On his album show recently, Simon Mayo played Badhead by Blur; I’d forgotten what a lovely tune it is. It would never have been a hit single, but, in its own quiet way, it works brilliantly in the context of the album. Any other songs like this that you’re fond of?
Great album tracks… that genuinely work as album tracks
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This Is A Low from the same album. Brilliant way to end an album and would never have worked as a single. One of my absolute favourites of theirs
Weird. Played the album for the first time in absolutely ages yesterday. And Badhead always my favourite actually along with This is a Low. Brilliant album
But to answer the question, it basically comes down to album tracks that one likes. I have thousands of them
It’s a really good album isn’t it, possibly their most consistent, notwithstanding the overplayed ubiquity of the title track and Girls And Boys. Jubilee and Trouble In The Message Centre are terrific as well.
I could quite happily never hear the title track again but the rest of the album is chock full of great tunes
New Order – All Day Long from the under-appreciated LP, Brotherhood.
Barney’s best lyric, and his best attempt at singing, and everybody else seems to be pulling in the same direction.
One of my favourite tracks ever. I love how it builds and builds …
Sequenced strings (possibly an Emulator keyboard) with a definite Prokofiev vibe. I remember the sheer vast sound of it when they played this and Bizarre Love Triangle in the SFX Dublin. It was epic!
What a coincidence @fentonsteve This was exactly the track that popped into my head when I saw the title of the post. I just couldn’t remember what it was called.
Great minds, etc.
Great track. Right up there with their best, ie Love Vigilantes, Your Silent Face, Dream Attack and Ceremony.
Yeah, Dream Attack and Vanishing Point are a great way to end the album. I remember seeing them at the G-Mex gig when they played those two for the first time
Technique is one of my absolute all time favourite albums. Would have loved to have been at that G Mex gig!
Fingers crossed for a Technique box set next year
Sunrise is a great buried New Order track. Not one that ever gets talked about, but seems to exemplify their sound
https://www.thesdeshop.com/collections/new-order-1?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=email&_kx=QUA_foPBcsYb4SbazJHF6dfirfj9LtOTZa7kqTJir78.H3pGub
I’m with @dai on this we’ve all got our favourite album tracks which work just for us great subject though
Trouble my mind is bombarded with hundreds of songs when I attempt to list just 5 or 6
Per the recent vinyl thread, one of the albums I ended up grabbing was Disintegration by The Cure.
Disintegration opens, of course, with Plainsong, and Plainsong is a brilliant tune, but it works at the apex of its strengths as an album opener. That icy, panoramic sweep of synths emerging out of all the chimes, a chill wind blowing into the room promising gloom and glory in equal measure.
You can stick it on a playlist, you can listen to it on its own, but Plainsong was very evidently built to kick off an album, to set a mood and to lead the listener through the back of the wardrobe and into the gothic fantasy lands that lie beyond.
Good shout, Bingo. I feel the same way about I Wanna Be Adored, by the Stone Roses, which Silvertone ruined by actually releasing it as a single.
See also Suede’s Introducing the Band.
I think The Smiths could feature here. A lot of my favourite tracks of theirs are album only, but to me it is where they are strongest.
First to jump to mind today is this absolute stormer:
Big yes. My first thought was ‘Rusholme Ruffians” as a superb track that makes most sense on the middle of side one.
I’d go for the full 3 parts of Down in the Sewer, the Stranglers song that closes side 2 of Rattus Norvegicus.
more Stranglers … Tank
I really don’t need to hear Come On Eileen again … but in the context of the Too-Rya-Ay album, it just works pugged away at the end
Similarly, DYWM on Dare.
If Blur are mentioned, then Oasis won’t be far behind.
Married With Children, last track on Definitely Maybe.
Shorn of the bombast and multi tracking of the rest of the album, and closes things out nicely
I like it when really good albums save the longest and /or most “epic” track till last. Damn The Torpedoes does that with Louisiana Rain; The Up Escalator with The Beating Of Another Heart; Born To Run with Jungleland; Hotel California with The Last Resort; The Doors with The End; Peter Gabriel 3 with Biko: Shades with Cloudy Day; Wilder with The Great Dominions.
All great shouts
The Ruts S/T – “It Was Cold”.
Julian Cope on Saint Julian – “A Crack In The Clouds”
Purple Rain with…
Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses took me a long time to like. It’s cold and sparse with some slow and experimental-sounding songs which would never be singles. And there’s this – PIMPF – a piano-led instrumental that builds and builds. It opened the live show before the band could be seen behijnd the curtains. The opening notes prompted the entire crowd to obediently rise to their feet.
Yes, a really good choice.
Watching Wales playing Belgium last night, I heard the band in the crowd do a brass band-type rendition of Just Can’t Get Enough. How brilliant it would have been if they’d done Pimpf instead.
There seems to be a debate over what the repeated phrase being sung is. Officially it’s an instrumental with no lyrics. I always heard it as “Oh! Dear!” – which would indeed be a great thing to hear a football crowd sing when England are 1 down against Latvia after 96 minutes…
Moonlight Mile on Sticky Fingers. A gem that bring another dimension to the album.
I Just Wanna See His Face on Exile. Similarly another departure that adds to that gospel feel.
I was thinking of Moonlight Mile as I scrolled down.
The much maligned It’s Only Rock n’ Roll album has cuts at the end of both sides that are atypical Stones and all the better for that – two of my all time favourites, Time Waits for No One and Fingerprint File.
I feel It’s Only Rock n’ Roll is very underrated — I love both the tracks you mention, alongside “Till The Next Goodbye” and “If You Really Want to Be My Friend”,* oh, and “Dance Little Sister” for Charlie’s drumming.
*If you were being picky, you could argue that “Time Waits for No One” and “If You Really Want to Be My Friend” are variations on “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and “Let it Loose” respectively.
Definitely agree on those two.
Another Satellite from XTC’s Skylarking is one that does it for me every time. Although it definitely feels a bit different to the rest of the album I can’t imagine it not being there…its spacey, synthy music and wistful sounding vocals almost but not quite disguise some quite cutting lyrics about his then extra-marital girlfriend, (now long term partner) and apparently Andy Partridge didn’t want it on the album at all, but Virgin insisted. In this instance, they were right.
An unusual choice, perhaps. Anyone familiar with Syd Barret’s The Madcap Laughs will know already that it can be quite an uncomfortable listen, the sound of an unravelling cortex. As side 2 unfolds it gets almost intrusively so, with botched starts etc, all recorded for posterity. Then, right at the end comes Late Night, which is like a sudden eye in the brainstorm, an oasis of peace and one of the finest songs in the entire Floyd canon. Sadly the reality is more mundane, the track peddled together over around a year, all the gloss overdubbed some time after the vocal. But it is still a tremendous way to lull the earlier frayed nerves of hearing what happens if you don’t say no.
Retro and I find common ground on the unlikely subject of Syd…
I will also champion the beguiling final album, “Barrett”; things like the lovely “Wined and Dined” and “Waving My Arms in the Air” work best as part of the entire side, although it is another painful listen up close.
Leave this City by The Sundays, from Static and Silence. It’s the perfect song in the right place. Not sure it would work out of context.
Teardrop Explodes’ The Great Dominions. It could never have been a single but might just be the best thing they ever did.
Excellent pick… “Wilder” tends to get lost in the shadow of “Kilimanjaro”, (geddit?), but for me the former is a better album, not least due to that track (trivia: “The Great Dominions” was the original album title, but was changed just before release…)
I came here myself to post Julian Cope’s “Kolly Kibber’s Birthday” from the “World Shut Your Mouth” LP, a track totally out of kilter with the rest of the album, yet serves as the perfect mid-album tentpole…
Sweetness Follows on Automatic for the People. Just gorgeous, but can’t hear Bruno Brookes cueing it up, can you?
English Rose – is it a great track? I think so, maybe it’s “nearly great” … but it don’t fit on All Mod Cons
Stereolab’s motorik “Jenny Ondioline” doesn’t get going as an edited single and it flopped, but it’s the heart of the second album “Transient Random Noise…”