10 Utterly Bizarre Album Titles (And What They Really Mean)

6. System Of A Down €“ Steal This Album!

Released in 2002, System Of A Down's Steal This Album! is an album with a title that is considerably more complex than it first appears. Coupled with the album artwork of a blank disc with the band's name and the album's title scrawled across the front in black marker, it made for quite the statement back in the early 2000s when music piracy was only really beginning to become a serious problem. The title itself is a double-edged reference. On the one hand, it's a reference to the Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book, which is commonly regarded as a classic example of counterculture literature (counterculture is a subculture whose values differ greatly from those of mainstream society, something which System Of A Down absolutely encapsulates). On the other, it's a direct response to the album itself. In early 2002, the whole album was leaked onto the internet under the name Toxicity II, despite the fact it wasn't finished and most of the songs were merely demos. The band worked, then, to finish the album and release it properly, prompting the title's sly reference to the leak.