13 (great) songs with parenthetical titles

Today’s playlist is devoted to one of my absolute favorite musical conventions: the parenthetical song title.

Why use parenthesis when naming a song? There are so many reasons. Sometimes it’s a rather brazen way to remind a listener of the song’s hook, in case the title itself was too obscure: “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” “Doo Wop (That Thing),” “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”

But sometimes (and these are my favorite times) the motives are a bit more inscrutable. Does “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” really need that parenthesis? Would we not know what the Quad City DJs are singing about without the clarification “C’Mon ’N Ride It (The Train)”? Are the Kinks making fun of this whole convention with “(A) Face in the Crowd”?

Plus, when we’re saying these song titles aloud, are we supposed to pause between title and subtitle, or just say the whole thing like a run-on sentence? Will you know which song I’m talking about when I say “Movin’ Out” or must I specify, “(Anthony’s Song)”? The mind boggles.

This playlist is here to help you through all that confusion, and to celebrate some of the best and most inventive uses of the parenthetical song title. It features some of the obvious ones, from the likes of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and Talking Heads, alongside a few of my lesser-known personal favorites from Charli XCX, Sonic Youth and more. I hope it provides at least one opportunity for you to (shake, shake, shake) shake your booty.

Listen along on Spotify as you read.

1. Whitney Houston: “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”

In the chorus of one of the most jubilant pop songs ever, Whitney Houston qualifies her initial demand – hey, I didn’t mean just anybody – and lays her heart on the line. Good on her for having high standards on the dance floor.

2. R.E.M.: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”

Michael Stipe learns to stop worrying and love (or at least feel fine about) the bomb in this cheerily apocalyptic hit from R.E.M.’s 1987 album “Document.” There are already so many words in this song, the parentheses seem to shrug, what’s a few more in the title?

3. My Chemical Romance: “I’m Not OK (I Promise)”

Gerard Way is (really, really, really) not OK in this 2004 emo-pop anthem, which asks listeners to imagine a sonic alternate universe in which Freddie Mercury fronted the Misfits. Though the parenthetical promise doesn’t appear in the song’s lyrics, it appropriately kicks up the overall feeling of excess and garrulous melodrama.

4. Charli XCX: “You (Ha Ha Ha)”

This title is poetry to me. From “True Romance,” the 2013 album by one of my favorite “middle class” pop stars, “You (Ha Ha Ha)” is a beautifully scathing kiss-off – as if the very mention of this person’s existence were an inside joke not even worth explaining. Savage.

5. Bob Dylan: “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)”

When it comes to parenthetical titles – as with just about every other element of songwriting – Bob Dylan is an expert. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” is an all-timer; “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” is a classic; “Do Right to Me Baby (Do Unto Others)” is a clever co-mingling of the sacred and profane. But this one, from his 1964 album “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” is probably my favorite. I love the way the title switches from second to third person inside the parenthesis, as if he’s turning to the audience in the middle of a conversation and mouthing, “Can you believe her?!” It mimics a similar perspective shift in the song itself, when, in the penultimate verse, Dylan goes from singing about this woman to suddenly singing to her: “If you want me to, I can be just like you,” he sings, “and pretend that we never have touched.”

6. Otis Redding: “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”

Recorded days before his untimely death, the parenthetical prefix of Otis Redding’s enduring swan song not only specifies what he’s doing on the dock of the bay, but it gives that titular setting a human character – eyes through which this languid bayside scene is witnessed.

7. Talking Heads: “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”

When the members of the recently (sort of?) reconciled Talking Heads recorded the instrumental tracks for their 1983 album “Speaking in Tongues,” they gave the demos unofficial titles. But even after David Byrne wrote lyrics to what would become the luminous “This Must Be the Place,” they wanted to honor the track’s original nickname, which expressed both its compositional simplicity and its childlike innocence.

8. Janet Jackson: “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”

I’m a big fan of parenthetical song titles that complete an internal rhyme – see also: Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” – and an even bigger fan of this ecstatic tune from Jackson’s 1989 opus “Rhythm Nation 1814.” That key change gets me every time!

9. Radiohead: “(Nice Dream)”

The members of Radiohead are such fans of parentheses that every single track on their 2003 album “Hail to the Thief” has a subtitle – which is honestly a bit much to keep track of. I prefer this early song from “The Bends,” which has its title entirely encased in parentheses, adding to the song’s liminal, somnambulant feel.

10. Sonic Youth: “Brave Men Run (in My Family)”

Off “Bad Moon Rising,” a strange and eerie early Sonic Youth album of which I am quite partial, this ferocious squall of a song finds Kim Gordon meditating on masculinity, turning it inside out with her sly wordplay, and bellowing each lyric with a warrior’s intensity.

11. The Rolling Stones: “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)”

Perhaps the spiritual inverse of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ later “Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It)”, this 1974 hit contains a truly shocking admission: The Rolling Stones … like rock ’n’ roll? I have to say, I didn’t see that one coming!

12. Aretha Franklin: “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman”

Oh, I could have written an entire women’s studies paper on this one in college. The proper title “A Natural Woman” proposes that there’s such a thing as authentic and essential femininity, but the parenthetical totally upends that notion – the singer doesn’t need to be a natural woman to feel like one. No wonder it’s a drag classic!

13. Meat Loaf: “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”

It’s the Alpha (and Omega) of parenthetical song titles. Thesis and antithesis. It prompts certainly the most profound mystery in all of rock opera, and perhaps in pop music writ large: What. Is. That? Meat Loaf claimed that the answer was hidden in the song itself, and in a 1998 episode of “VH1 Storytellers,” he pulled out a chalkboard and gave a grammar lesson proposing as much. (But I choose to believe the mystery … or maybe the explanation his character gave in “Spice World.”)

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.