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Non-album singles

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After eventually clicking on The Jam documentary that’s been sitting on TiVo for a couple of years I’ve spent the last week re-living the band that meant the world to when I was miserable schoolboy.
Of course, those were the precious years when singles ruled the musical landscape, and coolest bands didn’t put all of them on their LPs, so you didn’t end up paying twice for the same song.
The tune I’ve been humming is Strange Town – Weller’s bittersweet tribute to the capital that he’d loved from afar, and then seemingly fallen out of love with after rubbing up against the big boys of ‘76 and ‘77.
Ignoring later greatest hits round-ups, let’s have some love for stand-alone 45s.

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Comments

  2. The correct answer is, of course, The Clash’s Complete Control, a non-album single all about being told to release a single from an album. However, in keeping with your ‘How good were The Jam??!’ theme, voila…..

    and again…

  4. The Jam were serial stand-aloners:
    All Around The World
    News Of The World
    Strange Town
    When You’re Young
    Going Underground / Dreams Of Children
    Funeral Pyre
    Absolute Beginners
    The Bitterest Pill I Ever Had to Swallow
    Beat Surrender

    None of ’em available on album until the Snap compilation

  5. The Smiths did a number of stand-alone singles, and then let themselves down by releasing a compilation (Hatfil Of Hollow and The World Won’t Listen) and placing them on albums – in the band’s lifetime

    Hand in Glove
    This Charming Man
    Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now
    William, It Was Really Nothing
    How Soon Is Now?
    Shakespeare’s Sister
    Panic
    Ask
    Shoplifters of the World Unite
    Sheila Take a Bow

  6. Undertones – Teenage Kicks.
    It was not on the original album, but Sire must’ve insisted as it ended up on the re-issued debut (just 6 months after the release of the first version)

  8. Joy Division – Transmission, Love Will Tear Us Apart, and Atmosphere. NOT on albums
    (unless you count the Live versions of the first 2 on Still)

    But no album home for this one:

  9. Plenty by New Order too, discounting compilations:

    Ceremony
    Procession
    Everything’s Gone Green
    Temptation
    Blue Monday
    Confusion
    Thieves Like Us
    Touched By The Hand Of God
    World In Motion

  16. Re: post above … Honky Tonk Women … has any song in the history of pop music been misspelt more often?

    Not one of the Stones’ 15 a-sides from 63 to 69 appeared on a studio album.

    If you’d bought all 15 45s, the 3 EPs and the 8 studio LPs, you’d repeat only Little By Little and Off the Hook. I think we can agree the two versions of You Can’t Always Get What You Want are wildly different from each other.

    Take all the anti-Decca stuff they continue to peddle with a massive pinch of salt.
    The lack of value for money happened after 69.

    • I think Decca became a problem in their eyes simply because they were an establishment record company, and this came to a head with the Beggar’s Banquet cover (incidentally, in my view Decca were right – the toilet cover is awful), as well as demanding they actually delivered product. After they left there were also all those dodgy compilations which they were miffed about, which was probably justified, and Decca rejected proposals from the band for decent ones.

      I’m still unclear as to why the Decca masters are such an issue – I think they were originally owned by the band and leased to Decca, and Allen Klein then got hold of them when he was managing their affairs and they are now still owned by ABKCO. It beats me why they can’t co-operate on archival releases of the unreleased stuff as surely this would benefit all parties..?

  17. Joe Jackson has recently reminded us of the qualities of XTC.
    So let’s have one of their non-album singles: “Wait till Your Boat Goes Down”
    I still have the single. Love the “matchbox” design of the cover.

  20. I can’t quite recall Bob Stanley’s remarks on Abba. It was something like Ulvaeus/Andersson sweated blood to create 12 killers a year – 45s and deep cuts – for the guts of a decade. Berry Gordy nods approvingly in Palm Springs with a semi-evil grin spreading across his face.

    A favourite non-album single of mine is EWF’s ‘September’. I can’t link to it from here but as Eddie Murphy said about Stevie Wonder’s Filful-Fitful-Fistful – fuck it, y’all know the one I’m talking about.

    • No, only on the Intro compilation. Along with Babies.

      Talking of which, Babies wasn’t on an album either (but it was on the CD of His n’ Hers). It’s my fave Pulp song.

    • Good Vibrations was supposed to end up on Smile but had to make do with Smiley Smile, at least until Smile was finished. See also Heroes And Villains.

      The Little Girl I Once Knew, however. Proper stand alone.

    • Pink Floyd had a run of non-album singles with non-album B-sides in their early days. Arnold Layne/Candy and the Currant Bun was their recording debut. Apples and Oranges/Paintbox, It Would Be So Nice/Julia Dream and Point Me At the Sky/Careful With that Axe, Eugene were all singles in ’67-’68.
      They also released When the Tigers Broke Free/Bring the Boys Back Home in ’82.

  32. Beatles had a quite a few stand-aloners:
    From Me To You
    She Loves You
    I Want To Hold Your Hand
    I Feel Fine
    We Can Work It Out / Day Tripper
    Paperback Writer
    Strawberry Fields / Penny Lane
    Hello, Goodbye
    Lady Madonna
    Hey Jude
    Get Back
    The Ballad of John and Yoko

  34. Pete Townshends “doomed” Lifehouse project was re-cast and spawned Who’s Next, but it also gave the stand alone singles:
    Join Together
    and
    Relay

    And another attempted Who Project – Rock Is Dead, Long Live Rock gave the titular song as a single

  36. This was the last time Depeche Mode released a standalone single without an accompanying album or compilation. Martin was sick of the constant promotional TV appearances. Can’t think why – he seems to be having a whale of a time here on French TV.

    • Strangest thing happened when I saw them live several years ago. I might have been hypnotised by the experience but when this song started my eyes immediately welled up. I wasn’t knowingly overwhelmed emotionally but I had a moment where I had to sort myself out because of the sudden tears.

      • It’s quite a beautiful tune, almost like something from children’s television, and a nice coda to their imperial Hutter-Schneider-Bartos-Flur period.

        Europe Endless does that for me, and not just because of what it means, and the middle bit of Computer Love…. not least because I know that the psychedelic brutalism of Home Computer / It’s More Fun To Compute it just around the corner.

        Kraftwerk! Land of contrasts!

    • It was on the reissued version from mid-1981 that swapped out the original cover for a literal photo of the mountain that rises like Olympus upon the Serengeti. I got this version of the album as a 14th birthday present from my mam and dad. Their eternal rest at God’s right hand is condign reward for having such a hoormaster of a son.

      Further observation from the screenshot in the previous post: tread warily when buying a sheepskin flying jacket in your middle years. If you’re lucky, the jeers will be limited to ‘Julian Cope’s really let himself go, hasn’t he?’ and ‘Bane has really let himself go, hasn’t he?’

      • ’tis true, but when they started re-issuing on CD in the 90s, they reverted to the original track-listing, with Reward as a bonus track. My copy remarks somewhat bizarrely that this was from a Japanese mini-album, like we might not have heard it before.

  41. The singular and albumular existence of Sweet were different worlds.
    All those big Chapman/Chinn singles were homeless:
    Little Willy
    Wig-Wam Bam
    Block Buster!
    Hell Raiser
    The Ballroom Blitz
    Teenage Rampage

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