10 songs artists tried to delete from history
It’s always a challenge for artists to create something they’re proud of for eternity. Even if there is a wealth of great material in the songs, getting each track to speak to each other in the right way while still balancing a similar tone for an entire record is the kind of balancing act they most wish they could pull off. When everything goes wrong, though, bands like Metallica have gone out of their way to try to delete some pieces from their discography.
That’s not to say that each of the songs is terrible. Many of the tunes on this list have been morbid fascinations for nearly anyone who has heard of them, but many of them have been kept behind a vault by the band who felt that they weren’t right for the time that they were made, either because they conflicted with the tone or completely screwed up the flow of the album.
While some of them have found their way onto streaming services, it’s a wonder what they were thinking by ignoring them, though. Sure, some of them might not be on the same level as the all-time classics or anything, but there are also a handful that have managed to stand the test of time and deserve spots next to the brightest spots in a band’s catalogue if only because of how strange they are compared to everything else.
The number one thing is to respect the artist’s vision when they are making a project, but the fact that these records are out there somewhere in the world is still a wonder for many prospective fans. The artist might have the final say in what goes on the record, but who knows if their careers would have turned out differently if some of their darker moments got a chance to shine a bit brighter.
10 songs artists tried to delete from history:
10. Cut the Crap – The Clash
During punk’s glory years, The Clash represented everything that the genre should have stood for. It was clear that all Sex Pistols had to offer was merely a fashion statement, and when Joe Strummer and Mick Jones came to the forefront with political doctrine, the rest of the world stood up and began paying attention. Right as that bond was broken, though, Strummer’s vain attempts to carry on resulted in an album that none of the members ever want to revisit.
Aside from Cut the Crap strongarming its way into being made by manager Bernie Rhodes, most of the album feels like a cheap imitation of what The Clash was meant to be. Aside from one great song in ‘This is England,’ the entire record is skippable in their catalogue, especially towards the end of the record where Strummer seems to check out completely and go for the base-level of lyric writing on ‘Fingerpoppin’.
Even when the band came out with their gigantic box set of all of their albums, they made sure to keep Cut the Crap off of that final release. Because if you want a true love letter to ‘The Only Band That Mattered’, there’s no reason for anyone needing to relive the blemish on the backend of their discography.
9. ‘Sunday Morning Call’ – Oasis
The usual Oasis promotional cycle didn’t go long without Noel or Liam Gallagher hyping themselves up as two of the greatest rock stars ever. In their minds, everything they touched turned to gold, and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world was on the hype train. They were still fallible, though, and Noel went out of his way to ensure that ‘Sunday Morning Call’ got as little promotion as possible after the initial Standing on the Shoulder of Giants cycle.
While Noel looks back on Be Here Now with a certain amount of disdain, ‘Sunday Morning Call’ is one of the few songs that he has no problem saying that he hates. Despite the track missing that optimistic spirit of those old Oasis tunes, it does give off the feeling of someone coming off of a high, almost like a softer version of what the band were doing on the track ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong’.
When reviewing songs for the album Time Flies, all of the band’s singles were included on the track listing, only for ‘Sunday Morning Call’ to be relegated to a hidden track well after most fans would have taken the CD out of their stereos back in the day. There are many ways to get around certain obligations, but this is one of the sneakiest tactics someone has tried to ignore their body of work.
8. ‘Iron Gland’ – Alice in Chains
Half of Alice in Chains’s discography was defined by a certain amount of pain. Even if they had a song in them that was about sunshine, puppies and running through a field of roses, chances are it would still come out sounding like the heaviest thing imaginable this side of Tony Iommi. At some point, things can go from heavy to plain annoying, and the rest of the band had had enough when Jerry Cantrell came to the forefront with ‘Iron Gland’.
Whereas most of Cantrell’s had a certain hypnotic quality about them, this play on the typical ‘Iron Man’ was used to drive everyone nuts in the studio while making Dirt. Cantrell found it funny, but the only way that the rest of the band would allow him to put it on the record is if he promised never to play the riff again.
Cantrell may have kept that promise, but in the context of the album, it does add the right kind of ambience before getting into the final stretch. Since this was the druggy equivalent of Dante’s Inferno, the screams of agony in the background and warped guitars are practically an introduction to the final layers of Hell from which there is no possible escape.
7. ‘Bad Boys’ – Wham!
One of the biggest curses of having an immediate hit is to try to do the same thing over again. After all, the biggest names in music don’t get there without momentum, so why not hit the ground running with something that they know will work instead of having to go back to square one all over again? If you’re in a band like Wham!, though, making a carbon copy of the last hit was never George Michael’s idea of success.
While ‘Young Guns’ remained a core part of the group’s setlist once it started gaining traction, ‘Bad Boys’ was Michael’s attempt at putting out the same thing so that lightning would strike twice. Once you listen to them back to back, you can understand why it got under Michael’s skin since the whole thing sounded like slightly modifying the original’s melody and swapping the lyrics here and there.
And outside of the compilation album The Final, Michael saw no real need to call attention to it since then, hardly ever performing it during his solo shows and never bringing it up in interviews outside of trashing it. Given the fact that his entire goal was about trying to make something that would prove him to be an iconic songwriter, though, making a rinse-and-repeat so soon in his career was never a good sign.
6. ‘Back to School’ – Deftones
The nu-metal scene felt like the last genre that needed to pander to the pop music crowd. This was the kind of scene reserved for the disaffected kids who wanted nothing more than to rage about their internal demons and the darkest sides of the human psyche, so it’s not like that was taking up prime real estate next to Britney Spears. When Deftones came up with a song that had the inklings of a hit, though, they learned that everyone in the music industry has zero sense of humour.
Since most White Pony was completed, the band’s label thought it would be a good idea to flesh out the closer ‘Pink Maggit’ to sound like a traditional nu-metal song. While Chino Moreno was furious at someone trying to disassemble the band’s masterpiece, he ended up creating ‘Back to School’ in a fury to prove a point about how easy it is to get away with writing a hit song.
As it turns out, executives are allergic to sarcasm, so when they did finally make the record, they tacked it onto the front of White Pony without thinking twice. Although many fans have to skip past the first track to get to the band’s true vision for their masterwork, none of the band have ever felt the need to play the song in a live setting.
5. ‘Bip Bop’ – Paul McCartney
There’s no right way to leave one of the biggest bands in the world. Even if Paul McCartney had a foolproof plan for how to get back his footing after The Beatles broke up, chances are he would still have had some reservations about watching his friends fly solo without him. But while Wings was an incubator for him to test out new material, ‘Bip Bop’ was the tune that he would have gladly forgotten ever came out.
Then again, the whole point of Wild Life was to make something that was a bit more ramshackle. Half of the album was centred around the group jamming on different vamps, but whereas ‘Mumbo’ was a bit of Little Richard-esque fun, ‘Bip Bop’ was McCartney messing around with a riff he had lying around that he somehow found out how to stretch out for over three minutes.
Even though Wild Life did contain songs that the band went back to, like the title track and ‘Dear Friend,’ McCartney still loathed the idea of this tune, saying that it was one of his least favourite pieces that he ever worked on. It’s not as awful as something like ‘Wild Honey Pie’ on The White Album, but nowhere else has a song been birthed into existence with a premise this flimsy.
4. ‘7 Minute Drill’ – J Cole
There are only a handful of diss tracks that have managed to stand the test of time. As much as people have made the most out of the beefs between Tupac and Biggie Smalls or Eminem and whoever he happened to be feuding with at the time, there’s a reason why people only remember the key players and not the tangential parties at play. But even for a beef as large as Kendrick Lamar and Drake, it made zero sense to see J Cole try to throw his hat into the ring and say his piece.
While Cole did try to go after Lamar for coming after both him and Drake on ‘Like That’, ‘7 Minute Drill’ is one of the most embarrassing things that he has ever put out. Outside of not being a battle rapper, to begin with, Cole says things that would even have the majority of the rap game turning against him, like implying that Lamar’s recent records were nowhere near as good as people claimed they were.
And it didn’t take Cole long to realise his mistake, either, eventually saying it was the lamest decision he ever made and eventually removing the tune from streaming services on the album Might Delete Later. Considering all the baggage, the fact that the album got nominated for a Grammy is downright laughable. Because how the hell are you going to award an album that’s actively trying to remove itself from existence?
3. ‘Her Majesty’ – The Beatles
There are more than a few ways that a song could end up getting left on the cutting room floor. Even if the track has the potential to be a hit, it’s better to save certain moments for the right album or make it a one-off single for fans to enjoy before they get the proper album after the fact. When The Beatles were putting the final bow on their discography, though, ‘Her Majesty’ was the kind of classic that was never supposed to exist.
While most of Abbey Road’s back half contains the best moments of the Fab Four’s career, the original running order included ‘Her Majesty’ in the middle of the medley in the middle of ‘Mean Mr Mustard’ and ‘Polythene Pam’. The songs share similar chords and could easily be meshed together, but McCartney felt it disrupted the flow and recommended it be thrown away at the end of the session.
When the rest of the band heard it tacked on at the very end of the tape, though, they felt that it was funny enough for them to keep. The fact that it survived to the end of the album is honestly a miracle, but it’s almost worth it to say that The Beatles added the concept of hidden tracks to the list of things that they could claim to have invented.
2. ‘Escape’ – Metallica
During their thrash prime, no one was going to tell Metallica what to do. Even though they were more than capable of following trends based on Load and ReLoad, the majority of their best material came from them following their heart and doing whatever they felt was right for the song. Although some thrash purists may have had a problem with ‘Fade to Black’ for being too soft on Ride the Lightning, ‘Escape’ was the real nadir of their catalogue that they did their best to ignore.
The whole point behind the song appearing on the record was already questionable. Since they already had the makings of a decent seven-track album in the can, being asked to go back and make one more tune from scratch wasn’t what they wanted to hear. So what they came up with is the closest they would get to a Metallica-by-numbers track, which happens to include one of their heaviest breakdown sections midway through the piece.
That wasn’t enough for James Hetfield to have a change of heart, eventually saying that they ever wanted to play it live when playing the album in full and mouthing the word ‘NO’ at the end of the song when asking the crowd if they liked it. Still, the fact that this was some degree of good is a testament to how little fat Metallica put onto their records in their heyday.
1. ‘Between Us Two’ – Van Halen
Most artists have to eventually accept that not everything they make is a masterpiece. Even if they have made God’s answer to rock and roll on their previous records, there comes a point where they can admit that pieces of their discography were far from the classics that they had once thought. It’s not easy to live with that, but Van Halen was the one band that was successful in erasing their mistake from existence.
During the final years of ‘Van Hagar’, the band were set to release different songs for the movie Twister, including the single ‘Humans Being’. While that track is responsible for spelling the end of the band in a lot of ways, the tune ‘Between Us Two’ never got the chance to shine, remaining unfinished and tucked away in the Van Halen vaults after Eddie couldn’t see eye-to-eye with where he wanted the lyrics to go.
Since they had production guru Glen Ballard at the helm, though, we could have been looking at another Van Halen classic had they had more time to work on it. And since there is a treasure trove of music still left in the vaults, who’s to say that ‘Between Us Two’ isn’t on the docket to be released on a reissue?
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