Title
While Innes recalls encountering the phrase as the title of an old American pulp fiction crime magazine he had encountered - the phrase Death Cab for Cutie may have been coined by Richard Hoggart in his The Uses of Literacy, a 1957 book discussing British popular culture and a pioneering work in the cultural studies field. The term appears in Chapter 8, "The Newer Mass Art: Sex in Shiny Packets," under part C: "Sex and Violence Novels". Hoggart provides a list of "imitations" of the "terse, periodic titles" of these novels, including "Sweetie, Take It Hot"; "The Lady Takes a Dive"; "Aim Low, Angel"; "Sweetheart, Curves Can Kill"; and "Death-Cab for Cutie".
Ben Gibbard used the title of the song as the name of the rock band he founded in 1997, saying "The name was never supposed to be something that someone was going to reference 15 years on. So yeah, I would absolutely go back and give it a more obvious name."
Read more about this topic: Death Cab For Cutie (song)
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their squalid lease of sin
With earlier title than his own.”
—Robert Bridges (1844–1930)
“Men don’t and can’t live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don’t live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of Labourers’ Unions.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men?—if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)