What’s the longest song title? Ask the Rock ‘n’ Roll Book of World Records

Into musical superlatives? Here's a selection of world records from the unofficial book of rock 'n' roll universe.

Sir Hugh Beaver loved to go hunting, and on Nov. 10, 1951, took a shot at a golden plover and missed. An argument arose within the hunting party: Was the golden plover the fastest game bird in Europe? If it was, Sir Beaver had his excuse. But someone else insisted that the true speed champion was the rest grouse, casting aspersions on Sir Beaver’s statement.

That night at the lodge, no amount of research could determine which bird was quicker. This was frustrating.

Returning to his position as the managing director of Guinness Breweries, he commissioned Norris and Ross McWhirter to compile a book that would settle all future debates about the fastest, slowest, biggest, smallest, highest, lowest, and all manner of superlatives of all time. Thus was born The Guinness Book of World Records.

I’ve had a similar idea for the world of music, but I don’t have an international brewery to finance it. Until such time, I present to you possible entries in my book, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Book of World Records.

You might remember Rednex, the Swedish collective that mixed country music with Eurodance, best exemplified by their completely unnecessary cover of Cotton-Eyed Joe. They also wrote a song called The Sad But True Story Of Ray Mingus, The Lumberjack Of Bulk Rock City, And His Never Slacking Stribe In Exploiting The So Far Undiscovered Areas Of The Intention To Bodily Intercourse From The Opposite Species Of His Kind, During Intake Of All The Mental Condition That Could Be Derived From Fermentation. That’s 52 words and 254 characters.

There’s no point in logging the shortest album title because many records aren’t titled at all. As for the longest, some point to a Fiona Apple album from 1999 that begins When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts… and continues for 90 words and 355 characters. Some will point to a Soulwax album from 2007 that starts Most of the Remixes We’ve Done Over the Years… and ends with …Always at Our Studios in Ghent after 103 words and 405 characters.

However, the current champion belongs to England’s Chumbawamba. At the risk of blowing through my allotted word count for these columns, I present it in full here:

The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether from Lack of Ideas or From Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother’s Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don’t Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to ‘Guard’ Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It’s Over, Then It’s Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won.