(Songs where most of the title is in) parenthesis. (How many can you name/Search & Destroy)

which also wins for Most Ungrammatical Title Forced By Parentheses.

83. December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night) -the Four Seasons
84. Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)- Marvin Gaye

85. gary numan -- we take mystery (to bed)

90 Feelin' Just Fine (Head Full Of Shit)

Oh, man I knew I should have gotten round to sorting my LPs. This is going to be like trying to determine whether the song is called "Honky Tonk Woman" or "Honky Tonk Women." I distinctly remember on the LP, the jacket had

(Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The) Memphis Blues Again

and the LP center label had

Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The (Memphis Blues Again)

or possibly it was the other way round, but there were definitely parentheses and they were definitely switched up. Maybe this enjoyable little paradox has been cleaned up by the CD rerelease people, the same way that Get Happy! must now have a clearly defined first side. Well, a clearly defined first track.

91. She's A Bad Mama Jama (She's Built, She's Stacked) -Carl Carlton

Surely I didn't imagine these parentheses. Or maybe the Bad Mama Jama is so built and so stacked that mere parentheses could not contain her and she has long since busted loose.

Perhaps THIS will explain things.

This in one of Dylan's favorite songtitling tics, like calling songs things like Incrementally Subtitled Josephine, Half Ghislaine Wholeheartedly and Annabel Explicated Summarily so I can't escape the nagging feeling that there are more. I want to say Rainy Day Women #12 and #35 (everybody must get stoned), but BE CAREFUL! What is in the brackets is not an actual part of the title, but merely a helpful extract from the lyrics that some gentle soul might THINK is the title.

96. The Chrysanthemums: "(They Must Have Made It With Their) Hats"

100. (You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care -Elvis

How about

101. Amseterdam (Gonna Write You A Letter) - Guster
102. Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) - Darlene Love
103. Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds
104. Deja Vu (All Over Again) - John Fogarty
105. Dude (Looks Like A Lady) - Aerosmith

108. (Shake Shake Shake) Shake Your Booty

and my new least favorite

109. Leave (Get Out)

if i'm not mistaken, green day's...

110. good riddance (time of your life)

became...

110.5 time of your life (good riddance)

when released as a single.

111. part two (let a man come in and do the popcorn)"

Was it just me, or shouldn't that song have been called "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)"?

117. 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be) - Hendrix

This is the Exchange reprise at the end of Mezzanine. I've seen it listed with parentheses, but both amazon and allmusic omit them. I haven't got the packaging handy to check.

As an aside: three years ago, my friend Sarah-poo had made for our friend Alli-poo a shirt that said, "My friend was Robert McNamara'ed into submission and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." Alli-poo wore it to a Paul Simon show soon afterwards, I never found out if he saw it ...

Fucking great song, and probably one of the longest songtitles ever. :-)

(Baby, I need your love) Because Your Love Is So Wonderful (Baby)

?

a good title indeed, but it would be a lot better if george jones hadn't already done (the equally unparenthesized) "feeling single, seeing double" a decade earlier. i'm all for borrowing and stealing in music, but stealing someone else's joke is a bit unseemly. (yeah yeah, i know comedians do it all the time, and it's standard operating procedure, and all that. but something just seems weird about a songwriter grabbing another songwriter's pun like that.)

(neither gary nor george wrote either song, they just sang 'em, for whatever that's worth. and it seemed important to add this so, even if i wasn't discussing a song title in parentheses, at least my answer would be mostly in parentheses.)

I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone - Elvis
I Was Checking Out, She Was Checking In - Don Covay

128. Samantha Fox - "Touch Me (I Want Yoyur Body)"

I think Smash Hits wrote something along the lines of "(Don't you just hate it when) artists put parentheses in song titles?"

"my own summer (shove it)"
"be quiet and drive (far away)"

The Tank one reminded me of another one:

Sarah Brightman & Hot Gossip - (I Lost My Heart to A) Starship Trooper

The Miracles - (You Can't Let the Boy Overpower) The Man in You

Jim Croce - Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)

Same song, different parentheses:

"Walk Tall (Like a Man)" by The 2 of Clubs
"(Walk Tall) Like a Man" by The New Faces

The 2 of Clubs version is gem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyxU9jmk21E

Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band - "Comment (If All Men Are Truly Brothers)"
Wilco - "Wilco (The Song)"

Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth (Stop, Hey What's That Sound)

Scritti Politti - Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry for Loverboy)

Van Halen with a few for y'all:
"Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)"
"A.F.U. (Naturally Wired)
"Don't Tell Me (what Love Can Do)"
"Take Me Back (Deja Vu)"

I was super-surprised when going over their catalogue to realize that the wild, over-the-top DLR era only gave us one of such songs - "Big Bad Bill". Then again, before Diamond Dave was axed for Hagar, they were far more into placing random punctuation in their titles over parentheses, whether it was actually merited ("So This is Love?", "Bottoms Up!", "Could This Be Magic?"); accurately exuberant ("Everybody Wants Some!!"), inaccurately exuberant ("Sinner's Swing!", "Where Have All The Good Times Gone!")
and leaving us with more questions than answers ("And The Cradle Will Rock...", "Women In Love...", ""Dirty Movies"").

There are also the inexplicable omissions of exclamation points. Dave, if you are reading this (and we know you are), during the next re-re-re-release of the catalogue, nobody will be upset if a couple of fun scream-along tracks get listed as "Jump!" and "Somebody Get Me A Doctor!!", but the world? The world will be cheering you, with a drink in their hand and their toes in the sand!

Not just any Manalishi

BUT:

"The Green Manalishi (with the Two Prong Crown)"

Young & Company – I Like (What You're Doing To Me)

DJ Sprinkles - Ball'r (Madonna-Free Zone)
Billy Ocean - Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run)
Soul II Soul - Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)
Blut Aus Nord - Antithesis of the Flesh (...And Then Arises a New Essence)
Green Velvet - (You Don't Have to Be) Fake and Phoney

The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season)
Janet Jackson - Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)
The Human League - Love Action (I Believe in Love)
Sly and the Family Stone = (You Caught Me) Smilin'

That Human League one always kills me, since it has "Love" in the regular and the parenthetical side of the title

Great song, too!

"If I Said You Have a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me (In The Sense That You Would Find My Appreciation Of Your Physique To Be Inappropriate)"; b-side was "If I Said You Have a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me (In The Sense That You Would Put Yourself In Close Physical Proximity To Me, Possibly With Sexual Implications)"