Is it Bangles or The Bangles?

MusicBrainz
1

According to what I’ve been reading the official name is Bangles, without “The”.

From Wikipedia " At the last minute, they discovered another band had registered the Bangs name and would not let them use it without payment, so they dropped “The” and added the letters “les” to the end to become Bangles."

But I still I see “The Bangles” used all over, even in Wikipedia. So what is the official name?

2

Please stop entering every topic in the MusicBrainz Picard category. If it is a general MusicBrainz database discussion please use “MusicBrainz” as category.

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Ok, sorry, it’s just that it seems no one responds outside Picard.

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Their official website is thebangles.com. Of the five albums on MusicBrainz, three are credited to “Bangles” and two to “The Bangles”, but those are the last two albums. So it would seem their latest and current name includes “The”.

Artist credits should be used to correctly attribute each release to the version of the name that is used on the releases themselves (just like it is now, by the way).

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I’m not familiar with the band, but from what I can see on Wikipedia and looking at the album art they seemed to use “Bangles” originally, but use “The Bangles” after their 1998 reunion.

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bangles logo
They did not update their logo to that same the BANGLES artist credit they have been starting to use.

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7

browsing the website, there’s not a clear majority between “The Bangles” and “the Bangles” (or rather, “The” capitalization). however, on “About the Bangles” they consistently use “the Bangles”, as if the “the” is not part of the name.

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Maybe you can explain the difference between the use of “The” and “the” for us non-native english speakers?

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9

When you write things about the Sun, the is not part of the name.
There is a difference when you write things about The Sun, where The is part of the name.

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10

I would say that “About the Bangles”, regardless of capitalization, indicates that the definite article is a part of their name. If they insisted on the opposite (like Eurythmics ) then it would simply be “About Bangles”.

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11

I was going bring up Buggles as a counterexample, but it seems they might have gone the same way, and added the “The” to their name posthumously…

either way, it might be a grammer thing, like “the (plural noun)” sounds much better with the “the” than without, at least to me. Eurythmics are named after a school of teaching, Dalcroze eurythmics, and therefore isn’t a plural noun.

I dunno, I could go either way at this point…

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Another counterexample is Talking Heads; although fans and journalists sometimes refer to “the Talking Heads” (which as you note sounds more natural), the band consistently excludes the definite article. They even titled their first live album The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads.

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another example (and one where they don’t specify on a release) is Eagles. the only place on their website where I saw them use the “the” is where they ask you to “Subscribe to the Eagles Newsletter” (note the lack of capitalization)

I don’t see enough consistency with Bangles to say whether the “the” is part of the name.

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14

I would propose as a general rule that if the band name sounds like it should have a “The”, it should be part of the band name unless the band itself consistently does not use it. To my mind, this is comparable to standardizing capitalization unless an artist consistently uses a specific nonstandard version. By that logic, they should be “The Bangles”.

(Also, I note that their official website is http://www.thebangles.com/ , although I suppose it is possible that the bangles.com domain was already taken and they took the path of least resistance.)

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15

I don’t think we need rules.
The artwork of releases usually indicates the name of the artist.

In this case:

So each release may get its own artist credit.

And then, for the MB artist name itself, it’s case by case whether we give the most common or the most recent name.

It’s not only like this for artists with The. :wink:

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I agree in general, but what would be your opinion in this specific case? I find it hard to say really, you can make good arguments for both :confused: But then I had also not heard of this band before.

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17

You never heard this song?

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18

Is that a JoJo reference?

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Oh, this I know :smiley: Just never knew about the band behind the song.

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