators use. Example: The song is "Evil for Extra Credit", even though the official BMI title is "Evil for College Credit".
    • The song played during the Big Idea in "Last Day of Summer" is "There's No One I'd Rather Go Nowhere With", and not "There's No One That I'd Rather Go Nowhere With".
  • Razzberry Jazzberry Jam somehow inverts this with the show’s ending theme. Both the title and the first line of the chorus are “We Wanna Thank You”; however, in some renditions of the show’s Couch Gag, characters refer to the song as “the ‘Thank You' song”, which may cause viewers to believe this trope is in effect when it isn’t.
  • Ready Jet Go!: The song sung at the end of "Date Night" is actually called "Date Night" according to the episode credits, but fans always call it "Real Bortronian Deal" because of that phrase being repeated in the song.
  • The Simpsons: In "New Kids on the Blecch," the song featured in Bart's boy band, the Party Posse's, music video is called "Drop Da Bomb." It's more commonly known to fans as "Yvan eht Nioj" due to the backwards lyrics meant to hypnotize people into joining the Navy.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • An odd example: the theme song is officially named the "SpongeBob SquarePants Theme Song", not just the "SpongeBob Theme," as it's commonly called. This oddly specific title is for a reason; there's a separate, incidental background tune named simply "SpongeBob Theme". Its name was later changed to "Hawaiian Adventures SpongeBob Theme" to help better differentiate it.
    • "Bubble Beat Box" is commonly referred to as the "Walk Cycle song" or the "Lost Episode song", after its most memorable appearance.
    • "Gary's Song" is rarely referred as such, instead usually called "Gary Come Home" after its refrain.
  • Steven Universe:
    • "Stronger than You" is the title only gets sung in the final refrain, while "I am made of love" is sung in every refrain, leading some to initially mislabel the song as "Made of Love."
    • "Shining Through" from Steven Universe Future gets its title from the end of the song where it's sang only twice. Most would believe it to be named "Why So Blue" after the episode it came from, even Cartoon Network's YouTube channel uploaded the song under that title.
  • "Alone Together" from Timon & Pumbaa has the refrain being "Timon and Pumbaa", with the title only being used once. Because of that, Toon Disney has incorrectly labeled the song "Timon & Pumbaa" when it was shown as a music video.
  • VeggieTales:
    • Most fans believe that the song "Endangered Love" is called "Barbara Manatee" because of how frequently that name appears in the song. The real title is only said once by the segment's narrator.
    • "Together" from "Celery Night Fever" is often mistakenly called "Celebrate, Get Funky" by fans of the series.
  • Inverted in the Yogi's Treasure Hunt episode "Yogi's Heroes." Dick and Muttley capture Snooper and Blabber and torture them by making them watch old Dastardly & Muttley episodes, which Snooper called "Stop That Pigeon-type cartoons."

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