10 classic songs that saved an entire album

‘First Date/The Rock Show’- Blink-182

No one was going to any pop-punk album in the 2000s to think. Blink-182 may have been the poster children of the genre and could write something serious every now and again, but to get to something like ‘Adam’s Song’, you were going to have to sit through something dumb like ‘Dysentery Gary’ or ‘Happy Holidays You Bastards’. Take Off Your Pants and Jacket may have been the perfect lowbrow joke for their audience, but apparently, the music within wasn’t hooky enough for the label to put out.

Since the entire band had handed in the album completely finished, they were given it right back when the label insisted that they needed some hits. As a joke, Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge wrote what they thought would be some of the dumbest tunes of their career, which became ‘First Date’ and ‘The Rock Show’. When they turned up on the album, they became the anthems to every single kid who went to Warped Tour and didn’t actually have a terrible experience.

But the fact that both tunes were written as jokes should really tell you everything about the kind of people that populate those industry meetings. These are people who have never heard a joke in their lives, nor do they care to hear one, and as long as something sounds like it’s going to sell, that’s more than enough for them to work with.

‘Beth’ – Kiss

Before we start, allow me to make a bold claim: Kiss’s music is not as important as their costumes. There’s no doubt that Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons built up a career for a reason, but if they were to have taken off the makeup at the start of their career instead of midway through in the 1980s, chances are they would have been looked as any other run-of-the-mill rock and roll band, albeit one that was horny to the point of revulsion in Simmons’s case. So how the hell did a band that was this cartoony manage to make a song that could tug on someone’s heartstrings?

Although Destroyer was meant to be the band’s big departure after setting the world on fire with Alive!, Peter Criss really was the perfect person to deliver a tune like ‘Beth’. His voice fits somewhere between standard ‘Bowery Boy’ New Yorker and Rod Stewart’s signature rasp, and hearing him sing passionately about coming home to his other half while on tour as cat-like makeup is smeared all over his face was the kind of pitch that was crazy enough to work with the public.

And since the entire country washed their hands of the record, having it be the B-side to ‘Detroit Rock City’ gave them a new lease on life when they started going through the touring circuit, eventually giving them one of their biggest hits. It may have been the exact opposite of their strengths, but given the fact that ‘Hard Luck Woman’ turned up on the next album, it’s not like they didn’t know how to follow the money, either.

‘Beyond Beautiful’ – Aerosmith

It’s hard to keep score of how many career resurrections Aerosmith seemed to have throughout their tenure. While they have effectively retired for the time being, they have risen like a phoenix from the ashes after surviving everything from addiction to shady managers to the grunge revolution, so it looks like there’s nothing they can’t get over. When they got their first taste of major success, though, Just Push Play was the first time they embarrassed themselves on the world’s stage.

Despite half of the album being an excuse for Steven Tyler to step into his role as a pop singer, ‘Beyond Beautiful’ manages to kick down the door pretty well. The entire premise of Aerosmith going pop was bound to be a tough sell, but opening things up with strange sitar sounds before going into a pummelling riff was the first time that people thought that an American Idol-ified version of the band could be tolerable.

Too bad ‘Jaded’ takes the wind out of everyone’s sails the minute it starts and has Joe Perry brandishing the same kind of guitar sound that wouldn’t have felt out of place if it were on a Britney Spears record. The 2000s already have their own pop legends to look back on at this point, but considering the flavours of the day, ‘Beyond Beautiful’ was strong, but not strong enough to go up against people like NSYNC.

‘One More Light’ – Linkin Park

For any rock band, the number one sin you can commit is being inauthentic. The whole point of someone writing a song is to have a complete stranger be able to relate to the feelings you have, and the minute that someone sees their favourite act pleading for relevance is normally the first sign that they should be dropped without a second thought. Although there’s a lot of emotional baggage wrapped up in a record like One More Light, the title track did become all the more pertinent for Linkin Park.

That said, that didn’t mean the rest of the record was perfect by any means. The band had obviously become a victim of the 2010s pop-rock trends, and hearing them try to be everything from Twenty-One Pilots to The Chainsmokers to what sounds like The Lumineers on a handful of tracks wasn’t going to do their mainstream fans any favours. But given what happened next, ‘One More Light’ feels like a gentle prayer for humanity after Chester Bennington passed away.

Despite not being written about his own struggles, hearing him sing about comforting people dealing with the loss of a loved one right before he passed away was like he was trying to send a message from beyond the grave listening back to it. While later circumstances shouldn’t really make anyone re-evaluate a song, this has gone from being considered one of the most toothless Linkin Park tunes to one of the most sobering moments of their entire career.

‘All Those Years Ago’ – George Harrison

The 1980s weren’t really a decade George Harrison was cut out for. He had a roaring return the minute that The Traveling Wilburys started up and he had his own hits with Cloud Nine, but coming out of an era that was all about preaching and chanting the names of the Lord, he found out very quickly that people didn’t want to know about his spiritual journey once MTV kicked in. That meant that Somewhere in England needed a massive overhaul, but Harrison did manage to get one major hit for all the wrong reasons.

Because as soon as he went back to record some new tunes, John Lennon’s death put a lot of unwanted attention on the record. Although ‘All Those Years Ago’ was originally slated for Ringo Starr, Harrison’s take on the tune was far more appropriate, talking about his musical older brother as the one who imagined it all for them and how he always looked up to him when they were performing together.

The track is almost too good for the album, especially since it tricks you into thinking that this will be another carefree pop-rock record. What we got instead was 1980s schlock that would have been considered passe before the decade was even out, along with some of the most cynical lyrics to ever turn up on a Harrison album. The entire record is far from perfect, but it is admittedly funny to go from one of the most earnest songs a Beatle ever wrote to something as dated as ‘Teardrops’.

‘Home Sweet Home’ – Mötley Crüe

The entire success of Mötley Crüe almost feels like a mistake that happened to get past the higher-ups at the label. Despite Nikki Sixx admittedly writing some kickass riffs, every single member of the band seemed to be a walking casualty, and even by the standards of punk rock some of their actions have more than outweighed their music half the time. They did have some semblance of a heart, though, and ‘Home Sweet Home’ gave every starry-eyed girl watching MTV someone to love.

Since the band had spent half of their lives on the road, making a song all about people finally leaving the touring life behind was the kind of well-worn topic that never gets old in rock, like a hair metal version of ‘Turn the Page’. Considering that the only other good song on the record was a cover of ‘Smokin’ In The Boys Room’, there’s a good chance Theatre of Pain would have never sold had they not had those two songs in the mix.

Although the band playing the tune as their final song during what was supposed to be their final performance does tug on one solitary heartstring, it’s strange that they never matched this kind of ballad again. Every hair act is entitled to having one great ballad, but if all they had to offer on later albums were ‘You’re All I Need’ and ‘Without You’, perhaps they should have quit while they were ahead.

‘Times Like These’ – Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters didn’t really need to argue about who steered the ship in every era of the band. Dave Grohl was the reason why the band existed in the first place, and since he came through with the songs, sang them, and even played every instrument on the first record, he could have easily kept this up as a solo act, and no one would be the wiser. But the rest of the band did have feelings too, and when they reached their breaking point, ‘Times Like These’ helped build bridges they thought they burned.

After Taylor Hawkins chewed out Grohl for playing on Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf, it wasn’t clear whether One By One would even be released or if the band would break up. Although they went back to the studio licking their wounds, nothing on the record was to their satisfaction until ‘Times Like These’ turned up, written by Grohl about how much he missed playing with his friends.

And while One By One didn’t manage to have the same staying power as its biggest hit, the tune was enough to bring an entire arena of people together when they performed their tribute shows for Hawkins shortly after his passing. Grohl may not have known what he was working with on this song, but somewhere between the chords, he found a melody that had some sort of healing factor behind it.

‘Trainwrecks’ – Weezer

There are age-old legends that will most likely never be solved in music history. Is Jim Morrison still alive? Who really shot Biggie and Tupac? But perhaps the biggest mystery of all is this: when did Weezer truly start to suck? It’s a tough question to grapple with, but even if Rivers Cuomo did fall down the musical rabbit hole a little too often, he never forgot about the kind of song that could hit people right in the chest.

Although Hurley already had to deal with coming after the truly terrible Raditude, ‘Trainwrecks’ is the kind of record that most fans have been waiting for them to make for years. The whole point behind their sound in the first place was that they were nerds trying to make the best with what they had, but this tune sounds like that person all grown up and making their own version of ‘Born to Run’, complete with the bombastic chorus and lyrics about muscling through their nowhere town and becoming famous.

It’s not clear whether the characters in the song actually end up fulfilling all their dreams, but it doesn’t even matter. The minute that the final notes rang out, every Weezer fan’s collective prayers were answered, knowing that they witnessed a band suddenly trying to pick themselves back up and move in the right direction again.

‘The Sound of Silence’ – Simon and Garfunkel

It’s a major task for any song to resurrect an entire album. Most artists are trying to make an entire project work from back to front, so having one tune that’s so undeniable that it renders everything else around it obsolete is almost a feat unto itself. Paul Simon already had a handful of perfect songs working with Art Garfunkel, but ‘The Sound of Silence’ was so good it managed to save two completely separate projects.

While Wednesday Morning 3am sunk without a trace upon arrival, Simon’s tune about the human condition in the 1960s had enough staying power to keep them afloat. Other deep cuts like ‘Go Tell It On the Mountain’ didn’t have a prayer next to their original, and when they eventually went under for a few months, the reworking of the track with rock instruments was enough to give them a new lease on life, to the point where the next album was named after the tune.

It may have become a bit of an albatross around the duo’s neck for a while, but it didn’t take Simon long to hit the ground running with even more classics like ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. But for a mild-mannered little protest song from a kid in his mid-20s, ‘The Sound of Silence’ would have been enough for any other poet to retire.

‘Under Pressure’ – Queen

Queen were never afraid to follow the trends whenever they arose. Every one of their tunes was always going to sound like them, but when they eventually adopted synthesisers and embraced dance textures on The Game, it’s not like they didn’t know what they were doing when making ‘Another One Bites the Dust’. There was a lot of money to be made when leaning into pop, but Hot Space was the one moment where they went a little bit too far.

Since their last single was a danceable track, their choice to make their next project nothing but more versions of ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ wasn’t going to do them any favours. The entire project has become known as one of the more reviled moments in the band’s career, but the fact that ‘Under Pressure’ is on the record almost levels out the schlock that’s on every other track.

Since their duet with David Bowie has gone down in history as one of the best collaborations of all time, the fact that it sits next to some of the most milquetoast music in Queen’s entire canon feels incredibly jarring. No one was going to say no to a tune like this, but if we’re using the same collaboration metaphor here, this would be the equivalent of listening to an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo appear in the middle of The Shaggs’ Philosophy of the World. It’s certainly welcome, but it’s clearly not supposed to be here.