Some great songs never made it onto an album, instead languishing on the flip-side of a single. In this series I examine some terrific songs that didn’t make it onto a studio album. Some have since been recognised as part of the artists’ canon, others are still obscure.
Feel free to send ideas for b-sides to cover.
Iron Maiden’s third album, The Number of the Beast, was made under time pressure. The group had five weeks to record their first album with new lead singer Bruce Dickinson. The single ‘Run to the Hills’ was released in advance…
Van Morrison is a prolific recording artist, releasing more than 40 studio albums during his solo career, as well as fronting Them in the 1960s. He recorded a lot of non-album material, but his only non-album b-side that I’m aware…
Scott Walker is one long-time favourite artist who I’ve barely mentioned on this site (edit – I have now). Born Noel Scott Engel, in Ohio, he moved to London and fronted vocal heartthrob group The Walker Brothers. When the trio…
There was a lot of great pop music in the 1960s, and Birmingham psychedelic rock band The Move are overlooked among the rush. They never made an impression in the US where the band they morphed into, Electric Light Orchestra,…
Sometimes a record is so jammed with great songs that something worthy has to be shipped out to a b-side. Despite its huge success, Peter Gabriel’s So isn’t one of those records. Singles like ‘Red Rain’ and ‘Sledgehammer’ are terrific,…
Faith No More have covered a lot of ground over their career – in particular, 1995’s King for a Day… Fool for a Lifetime utilises a different genre for every track. Mike Patton is one of the most talented vocalists…
Arnold Dorsey struggled to break into the music industry until he was advised to adopt a more interesting stage name. Dorsey took the name Engelbert Humperdinck from the German composer of Hansel and Gretel. Already in his early thirties, the…
Universally beloved soul singer Bill Withers passed away this week. He came from the small coal mining town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, and spent his early career in the Navy. His career as a professional musician was notably short…
Power pop band Fountains of Wayne was formed by Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood – they took their name from a now-defunct lawn ornament store in New Jersey. Apart from one fluke hit (2003’s ‘Stacy’s Mom’) they were never huge…
‘La Bamba’ is a traditional Mexican folk song, from the state of Veracruz. Ritchie Valens, a 17 year old rising star, converted the tune to rock and roll. It’s one of the best known Spanish language tunes in the rock…
It’s a long way to the top (if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll), and Australian hard rock band AC/DC spent much of the 1970s building their profile. They cracked the big time with 1979’s Highway to Hell, which peaked at…
Of all the b-sides that I’ve covered in this series, Elvis Presley’s cover of ‘Mystery Train’ is the most iconic. It was voted on a 2003 Rolling Stone as the 77th greatest song of all time, an astounding feat for…
Marillion were named after JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, and were formed in 1979. Early Marillion were often compared to the progressive-rock era of Genesis – lead vocalist Fish’s theatricality was similar to Peter Gabriel. The core lineup of guitarist Steve…
Patti Smith was one of the first punk artists to make a record. 1975’s Horses, produced by John Cale, was a confronting album. Musically it drew from 1960s garage-rock, while lyrically it was provocative. Smith was clearly influential on an…
The Cure have been around for more than forty years, with leader Robert Smith the only constant member. The band formed in Crawley, West Sussex, in 1976, and have covered a lot of ground over their career, from the Gothic…
The b-side is often a British commodity, but one American artist was the equal of any British artist with the quantity and quality of his outtakes. Prince was so prolific that he released 70 official non-album b-sides, as well as…
Canadian power-pop band The Pursuit of Happiness scored a surprise top 40 hit in 1986 with their independent single ‘I’m An Adult Now’, helped by a low-budget, self-produced music video. The Toronto-based group signed with Chrysalis Records to make their…
The Kinks formed in Muswell Hill, London, in 1964. They launched their career with hard-driving rock and roll like ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night’, songs that are considered as landmarks in the development…
In The Beatles, George Harrison often suffered the indignity of being limited to two songs per LP. It worked fine at the start of the group, when he was the junior partner in the band. By the end of The…
Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is one of the great cult records. Issued in 1998, it’s full of enigmatic lines, like “Now she’s a little boy in Spain/Playing pianos filled with flames”, and Jeff Mangum’s raw…
Cat Stevens‘ work has endured because his low-key songs are relateable and accessible. Stevens has explored different styles over the course of his career – he started as a teen pop idol in the 1960s, and moved towards progressive rock…
The Police were arguably the greatest singles band of their era. In the late 1970s and early 1980s they released a string of great songs – ‘Roxanne’, ‘Message in a Bottle’, ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, and ‘Every…
American rock icon Bruce Springsteen celebrated his 70th birthday this week. This means it’s half a lifetime since he released his most commercially successful album, 1984’s Born in the USA. A decade earlier, 1975’s Born to Run had launched Springsteen…
It’s the year of Our Lord 2019, and we’re rapidly approaching peak-rock-star-death era. The Cars’ mastermind Ric Ocasek passed away earlier this week. I was surprised to learn that he was 75, older than many of the stars that he…