Guess the band by emoji

Queen — Freddie Mercury chose the name himself in 1970, specifically because it sounded regal and over-the-top. He then spent the rest of his career making sure the band lived up to it.

The Beatles — John Lennon has said the beat/beetle pun landed almost by accident — early drafts of the name were spelled straight, "Beetles," before the wordplay clicked.

ABBA — It's just the four members' first initials in order — Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Anni-Frid. A Swedish canned-fish company already using the name had to sign off on it first.

Red Hot Chili Peppers — Anthony Kiedis has said the name just felt like the band's onstage energy in three words, settled on in a Hollywood apartment in 1983.

Guns N' Roses — A straight merger of two earlier LA glam bands, Hollywood Rose and L.A. Guns, formed the same night Axl Rose blew up at his other band's manager.

Michael Jackson — The single rhinestone glove first appeared at the 1983 Motown 25 TV special — the same performance that introduced the moonwalk to most of the planet.

Kiss — Each member designed his own painted persona — Starchild, Demon, Spaceman, Catman — and the band reportedly kept their bare faces out of public view for years.

Black Sabbath — Named after a 1963 Boris Karloff horror anthology, after the band — then playing under the name Earth — noticed a line forming for the movie across the street from a gig.

Coldplay — They got it secondhand: a friend's band had considered the name, borrowed from a poem, then dropped it. Chris Martin simply asked if he could have it.

Pink Floyd — Named for two obscure American blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, whose records the founding guitarist happened to own.

AC/DC — Angus and Malcolm Young's sister spotted the letters on the back of her sewing machine — alternating and direct current — and suggested it on the spot.

Metallica — A friend of Lars Ulrich was choosing between "Metal Mania" and "Metallica" for his own fanzine. Ulrich talked him into the first option and kept the second one for the band.

Nirvana — Kurt Cobain has said he wanted something that sounded beautiful rather than menacing — a deliberate swerve from the grim punk-band names of the era.

The Rolling Stones — Picked in a rush before their first gig, straight off a Muddy Waters record spinning on the floor of Brian Jones's flat. The song was 'Rollin' Stone.'

U2 — It made the shortlist mostly because it looked good on a poster and worked as a pun. The other name on serious consideration was "The Hype."

Journey — A radio contest to name the band produced entries like "Rumpled Foreskin." The winning suggestion actually came from their own roadie, after the contest flopped.

Bee Gees — It started as "BG's," honoring a DJ and a promoter who championed the three Gibb brothers early on. The tidier "stands for Brothers Gibb" story came later and just stuck better.

Eagles — The band has said the name nodded to the bird's standing in Native American culture as much as to any rock swagger. Officially, it's never 'The Eagles.'

The Beach Boys — They were called The Pendletones and wanted to stay that way. A record executive changed it on the label without asking, and the band found out when the boxes arrived at their door.

Spice Girls — Posh, Scary, Sporty, Baby and Ginger were all handed out by a magazine editor right after their first single dropped — a shortcut for a writer who did not want to keep listing five names.

Backstreet Boys — Their manager named them after a real Orlando flea market called Backstreet Market — though a couple of members have since said they're not sure that story checks out.

One Direction — Five solo X Factor contestants were grouped together in 2010 and had minutes to agree on a band name before their first live performance.

Destiny's Child — Mathew and Tina Knowles pulled 'destiny' from a passage in the Book of Isaiah, then added 'child' once the single word alone couldn't be trademarked.

TLC — It's both the members' initials — Tionne, Lisa, Crystal, later Chilli — and the phrase their manager handed them on top: tender loving care.

Wu-Tang Clan — RZA borrowed the name from a kung-fu film's rival sword style, then reworked the idea into a metaphor for nine rappers fighting as a single weapon.

Run-D.M.C. — Run's name came from his rapid-fire style on the turntables. DMC's came from how Darryl McDaniels signed his own schoolwork.

Public Enemy — Chuck D titled an early radio demo tape 'Public Enemy No. 1' after feeling targeted by rivals in the local scene. That tape got him signed, and named the group.

Fall Out Boy — An early message-board poll picked the name from a shortlist, borrowed from a minor Simpsons character. Reportedly, the band's own suggestions all lost.

Panic! At The Disco — The exclamation point and the phrase both come from a lyric in a song called "Panic," by the little-known band Name Taken — not, as people usually assume, The Smiths.

My Chemical Romance — Bassist Mikey Way spotted the phrase on a bookstore shelf, on the cover of an Irvine Welsh short-story collection, and it just stuck.

Green Day — 1990s slang for a day spent getting high — a teenage in-joke the band kept as a name well past the point anyone needed it explained.

Linkin Park — Named for an actual Lincoln Park near the band's early studio, respelled with a K purely so they could grab the matching dot-com domain.

System of a Down — Reworked from a Daron Malakian poem called "Victims of a Down." The band swapped in "system" because "victims" felt too bleak to lead with.

Rage Against the Machine — Zack de la Rocha had already written the phrase as a title for an unfinished record with an earlier band, years before Rage existed.

Twenty One Pilots — Pulled from an Arthur Miller play studied in a college theater class — the 21 pilots in the title die because of a factory owner's faulty airplane parts.

Imagine Dragons — It's genuinely an anagram of a private phrase that means something to the band. They have never told anyone, including close friends, what it spells out.

Maroon 5 — They were Kara's Flowers until a label deal and a fifth member arrived at the same time, and a whole new name felt overdue.

OneRepublic — Chosen to sound both patriotic and borderless at once — a deliberate double meaning the band has talked about openly in interviews.

Gorillaz — The world's first fully cartoon band — four animated characters with their own invented backstories, fronting for the real musicians working behind them.

Daft Punk — A scathing review of the members' earlier band called their sound "a daft punky thrash." They kept two of those words and turned the insult into a brand.

Talking Heads — Borrowed from TV studio jargon for a boring head-and-shoulders shot of someone just talking — "all content, no action," as the trade term goes.

The Doors — Taken from Aldous Huxley's book "The Doors of Perception," which itself borrowed its title from a William Blake line about doors of the mind.

Deep Purple — Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore suggested it because it was his grandmother's favorite song, a 1930s standard she used to play on the piano.

Iron Maiden — Named directly after the medieval torture device — a spiked, armored cabinet shaped like a person — which is exactly as cheerful as it sounds.

Judas Priest — A bassist in an earlier band of the same name lifted the phrase from a Bob Dylan lyric. When that group split up, this Judas Priest kept the name going.

Motörhead — Lemmy's last song written for Hawkwind, before they fired him — British slang at the time for a speed freak. He renamed his new band after his own farewell single.

Def Leppard — Singer Joe Elliott sketched "Deaf Leopard" as a joke band name in school, years before the real group existed. The spelling changed once it stopped being a joke.

Foo Fighters — WWII pilots used the term for the mysterious glowing objects that trailed their planes over Europe. Nobody, then or since, has fully explained what they were.

Bob Marley & the Wailers — The lion nods to the Lion of Judah, a central image in the Rastafari faith Marley followed and sang about across his whole career.

Depeche Mode — Lifted from a French fashion magazine the singer used for his day job as a window dresser. It roughly translates to "fashion dispatch," not "fast fashion" as people often assume.

Earth, Wind & Fire — Pulled straight from founder Maurice White's own astrological chart. He swapped 'air' for 'wind' purely because it sounded better out loud.

The Cure — Shortened from an earlier, clunkier band name, Easy Cure, once the group wanted something a listener could actually remember and repeat.

R.E.M. — Picked at random from a dictionary the night the band formed, beating out other names on the shortlist including, reportedly, "Cans of Piss."

Smashing Pumpkins — Billy Corgan has said it arrived in his head fully formed, deliberately uncool on purpose, using "smashing" the old British way — meaning excellent.

Pearl Jam — Eddie Vedder told a colorful story about a great-grandmother's hallucinogenic jam for years before admitting it was invented. The real story is a bassist's suggestion plus one very long Neil Young jam session.

Soundgarden — Named after an actual public sculpture in Seattle — a dozen steel towers fitted with organ pipes that hum whenever the wind moves through them.

BTS — It stands for the Korean phrase for "Bulletproof Boy Scouts" — a name built around deflecting the criticism and pressure aimed at young people.

Weezer — Frontman Rivers Cuomo's dad gave him the nickname as a kid, after either a wheezy chest cold or an old Little Rascals character. Accounts differ, even from Cuomo himself.

No Doubt — Borrowed from original singer John Spence's own verbal tic — he punctuated nearly every sentence with the phrase, and the name outlived him.

Sublime — A Southern California ska-punk trio who just liked how the word sounded. Unlike almost everything else on this list, it is not a pun on anything.