Title track

A title track is a song which shares its name with the album on which it appears. Examples include Michael Jackson's song "Thriller" and AC/DC's "Back in Black". It is also a song which shares its name with the feature film in which it appears, or the song that runs over the opening credits of a film. An example of the former is "Jailhouse Rock" from the movie "Jailhouse Rock", and an example of the latter is "Born to Be Wild" which runs over the credits to "Easy Rider".

It is sometimes used when the song in question is not on the album with which it shares its name, but one of the artist's other albums. For example, Led Zeppelin's song "Houses of the Holy" appears on the album "Physical Graffiti", but not "Houses of the Holy"; similarly, Queen's song "Sheer Heart Attack" was released three years after the album of the same name. The Mothers of Invention did this on their album We're Only in It for the Money, with a song called Absolutely Free, which is also the name of their second album, which was released a year before the song, in 1967. A related example is Jennifer Lopez's album "This Is Me... Then". No title track appeared on this album, but her next album included the song "(Can't Believe) This Is Me". Another example is Bee Gees' song "Cucumber Castle" which is not on the 1970s album of the same name, but on 1967's "1st".

A title track can also refer to a song which shares its name with the artist: for example, Black Sabbath's song "Black Sabbath"; which appears on Black Sabbath's self titled album, or Motörhead's song "Motorhead", from their 1977 album, "Motörhead".

The song "Title Track" on Death Cab for Cutie's album "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes" is not, in fact, a title track.

Some albums contain a song that, while not sharing the name of the album, contains the name somewhere in its lyrics. Examples include Metric's song "IOU" on their second album Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, which has the title as the first line; the song "One Slip" from the Pink Floyd album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" that contains the line "A momentary lapse of reason that binds a life to a life..."; also from Pink Floyd is the lyrics "I'll see you on the dark side of the Moon" from the song "Brain Damage" on the album "Dark Side of the Moon"; the song "Beast and the Harlot" from Avenged Sevenfold's album City of Evil features the line "Look to the waters of the deep, a city of evil." and the song "Could This Be Magic?" on Van Halen's Women and Children First has a lyric in the chorus stating "Lonely ships upon the water, better save the women and children first."

There are also songs whose titles are an extended version of the album title or vice versa, as in the case of Evans Blue's "The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal of Life Ends", with the track "The Pursuit", which is still considered a title track. Another example of this is the song "Layla", the title track of Derek and the Dominos' 1970 album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs".

In an interesting twist, the title track to Porcupine Tree's 1999 album Stupid Dream is just a 23 second long instrumental piece although the phrase "stupid dream" is mentioned in the song Piano Lessons.