Forming a band is easy. Coming up with a great band name is the tricky part.
Music encyclopedias are full of groups named after animals, flowers, movies, cars and colors — and most of the good ones are already taken.
As a result, musicians often turn to their record collections for inspiration, like Death Cab For Cutie, who got their bizarre name from a 1967 song by the English cult-rock act Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
Here are 10 more bands who stole their names from songs.
RADIOHEAD: Pressured by EMI Records to find a more interesting name, the band formerly known as On A Friday turned to "Radio Head," a song recorded by Talking Heads on their 1986 album True Stories and also sung conjunto-style by Tito Larriva in David Byrne's True Stories movie. A decade earlier, Scotland's Big Country was inspired by another Heads tune, "The Big Country."
THE OLD 97'S: Dallas' alt-country quartet adapted its name from "The Wreck of the Old 97," a tune penned about a 1903 train crash in Virginia. Dozens of artists have recorded the song since 1924, but the Old 97's got the idea after hearing Johnny Cash's locomotive version.
SPOON: Britt Daniel and Jim Eno named their Austin band after the 1972 song "Spoon" by German avant-rockers Can. Though not nearly as weird as Can, Spoon will occasionally whip up some experimental rhythms that recall the German group.
BOYZ II MEN: Not only did New Edition touch off the whole boy-band boom, it also provided a name for this Philly R&B act via its 1988 song "Boys to Men."
PANIC! AT THE DISCO: Paying tribute to the Smiths' "Panic," the Las Vegas rockers join a long list of acts inspired by Smiths or Morrissey song titles, including San Antonio's Girl in a Coma, Seattle's Pretty Girls Make Graves, England's Ordinary Boys and the Bananarama-spinoff Shakespeare's Sister.
THE NAZZ: Todd Rundgren's early band named itself after "The Nazz Are Blue," a scorching blues-rock song by the Yardbirds in their Jeff Beck days. Unbeknownst to Rundgren at the time, the Yardbirds were tipping their hats to another recording, "The Nazz," a retelling of the Jesus of Nazareth story by American comic Lord Buckley.
GODSMACK: The Grammy-nominated metal band was partly inspired by Alice in Chain's "God Smack," a 1992 tune about heroin that probably owes a debt to the British slang term "gobsmacked," meaning dumbstruck.
COCTEAU TWINS: While the name is an obvious homage to French writer-artist Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), the '80s group actually got it from "Cocteau Twins," a song by Johnny & the Self-Abusers, a fellow Scottish band who morphed into Simple Minds.
THE WALLFLOWERS: Although Jakob Dylan doesn't like to talk about his famous dad, he did name his group after the old man's 1971 song "Wallflower." Other Dylan-inspired band names include Judas Priest ("The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest") and the punk group Firehose ("Subterranean Homesick Blues").
THE ROLLING STONES: Mick, Keith and the boys borrowed half their act from American blues, including their name, which comes from Muddy Waters' 1950 tune "Rollin' Stone." Then again, Waters also pilfered parts of "Rollin' Stone" from the standard "Catfish Blues." Other 1960s names inspired by the blues include Canned Heat (from Tommy Johnson's "Canned Heat Blues") and the Lovin' Spoonful (from lyrics in Mississippi John Hurt's "Coffee Blues").
