R.E.M. is one of those bands that I like, but don't like-like, you know? I understand why so many people do like them and I even really enjoyed the R U Talkin' R.E.M. Re: Me? podcast (which has since shifted to Youey Talkin' Huey 2ey Me?, all about Huey Lewis and the News and features the one and only Huey Lewis and is a good thing). But, at the end of the day, I don't listen to a lot of R.E.M.'s music and I don't have a lot of R.E.M. records. But, of the records I do have, one of them has the best album-title play on words of all time.
My favorite R.E.M. song. I mean, how could it not be?
The album-title play on words is a long-standing tradition that goes back to the roots of recorded music. Equally long-standing is my absolute failure to recognize most of them as jokes until years after having first heard the album. I don't mean obvious puns like Blink-182's Enema of the State or NOFX's Punk in Drublic. I mean more like Blink-182's Take of Your Pants and Jacket or David Bowie's Alladin Sane. But, of all the jokes I missed, R.E.M.'s 1988 greatest hits collection - Eponymous - is both the best and the one it took me the longest to recognize.
In my defense, in 1988, I was 13 years old and had never heard the word eponymous, much less knew what it meant. It is, after all, much less common than its cousin anonymous.
I'm fascinated by the almost LEGO-like way words can be put together in English. Fascinated because it's something most English speakers understand innately as part of understanding the language and partly because we all screw it up so often because, in English, the roots and branches of words are often taken from other languages meaning that we can put them together to form an English word that would not be recognized as a word in the original language.
The root ~onym comes from Greek and means, roughly, name. So we end up with an entire family of words in English that share a similar look and feel to them: synonym, antonym, patronym, pseudonym, anonymity, and eponym.
The suffix ~ous, on the other hand, comes to English from Latin via French and is used to show possessiveness or fullness; it turns a noun into an adjective to show that the object possessing the noun is full of the quality or condition of that noun.
So. Greek-derived noun - eponym, meaning to give a name to - plus Latin-derived suffix - ous, meaning to be full of the quality of - equals eponymous: the description of a thing named after something else. Think Led Zeppelin's fourth album, which is also called Led Zeppelin. Metallica's Black album, technically titled Metallica. Or every other Weezer record (a.k.a. the Blue album, the Green album, etc.). Or the first records by The Stooges, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Doors, and The Clash.
Which brings me back to R.E.M. They were putting out a greatest hits record and they needed a title. Rather than call it R.E.M. after the band's name, they instead called it Eponymous. Like I said, best joke album title ever.
Here are a few fun links:
Definition:
I liked this definition from Grammarly:
Eponymous is an adjective that refers to the person, place, or thing that something else is named after.
However, eponymous can also refer to the thing that is named after something else.
Notable Events of 1980:
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Cover Me:
As you may be aware, I love a good cover song. Especially when they change genres. I’ve recently discovered, via several people recommending him to me, the YouTube channel of Leo Moracchioli. Leo is a very talented guitarist and musician and makes lots and lots of videos of himself and the occasional assistant recording metal covers of every song you ever heard of. It is genius.
And, oh yes, he covered this song:
Next time: Swan song. That's it. Stay strong, stay curious. Learn something.