10 B-sides that should have been on albums
It’s never easy to spot the greatest songs of all time unless it’s in hindsight. Although many artists have been able to make landmark compositions, the songs that ended up defining their legacy are usually reserved for the deep cuts, either being tucked away at the back of an album or released as a lower-tier single at the time of its release. While the single material from acts like Oasis and The Beatles may have been excellent, they did have a few blind spots when relegating songs to B-sides.
When choosing the best material for an album, B-sides are generally reserved for putting out songs that aren’t entirely up to the same standard as what would be released on an album. Although certain B-sides may stand out as strange in a group’s catalogue, there are rare occasions where the flipside of the record could have beaten what the leading single had in store.
Then again, B-sides also give the artists a bit of an opportunity. Outside of the normal expectations of the listening public, musicians often took the time to experiment with what their usual sound was, bringing their audience down elaborate detours or trying out a random genre shift and just seeing where it goes.
Although B-sides may exist for a reason 99% of the time, it was a musical crime that these songs were left out to dry as odds and ends rather than fully fleshed-out songs. They may not have had the immediate staying power as the group’s central singles, but they are much more integral to the band’s story than anyone realised.
10 underrated B-side tracks:
10. ‘Soul to Squeeze’ – Red Hot Chili Peppers
No Red Hot Chili Peppers fan can really complain that the band don’t deliver on every album. Even if they have some songs that aren’t quite up to their usual standard, the sheer size of the band’s albums is more than enough to make up for it, with most of their LPs stretching well beyond an hour. When they made their magnum opus, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, someone had to make the call to let go of one of their most heartbreaking ballads.
Then again, Anthony Kiedis was just starting to get a handle on writing softer material during the group’s 1990s output. While the song ‘Under the Bridge’ marked a significant turning point for the band, they decided that it wouldn’t make sense to have two slow songs in the same vein on the same album, leading to ‘Soul to Squeeze’ being used on the soundtrack of the movie Coneheads instead.
In some respects, though, there are elements of ‘Soul to Squeeze’ that improve on ‘Under the Bridge’, with Kiedis talking about taking his life one step at a time after going through drug recovery and finally finding some peace of mind in the ‘City of Angels’. While not every piece of the song is meant to be a lyrical masterpiece, the group’s handle on melody has never felt smoother than on jams like this.
9. ‘My December’ – Linkin Park
There was always a gamble with signing a nu-metal act at the turn of the century. Even though the genre was as big as ever, bringing Linkin Park onto Warner Bros had to trigger alarm bells among those who only knew rap-rock from the likes of Limp Bizkit. Although the band proved themselves as the real deal on Hybrid Theory, their aggro approach to production meant that one of their slowest tracks had to be left off.
While ‘Crawling’ is the closest thing to a ballad that the group’s debut has, ‘My December’ is one of the most spare compositions in their entire canon. Featuring the delicate sounds of chimes chopped up by Joe Hahn, Chester Bennington takes centre stage, singing about the loneliness he feels in his heart. The production from Mike Shinoda is also pristine, practically seeing the breath in the studio as the band lays down the final version of the track.
Even though the song may not have gelled with the hard-edged sounds of tracks like ‘Papercut’, there aren’t too many nu-metal songs that cut to the core of teenage angst like this, especially when Bennington sings about throwing it all away just to have somewhere to escape. The core ethos of Linkin Park has been about having a vocal tandem, but ‘My December’ is a good look at what the band would have sounded like if Bennington had become the official frontman.
8. ‘Hey Hey What Can I Do’ – Led Zeppelin
In the grand scheme of Led Zeppelin albums, the band’s third self-titled outing is one of their most warped recordings. As much as the group’s catalogue has been deemed untouchable by their hardcore fans, the strange folksy bent of Led Zeppelin III stood out as strange upon release, taking the colossal riffs of their previous albums and filtering them through acoustic guitars and Eastern harmonies. While ‘Immigrant Song’ set the record up nicely with a massive riff, ‘Hey Hey What Can I Do’ indicated where they would be going.
Structured with the same arrangement one would expect out of a Bob Dylan song, Robert Plant spends most of the song flexing his softer vocal chops. While the subject matter of a woman who won’t be true isn’t anything new for Zeppelin, it’s the way that the band perform the song that makes it feel otherworldly, almost like Plant is coming out of a psychedelic haze as he’s singing every word.
Even though the song may have been one of the lower lights from the group’s repertoire at the time, it would signal the kind of rootsy sounds that they would get into later down the road. ‘Hey Hey What Can I Do’ might not be anyone’s first pick for the definitive Zeppelin ballad, but there’s a good chance that without it, the groundwork wouldn’t have been laid for future masterpieces like ‘Going to California’ and ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’.
7. ‘Waiting for Tonight’ – Tom Petty
Tom Petty always kept up a certain degree of quality across every song he wrote. Even when he was making classic albums like Damn the Torpedoes, any of the heartland rocker’s B-material would have been worthy to stand alongside classics by lesser rock acts of the time. When Petty decided to go off on his own, though, his inclusion of ‘Waiting for Tonight’ in the Full Moon Fever sessions didn’t get the treatment it deserved.
Thinking that it was too different from the sounds of tracks like ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’ and ‘Free Fallin’, Petty eventually threw the song on a B-side to one of his singles, not being heard until the release of box sets like Playback or Anthology: Through the Years. Featuring breathtaking vocals courtesy of The Bangles, the song is easily one of Petty’s best ballads, containing the same kind of drama one would expect from his contemporaries like Don Henley or Bruce Springsteen.
In hindsight, even Petty had to admit that he made a mistake putting the song on the back burner, thinking that it would have helped cut the fat off his true solo debut. There aren’t too many lesser songs on Full Moon Fever, but had Petty cut the closer ‘Zombie Zoo’ in favour of ‘Waiting for Tonight’, fans may have been looking at one of the best albums he ever made.
6. ‘Suffocate’ – Green Day
At the start of the 2000s, it looked as though Green Day’s career was beginning to flounder. After becoming one of the biggest pop-punk acts of all time, the band’s experimental period hit a brick wall with the album Warning, which would become one of the low points of their career commercially. While the B-sides compilation Shenanigans felt like the band trying to make up for their lost profits, they knew how to kick the door down when leading off with the song ‘Suffocate’.
Written during a time when Billie Joe Armstrong was trying to cut down on his drinking, this song is an exciting look into his psyche. While songs like ‘Hitchin A Ride’ from Nimrod may have a similar lyrical theme going throughout, this song illustrates the true nature of what it means to suffocate to your vices, with each guitar stab sounding like Armstrong is being awoken with raw nerves.
The song would also become hauntingly prophetic in the years to come, with Armstrong eventually having to clean up his act again in the 2010s and coming out stronger on the other side. Green Day has never been a band meant to make you think too hard about their lyrics, but this mature look at the dangers of addiction was a sign of the sobering sounds of American Idiot just a few months later.
5. ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ – Pearl Jam
From day one, Pearl Jam always had an awkward relationship with their star power. Even though the band created massive riffs that would become the blueprint for what grunge rock would be, Eddie Vedder’s need to remain private led to them drastically changing their sound to be as uncommercial as possible. While some hits like ‘Better Man’ could find their way onto records, the band’s most emotionally potent song ended up being the B-side to ‘Jeremy’.
While the titular song about a young kid’s death was already sobering, the smooth sounds of Mike McCready’s guitar lead the listener into one of Vedder’s most intense vocal performances. Singing about a man who is mourning his brother who was sent off to war, Vedder pushes himself to his emotional limit that Pearl Jam fans hadn’t seen since ‘Black’, wondering whether he’s responsible for beating himself up emotionally every time he faces some sort of trauma.
Despite Vedder’s performance, McCready may be the true star of the show, playing melodic leads that are worthy of being on any Jimi Hendrix record in the way they follow Vedder’s vocal melody. Pearl Jam may have been their worst enemy when picking singles, but there’s a good chance that ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ would have soared to the top of the rock charts had it been given a proper chance.
4. ‘Yes It Is’ – The Beatles
For the past few years, there’s a good level of sheen that has been put on every single Beatles song. Even if the track wasn’t up to snuff, the partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney could whip any mediocre songs into decent shape. If there was such a thing as a lowlight in the group’s career, though, ‘Yes It Is’ has that distinction hands down.
Written as a sequel song to ‘This Boy’, Lennon writes a gripping tale about what it’s like to go out with another woman after having to leave an old flame behind. Even though Lennon is trying his best to move on from his sorrow, it’s clear that he still has those feelings bottled up inside, saying that his pride often gets in the way of him forgetting her.
While Lennon could easily deliver this song with an acoustic guitar and his voice, the soaring harmonies, as well as George Harrison’s delicate pedal-steel guitar work, bring a slight country spin to the song, as if Lennon was channelling what The Rolling Stones would be doing later on their twangy ballads. 99% of The Beatles’ output may have been about looking at the positive side of life, but considering the time it was made, ‘Yes It Is’ may be the closest thing to goth rock that the group ever touched.
3. ‘Silver Springs’ – Fleetwood Mac
It’s hard to think of anything missing from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Across 11 tracks, the band created one of the true masterpieces of the vinyl era, with every song being a heartbreaking lament about the relationships breaking down within the band. Although Stevie Nicks already had phenomenal songs at her disposal throughout the project, the one closest to her heart only had the medium going against it.
When working on the final mixes of the album, Nicks was heartbroken to find out that ‘Silver Springs’ wouldn’t be able to make the final cut. Named after a town that the singer had seen when passing through the US, the lyrics may be the finest piece of poetry she has ever written, hoping to get away to another place once she finds her piece of mind again. Due to the song’s length of over five minutes, the band would have to cut the song, electing to record the song ‘I Don’t Want to Know’ instead.
Even though the song was thrown on the B-side to one of their singles, it would maintain a healthy shelf life throughout the years, with audiences getting a breathtaking version of the song on their live album The Dance and Nicks playing it off and on during her solo concerts. ‘Silver Springs’ may have been limited to the mechanical innovations of the 1970s, but no physical constraints can break the hold that it has on fans’ hearts.
2. ‘Marigold’ – Nirvana
Looking at the dynamic of Nirvana, there was no reason for anyone else to write the songs. Since the dawn of the band, Kurt Cobain’s way of weaving together melodies was unlike anyone else in the rock scene, putting together songs midway between punk rock, discordant noise, and The Beatles, depending on which track was playing. Even though Cobain was more than happy to write the songs, they had another world-class songwriter in Dave Grohl, for one song.
In the background of Nirvana, Grohl had already been working away at his songs, even releasing a handful of them under a cassette side project called LATE. When Cobain heard the beginnings of the song ‘Marigold’, he thought enough of the tune to include it as the B-side to ‘Heart Shaped Box’. Once the band crumbled after Cobain’s death, though, ‘Marigold’ would become the first breaths of Foo Fighters.
While Grohl would eventually return to making music with the debut Foo Fighters album, ‘Marigold’ would be one of the only songs that fans knew to shout out for him to play, which would often bring up raw wounds whenever the band would play club gigs. Although Grohl knew he had to move out of Nirvana’s shadow, he did eventually revive the song a decade later for the lie album Skin and Bones, making it a core bridge between both sides of his musical career.
1. ‘Talk Tonight’ – Oasis
During the mid-1990s, Oasis made classic songs faster than they could record them. Even though Noel Gallagher had every piece of the puzzle in his head when crafting albums like Definitely Maybe, he always made sure that every single release came packed with B-sides that were just as good (if not better) than the lead single. Even though the band were getting into emotional territory on tracks like ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Talk Tonight’ is the most personally revealing song Noel ever wrote.
Written while on a break from the band following a disastrous gig in Los Angeles, Noel ended up reconnecting with a girl whom he had met on the road a few weeks prior named Melissa Lim. After wanting to quit the band, Noel’s old flame convinced him to give the group another shot, thinking he would be throwing away one of his dreams by walking out. While Noel claims he could never remember the Lim’s name, he eventually wrote ‘Talk Tonight’ about that period that he spent nursing himself back to health.
Despite never reconnecting, the song is written as a thank-you to Lim for saving his life and putting him back on track to world domination. Although Oasis would eventually crumble over acrimonious circumstances decades later, ‘Talk Tonight’ was Noel’s reminder that realising his dreams was more important than any kind of petty squabbling going on behind closed doors.
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