Songs With a Color in the Title
Songs with a color in the title work best when the color is the idea rather than decoration. Prince's "Purple Rain", Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black", Coldplay's "Yellow" and New Order's "Blue Monday" are the four that always come up first, and the rest of the spectrum is where a round is actually won.
One song per color, so this covers the spectrum instead of stacking six blues. The reason next to each pick is the part worth disagreeing with.
If you only play one
Prince - Purple Rain (1984)
The colour is the whole idea rather than a word in the title, which is the bar every other pick on this list has to clear.
Filter
Clean and explicit are Spotify's own markings on the track, not our judgement, so the flag matches what a school or club system will see.
- 01
Prince - Purple Rain
1984
The most complete answer to the prompt. Purple was not a mood anyone had claimed before this song, and it has belonged to Prince ever since.
Clean - 02
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
2006
Black as a destination rather than a color. The 60s girl-group arrangement makes the title land harder, because nothing about the production sounds bleak.
Explicit - 03
Coldplay - Yellow
2000
Yellow is the hardest color to make sound romantic and this is the only song that has managed it. The guitar tone does most of the work.
Clean - 04
New Order - Blue Monday
1983
The best-selling 12-inch single ever pressed, and the color in the title is the only warm thing about it. Everything else is drum machine.
Clean - 05
Taylor Swift - Red
2012
The whole song is a color-coded emotional system, which is a bolder use of a title than naming something that happens to be red.
Clean - 06
Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Green Onions
1962
Instrumental, so the title is doing all of the naming. It means nothing and it fits perfectly, which is a trick nobody has repeated.
Clean - 07
Cream - White Room
1968
The wah-heavy solo is what people remember, but the title sets a scene in two words and the lyric never has to describe the room again.
Clean - 08
Spandau Ballet - Gold
1983
One-word title, one idea, and a chorus that has outlived the band by four decades. Every sports montage in Britain owes it money.
Clean - 09
Fleetwood Mac - Silver Springs
1976
Cut from Rumours and buried on a B-side, which is why it still feels like a secret. Silver is a place name here and a threat by the last verse.
Clean - 10
R.E.M. - Orange Crush
1988
The strongest orange in popular music and the least obvious pick on this list. The title is a soft drink and Agent Orange at the same time.
Clean - 11
Frank Ocean - Pink + White
2016
Two colors in one title and a Pharrell arrangement that sounds exactly like them. Beyoncé is on the outro, which most people never notice.
Clean - 12
Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl
1967
Brown is the color nobody else has made sound good. This has been playing in every bar in the world for fifty years, so it wins the category by default.
Clean - 13
Tommy James and the Shondells - Crimson and Clover
1968
Two colors, one of them barely a color at all. The tremolo on the outro is an early example of an effect that later took over psychedelic music.
Clean - 14
Hole - Violet
1994
The loudest color here. Violet reads as delicate and the song is anything but, which is the entire point of the title.
Clean - 15
Joni Mitchell - Blue
1971
The album and the song, and the only track on this list where the color is treated as a person. The strongest one-word title in the folk canon.
Clean
Settle it properly
Lists are one person's opinion. Put the same question to your friends instead. Everyone submits their answer to
"Song With a Color in the Title"
and the room votes blind on whose pick was best. Free, no account, about four minutes.
Start the BattleHow to win a color round
The instinct is to reach for the biggest song, which is why "Purple Rain" and "Yellow" turn up in every room. Both are correct and neither wins, because a table full of people who all thought of the same track will not vote for it.
The better move is a color nobody else is going to take. Blue, black and red account for most color titles in existence, so anything green, orange, brown or silver arrives with an advantage before it has played a note.
The other route is a song where the color carries a second meaning: "Orange Crush" as a drink and a defoliant, "Back to Black" as a place rather than a shade. That gives you something to say when the vote is close.
The colors nobody picks
Blue dominates song titles by a distance, for the obvious reason that it already means something before the song starts. Black and red follow. That trio covers most of what gets submitted in a title round.
Green, orange, brown and silver are almost empty by comparison, and the songs that do exist tend to be strong precisely because an artist needed a reason to use an awkward color.
The gap is worth knowing. In a room of six people the far end of the spectrum is effectively uncontested, which turns a prompt about titles into a prompt about who thought about it for ten more seconds.
Songs With a Color in the Title, answered
What is the most famous song with a color in the title?
Prince's "Purple Rain" (1984) is the most cited, with Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" (2006) and Coldplay's "Yellow" (2000) close behind. New Order's "Blue Monday" (1983) is the biggest seller of the four.
Which color appears in the most song titles?
Blue, by a wide margin, because it carries a meaning beyond the color itself. Black and red are next. Green, orange and brown are rare enough that a strong pick from one of them usually stands out in a game.
What is a good less obvious song with a color in the title?
R.E.M.'s "Orange Crush", Fleetwood Mac's "Silver Springs" and Booker T. & the M.G.'s "Green Onions" all sit outside the blue, black and red cluster everyone else reaches for.
More lists like this
This list came from our Title Game prompts. Browse all song lists or the full prompt library.
Landed here searching for aux cord wars and the other names? Same game, same rules, and songs with a color in the title work in it the same way. Start at the short version of the game, then the rules and the strategy that wins rounds, and aux battle categories with example prompts for what else you can theme one on. After that, try playing it as a Spotify game.