Jonas Brothers, BLACKPINK & More Acts That Released Albums With Very Literal Titles

Sometimes, album titles show a great deal of thought. The 1975’s I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It is a title of great complexity and beauty. The full title of Fiona Apple’s 1999 album When the Pawn… is an eight-line poem that contains a whopping 444 characters.

But sometimes artists just like to keep it simple. Real simple. Led Zeppelin’s first four albums were titled Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III and Led Zeppelin IV.

Chicago titled a long series of albums with just the band’s name and the number of studio albums they had released at that point. They kept this up, with just a couple of exceptions, from Chicago II in 1970to Chicago 18 in 1986.

Adele kept it as simple as could be with the titles of her albums 19, 21, 25 and 30 – her ages when she wrote and recorded them.

Then there are the album titles that are quite literal – they tell you exactly what the album is, with no flourishes whatsoever. The latest example is Jonas Brothers’ The Album, which was released today (May 12). As you’ll see below, it’s not the first time an act has titled an album The Album. (Here’s a ranking of all 12 tracks on the album by Billboard writer Hannah Dailey, who, in the spirit of literal titles, could have titled this piece, The Ranking.)

There have been many other examples of literal album titles over the years, as you’ll see when you scroll through this sampling of albums where it’s all right there in the title – with no frills added. All of these albums made the Billboard 200, with peak positions shown below.