The 10 best three-song runs in rock and roll history
If you ask anyone over 30, the art of making a complete and cognisant album is slowly dying out. Long gone are the days when the release of a classic album would be put up against the release of another, ensuring a dramatic record sale war erupts, a la Oasis vs Blur in the 1990s or even The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones before them.
Owing in part to the rise of cut and paste culture, which encourages listeners to create their own playlist, cherry-picking their favourite songs from their favourite artists and launching them into their bubbling jam jambalaya, and in part to the reduction in cash flow LPs receive, the album as we know it is changing.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t bands or artists who cherish the value of making a full-length record that flows into itself with the hum of a city river. In truth, most of the changes are coming from the audience’s side of the fence, with a change in consumption being the primary factor for why albums aren’t as beloved or as permanent as they once were.
There’s a cherishable beauty about listening to a single album over and over, finding the nooks and crannies within which resides the artist’s very soulful nature on the speaker’s other end. Diving headfirst into a pool of emotion can sometimes hit the nervous system like an ice bath, shocking you into immediately wanting to get out of the water. However, within a few strokes, the nuances of that emotion can slowly warm one’s cockles and light a fire within our appreciation.
As such, we’re here to dive into some of the best bits about albums. Whether it is monumental album openers or even the songs that close out our favourite records, we’re picking out the unusual parts of the best LPs around. This time we’re focusing on the fabled three-song run.
A trilogy of classic songs on any album is always enviable, but some lucky musicians have managed to conjure three brilliant songs and put them all in a row too. Below, we’ve picked out ten of our favourite three-song runs from the annals of rock and roll history.
The 10 best three-song runs in rock and roll history:
‘Idioteque, ‘Morning Bell’, ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ – Kid A (Radiohead)
Radiohead’s most protean album, Kid A’s blend of classical, glitchy electronica and experimental rock is as groundbreaking today as it was in 2000. The LP continues to refute categorisation, having provided listeners with enough sonic complexity for a lifetime.
Kid A reaches its incandescent peak around track eight. From the Aphex Twin-tinged pulsations of ‘Idioteque’ to the shoegaze meanderings of ‘Morning Bell’ and the tearjerking ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’, Radiohead blend glimmering experimentalism with highly inventive use of melody and texture to create what has to be one of the greatest three-song runs of the new millennium.
‘Mis-Shapes’, ‘Pencil Skirt’ and ‘Common People’ – A Different Class (Pulp)
Buoyed by the breakthrough success of their fourth studio album, His ‘N’ Hers, Pulp released A Different Class to huge critical acclaim. 1995 was one hell of a year for Jarvis Cocker and co. As well as releasing one of the defining albums of the 1990s, the group performed one of the defining sets of the Glastonbury Festival after agreeing to fill in for The Stone Roses at short notice.
A Different Class saw Pulp reach new creative heights, especially when it came to Cocker’s scathing lyrics. His wry wit meets the band’s exuberant instrumental work to brilliant effect in ‘Mis-Shapes’, ‘Pencil Skirt’ and ‘Common People’, the latter of which has come to embody the brilliance of Pulp at their peak.
‘Last Nite’, ‘Hard To Explain’ and ‘New York City Cops’ – Is This It (The Strokes)
The Strokes’ debut album, Is This It, is an absolute belter from start to finish. From the album’s opening rattle to its final cascading torrent of garage guitar, the 2001 album helped usher in a (somewhat transient) golden age of indie rock.
Truly there is hardly a track on Is This It? that doesn’t demand adulation, but the album is perhaps at its most vibrant from tracks seven to nine. As ‘Last Nite’ folds into ‘Hard To Explain’ and then into ‘New York City Cops’, youth reigns supreme, and everything seems to shimmer brighter than before.
‘Turn The Page’, ‘Has it Come To This’ and ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ – Original Pirate Material (The Streets)
I defy anyone to listen to this next triplet and not accept that The Streets’ Original Pirate Material is one of the most inventive and illuminatory British albums of the early 21st century. As soon as those lush strings open up in ‘Turn The Page’, it’s clear this is going to be an album with a very long afterlife. Indeed, today, the influence of the albums is more apparent than ever.
In these three tracks – ‘Turn The Page’, ‘Has it Come To This’ and ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ – Skinner manages to create something uniquely English with the rhyme and rhythm of US rappers like Nas. Sensitive, exploratory and intelligent, this trio of immensely listenable tracks definitely deserves a re-listen.
‘Visions of Johanna’, ‘One Of Us Must Know’ and ‘I Want You’ – Blonde on Blonde (Bob Dylan)
As Jack Black’s character tells one undiscerning customer in High Fidelity, “Don’t tell anyone you don’t own fucking Blonde on Blonde.”
The man has a point. The LP features some of Dylan’s most melodic and intelligent work, as you’ll no doubt be aware if you’ve heard this next three-track run, ‘Visions Of Johanna, ‘One Of Us Must Know’ and the unusually heartwarming ‘I Want You’, the last of which, despite being just three minutes long, features more cast members than Game Of Thrones. Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones even gets a mention at one point. Go forth and listen.
‘Golden Slumbers’, ‘Carry That Weight’, ‘The End’ – Abbey Road (The Beatles)
Whilst the question of the best albums by The Beatles is something that will be hotly contested until the end of time, no one can doubt that the three-song suite at the end of 1969’s Abbey Road is not only the best in their back catalogue but one of the best ever released, setting a precedent for all that was to come.
Kicking off with the swooning ‘Golden Slumbers’, that segues into the anthemic yet heady ‘Carry That Weight’ before climaxing with the iconic ‘The End’, this is one of the finest moments that the ‘Fab Four’ ever gave us, and it is criminally overlooked, as whether directly or by proxy, all the other inclusions on this list take their cues from this display of pure genius.
‘Soul Love’, ‘Moonage Daydream’, ‘Starman’ – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (David Bowie)
David Bowie was the master of the song runs, with many of his albums operating as total masterpieces — the kind best appreciated as a complete entity. However, there is a three-track circuit on 1972’s Ziggy Stardust that is his best.
It starts with the second song on the album’ Soul Love’, a languid, slightly funky number before fading into the longtime fan favourite ‘Moonage Daydream’, which is undoubtedly one of the definitive glam numbers, before climaxing with the timeless ‘Starman’, a cut that needs no introduction.
‘Speak to Me’, ‘Breathe’, ‘On the Run’ – Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd)
The masters of the concept album, suites and segues were the name of the game for English rockers Pink Floyd. The way they flawlessly configured their albums helped to push the boundaries of what a collection of songs could and should be, setting the bar so high that it would take the likes of Radiohead 20-odd years later to finally take it to the next level after them.
Whilst there are many exceptional three-track runs in Floyd’s back catalogue, none are as profound as the opening trio of 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon. ‘Speak to Me’, ‘Breathe’ and ‘On the Run’ are as cerebral and challenging as anything from the era, and they perfectly kicked off the album that would see the quartet crystallise their legacy.
‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘In Bloom’, ‘Come As You Are’ – Nevermind (Nirvana)
It’s not such an outlandish claim to posit that the opening three tracks of Nirvana’s seminal sophomore album are not only the best to open a record ever but also the most scintillating three-track run ever put to wax.
As soon as the choppy opening chord progression of the monstrous ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ cuts through the speakers, you know what’s in store. After what is the ultimate grunge track finishes, reflecting the once-in-a-generational talent of Kurt Cobain and Co., the second most important 1990s rock track blasts in the form of ‘In Bloom’, which features one of drummer Dave Grohl’s career-defining performances. It then concludes with the chorus drenched ‘Come As You Are’, which resoundingly completes this culture-changing trifecta.
‘When the Sun Goes Down’, From the Ritz to the Rubble’, ‘A Certain Romance’ – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (Arctic Monkeys)
When you think about it, the closing three tracks of Arctic Monkeys’ era-defining debut album are one of the most complete we’ve heard and eclipses any others the Sheffield band have released over what is best described as an invariably successful career.
It starts with the gritty ‘When the Sun Goes Down’, which remains of the group’s more dynamic numbers before frontman Alex Turner brings us into the second chapter with ‘From the Ritz to the Rubble’, with the line “Well, last night these two bouncers,” a phrase that rings as clear as the bell for closing time. After his Yorkshire drawl opens the song, he and the band proceed to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention. Closing out the trilogy and the album is ‘A Certain Romance’, a five-minute epic that confirmed that Turner and the boys were here to stay and that the future looked incredibly bright.
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