Erasure FAQ

Nightbird: too many words?

Updated 21 June 2005

The latest album Nightbird is great. A nice, rich sound, lovely production, and many strong songs. But the thing that really struck me is how wordy the song titles are. “Let’s Take One More Rocket to the Moon”, while quite a poetic phrase, doesn’t really hit you in a pop-song kinda way. And “I Bet You’re Mad at Me” just sounds silly, though maybe I just don’t much like the song. Anyway, I was sure Erasure had previously been synonymous with punchy songs with snappy titles, and the new album was a departure.

Of course I realise that it’s possible to over-analyse these things. So that’s exactly what I did.

I looked at the average number of words per song title for each of their albums, excluding compilations and live albums. I included Other People’s Songs because although Erasure didn’t write the songs, they did choose them.

Album	Words	Songs	Average
Wonderland	29	11	2.6
Circus	23	10	2.3
Innocents	29	11	2.6
Wild!	24	11	2.2
Chorus	26	10	2.6
I Say I Say I Say	30	10	3.0
Erasure	31	11	2.8
Cowboy	28	11	2.5
Loveboat	32	11	2.9
Other People’s Songs	47	12	3.9
Nightbird	51	11	4.6

Apart from the unusually concise The Circus and Wild!, all of the album until recently averaged between 2.5 and 3 words per song title. Then came a big jump with Other People’s Songs, where Vince and Andy unveiled their new predilection for verbosity. (I know how they feel.) And not to be outdone, Nightbird showed they can write their own jawbusting titles.

“All This Time Still Falling out of Love”, in particular, seems unnecessarily long. I have in fact created my own remix of this otherwise brilliant song. My remix sounds exactly like the original, but the title is shorter: just “Falling out of Love”. Terse and memorable, as befits a forthcoming single. Of course, it may be that they’re going for some sort of record: the double A-side “Here I Go Impossible Again / All This Time Still Falling out of Love” could well be the longest single title so far this century.