What was the first hidden song?
A hidden song is like a little golden nugget of reward for true diehard fans at the end of an album. If you’re willing to sit through what is often minutes on end of silence then it’s the treasure trove at the end of the tunnel, frequently later the subject of extensive lore behind that artist for potential meanings or intentions. The hidden song is the musical equivalent of a private members’ club in rock music, but as it happens, it came about as a bit of an accident.
Many artists including The Clash and Pink Floyd have used various techniques to encompass hidden songs into their albums, from the more conventional means like the former’s ‘Train in Vain’ at the end of 1979’s London Calling to the more covert methods like backmasking, which was used on The Wall’s track ‘Empty Spaces’ to send a message to Syd Barrett from his Pink pals.
But as it turns out, these examples were simply emulating a phenomenon which had come about before them, because they were not the first ones to hide a tun within their ranks. The real innovative acclaim must go to the Beatles, who, alongside this, can be credited with many a musical invention over the years – but what actually happened to get to this point?
It was on Abbey Road that a hidden track first revealed itself in the form of ‘Her Majesty’, beginning 14 seconds after the conclusion of the final track ‘The End’ and not listed on the album’s original sleeve. Lasting just 23 seconds total, it was a song initially penned to be a fully fleshed-out entity by Macca and Co but ended up taking on a whole new elusive lifeblood of its own.
The secret meaning of ‘Her Majesty’, however, is a bit of an urban legend in the respect that it came about as a self-confessed “happy accident”. Grammy-winning movie soundtrack engineer John Kurlander, then a novice 18-year-old, had been taken on for a job in the studio mixing the cuts of the Fab Four’s seminal album, and the mystery song in question was originally meant to have its full place on the tracklist. However, after a long day and into the small hours, McCartney told Kurlander to scrap ‘Her Majesty’ as “it [didn’t] work”.
Why did The Beatles add ‘Her Majesty’ as a hidden track?
Limited by the confines of 1960s technology and likely feeling just lazy, instead of editing out the track by normal means by putting it in the studio’s box of rough cuts, Kurlander moved it to the end of the final record, leaving a note to the mastering engineer to chop it out. But clearly misunderstanding what was meant, the track was left there unedited.
The next day, when the Fab Four were played the completed album with the surprise track in place, Kurlander recalled: “I remember the band looking at each other, then at me… and then going, ‘yeah!’. It was just a happy accident. The Beatles loved happy accidents.”
In doing so, Kurlander unintentionally created a musical phenomenon, though we can’t it’s recommended to necessarily take a leaf out of his book. No one’s boss is going to be happy about you being sloppy on the job, but only on rare occasions like these, this laziness actually opened up a whole new enigmatic world of sonic horizons.
