Twenty rock classics that never mention the title in their lyrics

There are songs that owe much of their success to an irresistible chorus, one that drills the song's title straight into listeners' memories. And then there are others that have taken a completely different path, becoming genuine classics without ever uttering, from start to finish, the words that give them their name. A choice that is sometimes deliberate, other times the result of spur-of-the-moment inspiration, wordplay, cultural references or simple last-minute second thoughts.
In rock, this quirk has produced some of the most enigmatic and fascinating titles in history. Just think of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, whose lyrics are populated by mysterious characters, invocations and operatic references, yet never contain the phrase that gives the song its name. Or "Baba O'Riley" by the Who, which many listeners still mistakenly call "Teenage Wasteland", simply because that's the phrase that recurs throughout the track. And then there's "Tomorrow Never Knows" by the Beatles, a title born from one of Ringo Starr's famously surreal malapropisms, or "Space Oddity" by David Bowie, whose name nods to Stanley Kubrick's cinematic masterpiece without ever appearing in the tale of astronaut Major Tom.
In other cases, the title acts as an interpretive key, a tribute or a suggestion that goes beyond the literal meaning of the sung words. It might evoke the story's protagonist, sum up a musical mood, or conceal biographical and cultural references. And there's no shortage of curiosities: songs whose titles were changed to avoid misunderstandings, or tracks that quote only part of the phrase chosen to identify them. Radio X has gathered twenty emblematic examples of this peculiar tradition, spanning different generations and styles: from the psychedelia of Pink Floyd to the progressive rock of Rush, from the hard rock of Led Zeppelin to the punk of the Clash, taking in the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath and Neil Young along the way. Twenty tracks that have entered the collective imagination despite the paradox that their titles are never actually spoken in the lyrics.

Here is the ranking of the 20 rock classics that never mention the title in their lyrics, as selected by Radio X (full feature here)

1. The Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil
2. The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows
3. Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody
4. Black Sabbath – Paranoid
5. Rush – The Spirit Of Radio
6. Buffalo Springfield – For What It's Worth
7. The Who – Baba O’Riley
8. Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues
9. Pink Floyd – Astronomy Domine
10. Led Zeppelin – Immigrant Song
11. Rod Stewart – Maggie May
12. Supertramp – Breakfast In America
13. Neil Young – After The Gold Rush
14. David Bowie – Space Oddity
15. Iron Maiden – The Trooper
16. The Doors – Roadhouse Blues
17. George Harrison – Run Of The Mill
18. The Clash – Train In Vain
19. Electric Light Orchestra – 10538 Overture
20. John Lennon – #9 Dream

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