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You’ve not heard the album version? You are in for a treat.

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Very simple. Post the different – maybe even superior – album version of a track we know well from the single/radio version. Obviously not if they are exactly the same. But from ooooh lets say the mid-sixties when albums really got going to the end of the eighties a surprising amount of tracks were chopped down/re-edited to fit radio formats. Here’s one that I am guessing you know from its endless airplay, but check out the last minute when Quincy’s band appear to say ‘enough with the yelps Michael, time for us to groove’.

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Comments

  1. The obvious answer is this:

    Beautiful South – Don’t Marry Her

    The song itself is the same, although the backing track sounds somehow cleaner (?).

    This is one of the many radio edits that exist to get rid of naught words, but some still make it through. The Jam’s Thats Entertainment (“pissing down with rain on a boring Wednesday”) and Funeral Pyre (“pissing themselves laughing”) can be heard freely on Radio 2 (albeit, not that often).
    As do The Rolling Stones on Start Me Up (“You make a dead man come”).

    • There are two good examples of this of the first TBS album. Song For Whoever is extended rather bonkersly, and the great Sail This Ship Alone was rerecorded for 45. The single version – and therefore the one on Carry On Up The Charts – is not anything like as good.

      In a related band, check out the radically different single and LP versions of the Housemartins’ Flag Day.

  5. A few spring to mind. The single version of “Heroes” lacks the best verse; the single version of Meatloaf’s ‘You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth’ doesn’t have the spoken intro; the single version of Sweet’s ‘Love Is Like Oxygen’ doesn’t have the fiddly acoustic guitar bit in the middle; and the single version of Manfred Mann’s Blinded By The Light doesn’t have the “mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun, but mama… that’s where the fun is!” bit.

  6. Contender for the “most severe edit ever”.

    The Doors – Light My Fire
    album version = 7 minutes
    single version = 3 minutes (the whole middle section is ripped out)

    If someone was only ever aware of the 3 minute version, then the full version is a treat. If all they know is the full version, the single version is like decaffeinated coffee (just about acceptable, but missing so much of the good stuff)

    • Kraftwerk…. I used to have the 1982 UK single of Showroom Dummies – edited down from six minutes to less than two. Ditto the B-side, Numbers.

      It was gloriously loud and – as with the hit single of Autobahn – rather a clever bit of editing.

    • The single edit of Light My Fire was just really crudely done, chopping out the organ solo and most of the guitar solo. My favourite bit of the album version is Krieger’s guitar coming in at the end of Manzerak’s solo.
      I was also less than happy discovering that the version of The End on the Best of The Doors cd was the Apocalypse Now edit and not the original from their debut album.

      • IIRC, Jac Holzman talked about this on a Word podcast. There was no way the whole track (Light my Fire) could be issued on a single and played on the radio at the time. The cut made was deemed to be an acceptable compromise.

  9. The single version of Gaga’s Bad Romance snips out the bit of the middle eight sung in French (“Je veux ton amour, et je veux ta revenge, je veux ton amour”). It’s only a little old bit, but it makes a big difference, and when I hear this version on the radio its absence ruins the song for me.

  10. Bowie had a few, “Heroes” mentioned above. I prefer the single version of Let’s Dance. Also edited were DJ and Ashes to Ashes. Fashion too I believe.

    • The recent ‘Nothing Has Changes’ comp revealed the uncommonly brutal treatment meted out to the Dame’s singles over the years. As well as Heroes, Let’s Dance, Ashes to Ashes etc are brutal edits of Fashion as Dai mentions and a proper bodge job on Young Americans


  11. Actually I don’t think this was the Bro’ in Arms version, being the 12 inch, but then came in on ‘Greatest Hits” and is a corker for that trumpet intro, c/o Brecker brother, Randy ahead of trained bother , Michael, on sax.

  14. Thunderclap Newman, those Something In The Air hitmakers, had a rather charming follow-up with Accidents.

    The 4 minute single version was not only much shorter than the lengthy nine minute album version, but it was a different recording too.

    Single version:

    Album Version:

  16. Just to show that I have actually read the OP, this I think is a very good example. The single is a fine little record, but the rerecorded LP version is in a whole other league.

    After the song proper, it broadens out into Panavision with a Jools Holland piano solo so glorious that I can almost forgive him for ruining every New Years Eve.

    https://youtu.be/dz50N2_tCCg

  17. Working Week’s fine single Venceremos (feat Tracey Thorn and Robert Wyatt) was a mere 3.54 minutes.

    The full length version is a glorious 10 minutes long and the jazzers get jazzing.

  19. In the era that interests me most there are several examples of tantalisingly rare different single versions of things on albums – re-recordings, different edits – sometimes even longer edits on the singles.

    One example of the latter is the rare 1973 Duffy Power single ‘Liberation’, a minute and a half longer than the album version from the accompanying LP ‘Duffy Power’ – which was only about 30 mins long in total. There was also a different single version of ‘Little Soldiers’, another track from the same LP. Bizarre.

    There was also, in 1968, a re-recorded single version of Mike Westbrook’s 8 minute LP track ‘Original Peter’ (yes, an era when jazz singles were released), which now costs £300+ if you can find a copy. And it’s never been on CD either, as far as I know.

    It’s been tricky to find The Who’s single edit of ‘Won’t Get Fooleed Again’ on CD until this year’s ‘Hits 50’ comp. Lots of people hate the single edit, but I think it’s terrific – cleverly done.

    I mentioned a few months back here that I had remarkable luck in finding US promo single versions of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s ‘Open Country Joy’ and ‘Sister Andrea’ (both 1973). I’m not sure OCJ has ever been documented as existing on US promo single before. And both are exclusive edits, and exhilaratingly so! Neither has ever been on CD thus far – probably because they have been forgotten about.

    Here’s Mike Westbrook, the LP version…

    • A feature of the cd era is “Greatest Hits” albums mostly using album cuts instead of single edits. This can throw up a treat, but I prefer my hits to be the hits and, in the iTunes etc era, individual album tracks are readily available anyway.
      3 from me:
      I prefer the neater version of Bizarre Love Triangle on Lowlife
      I prefer the great messy racket that is Wrote For Luck on Bummed
      The 45 of I Can’t Help Myself by Orange Juice is a nice cup of tea without the added chocolate digestive provided by the sunshine horns of the full length album version…

    • Cat People is a great choice. OST single good, OST album full 643 of Moroder great.

      Let’s Dance version. Now let’s just move along, nothing to see here. MCA refused to let him use the OST version on Let’s Dance. So he just made a rubbish version of his own. I think the key thing here is that it’s a Moroder track that Bowie then wrote some lyrics for and sung.

  24. Depeche Mode’s singles Enjoy the Silence, Personal Jesus, World in my Eyes and Policy of Truth on Violator are far more satisfying that the singles on their own. They are surrounded by interludes and atmospheric pieces and bits added on.

  25. The album version of ‘Crimson and Clover’ has an extended instrumental section, which maybe detracts from the pop impact of the 45 , but there you go.

    And while we are in the late sixties, the original 45 of Family’s second single is a different mix to the album (no phasing, stronger vocals): it has never been professionally reissued, even on the official CD.

  26. Going quite well this thread. Here’s another I thought of posting. The single version is beloved of US sports coverage, and movie soundtracks. The full album version contains an astonishing second half vocal performance done apparently in one take by Kathy Sledge:

  29. Thank god for the edited version –
    Turning Quicksilver Messenger Service’s Who Do You Love from 25 minutes of self-indulgent wankery down to one of of the greatest examples of 60’s West Coast psychedelia at around 5 minutes. Mind you, I did my own edit from the album version which came in at just over 4 minutes and, to these ears, was even better.

  31. The Raisin’ Hell version of Walk This Way gives you more than the MTV-familiar 45: more guitar and, crucially, the original drum break that Jay to cut the record in the first place. And very belated props to the ‘Smiths for getting on board with this when most rockers (especially in the US) regarded hip-hop as not real music.

  33. The edited single version of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” isn’t a patch on the full album version, as it omits the spoken word section in the middle (which features Stevie’s brother Calvin Hardaway getting framed, and then arrested by a racist cop).

  34. Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, which sometimes feels to me like the finest single by the finest band of ’em all, has a lovely instrumental reprise on the All Mod Cons album version….

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