3 Indie Artists Named After Real-Life Historical Figures

Good band names and pseudonyms can be difficult to come by. But the music world is full of artists who plucked their names from history. And though these historical figures are already famous, or infamous depending on the person, the old names become much more associated with their current holders.

Whether that’s due to recency bias or the fact that you slept through history class is beside the point. Because today we celebrate three indie artists named after real-life historical figures.

The Dandy Warhols

Portland’s psych-rock heroes, The Dandy Warhols, are not a subtle bunch. Led by Courtney Taylor-Taylor, the band emerged in the late 1990s. They were neither grunge, post-grunge, nor remotely concerned with current trends. With Andy Warhol as a muse and with Warhol’s iconic banana art from the first Velvet Underground LP, The Dandys survived a chaotic history with The Brian Jonestown Massacre and scattered Brit-centric bangers across a multitude of Capitol Records releases.

“Bohemian Like You” is their biggest hit. But also check out “Styggo”, an infectious 2016 highlight from their post-EMI years. The Dandys continue, and as they once put it, are sound.

Franz Ferdinand

Rock and roll after The Strokes’ debut, Is This It, produced many like-minded bands. But Glasgow’s Franz Ferdinand, named after the archduke of Austria, whose assassination helped trigger World War I, was different. They had more in common with Talking Heads than The Stooges, and the band’s breakthrough single, “Take Me Out”, with its elastic tempo and crushing riff, remains a touchstone of the era’s garage rock revival. But this was no one-hit wonder. “This Fffire” and “Do You Want To” show how these Scots perfected the art of danceable punk.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Before releasing I See A Darkness under the moniker Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Will Oldham had recorded music under various iterations of Palace (including Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, and Palace Music). Oldham wanted a name with the lovely ring of Bonnie Prince Charlie and Nat King Cole, which is how he landed on the sobriquet of Charles Edward Stuart. Also known as the Young Pretender, Charles led the unsuccessful 18^th-century Jacobite rising to reclaim the British throne for the House of Stuart. He remains immortalized in folk ballads and poetry as a kind of hero. An equally tragic figure, he’s also now adjacently preserved in Oldham’s quivering country gems.

Photo by Naomi Rahim/WireImage