Parenting & Family Quote by Robyn Hitchcock

Hitchcock’s line lands like a throwaway aphorism, but it’s really a small manifesto about authorship. Comparing an untitled song to an unnamed child is deliberately provocative: it drags the cozy myth of “the music speaks for itself” into the messy human world where things need labels to be recognized, remembered, argued over, and loved. A title isn’t decoration; it’s the first piece of story the artist gives the listener, the handle that lets a slippery, time-based experience become a thing you can point to.

The subtext is about power and vulnerability. Naming is an act of claiming: you pull a song out of the private fog of noodling, demos, and half-formed feelings and grant it citizenship in public culture. Hitchcock, long associated with idiosyncratic, literate psychedelia, knows that titles can function like stage lighting. They frame the mood, cue the irony, and set expectations before a single chord lands. Even the “wrong” title can be productive; it creates friction that makes listeners listen harder, searching for the connection.

Context matters, too. In recorded music, songs travel as metadata as much as sound. Radio requests, setlists, streaming libraries, cover versions, royalty statements: all of it depends on names. An unnamed song becomes harder to share, harder to archive, easier to lose. Hitchcock’s metaphor insists that identity is not just essence, it’s interface - the bridge between creation and community. In an era of endless tracks and algorithmic drift, naming is how a song refuses to be disposable.