In Praise of Filler

Elvis Presley and America - U2

Side 2 of Unforgettable Fire just wouldn't be the same without it.

Do skits count as filler?

I guess skits do, in a way, but I'm more interested in musical or incidental rather than spoken content for filler.

if it's something good isn't it not filler, by definition? I don't think of instrumentals and thematic segues and intros and outros and ambient passages and all sorts of other sonic palate cleansers as filler by default. some of my favorite albums is nothing but this stuff!

i mean, filler isn't the same as just bad music, I think of it as mediocre-to-bad material with the unmistakable whiff of indifference hanging over it, indifference being the key, really.

good filler = the songs on the album which are totally overshadowed by the singles/obvious key tracks, and which often get skipped, but are fine to listen to if you want to listen to the whole album. sometimes, not always, you find that six months later their subtleties have grown on you, and you like them better than the singles

i mean, slow jams and ballads on r&b albums to thread

I guess this thread was inspired by listening to the Patrick Wolf album the other day, and remembering reading / hearign reactions to it which went "the bits that are proper songs are OK but there's some weird short instrumental bits that are barely even songs and confuse me etc", and me thinking "Patrick's two minute semi-songs and segues are the best bits; they're the space between the spokes of the album that let the wheel turn" kind of thing. Also this is just another flank attack in my war on compression.

Filler to me = the stuff that's not designed to attract attention, but probbaly rewards it.

"album tracks" vs "filler"?

"Potential singles" vs "album tracks".

i mean, slow jams and ballads on r&b albums to thread

Yes, waaaay OTM Lex. To my ears, filler is most of the ballads on Destiny's Child's The Writing's on the Wall or the Diane Warren track on Mary J. Blige's 1999 album Mary.

What Mouthy is describing is something like "Security of the First World" on It Takes a Nation or "India" from Avalon both of which are great and lend their respective albums gestalt, to chose Xhuxk's favorite word.

The term does come from "hits plus filler," does it not? And of course, that term is meant to designate crap tracks speedily written to flesh out an album and sucker consumers into buying a full-length that contains 2, 3, 4, 5 singles they may know from the radio or MTV or wherever.

Christ, isn't filler Diane Warren's purpose on earth?

ok, i think it's about time someone mentioned the daddy of 'filler' albums, tool's "aenima". the filler bits are pretty much consistent (qualitatively speaking) with the main songs!

Yeah I guess there's (at least) two distinct types of filler - lame songs, and musical cement. There can be a... third path (?) though, I suspect - songs that woulcd / could NEVER be a single, but that are really musically interesting and/or demanding too. Perhaps starting with Tomorrow Never Knows? I have a vague sense of what I mean. Like... everyb track on Remain In Light EXCEPT Once In A Lifetime, perhaps.

That would be stretching the definition even more out of shape. No one on earth understands "Tomorrow Never Knows" or "The Great Curver" as filler nor should they.

"The Great Curve," that is.

I like Hunting Bears on Amnesiac. I used to skip it, but then I realised Like Spinning Plates didn't sound as good without it.

i dunno yall, i'd always used 'filler' as pejorative and conflating growers, non-singles, musical cement, and lifeless dreck that's there to mark time(my definition of filler) under one rubric doesn't seem helpful.

I agree with pretty much all that from kevin and tremenoid, but I know some people who DO describe things like The Great Curve as filler; or, at least, view it as something less important.

And their names? :)

I think Loud Family's Days For Days might be the one of the kings of this...9 unnamed tracks, one in between each of the ten main ones, most of which play off of musical themes in the album without seeming too rock opera-ish. Good album that I haven't listened to in a while.

Ohm ghi rahn jah rahn jah jah rahn

The underrated "Body Exit Mind" by New Fast Automatic Daffodils is chock full of such little filler treats.

Badly Drawn Boy - "Body Rap"
Super Furry Animals - "Some Things Come From Nothing"
Radiohead - "Fitter Happier"
every "commercial" on The Who Sell Out

on the second side of brian eno's <i>before and after science</i> in between the tender <i>by this river</i> and the ethereal <i>spider and i</i> there is the instrumental <i>through hollow lands</i>. i can imagine people seeing it as filler. it is a very calm piece where hardly anything happens. but for me it is eno is at the apex of his art. call it a sound sculpture, a trip into the void, a pure meditation, whatever. i could listen to it on repeat for ages.

I was just reading about how Boards of Canada kinda like making the little interludes more than the actual songs.

a few I enjoy:
Can - Pnoom
Blur - Intermission, Far Out
David Bowie - Don't Sit Down
the Eno one Alex mentioned

there's a whole lot more...

I listened to "Wild Honey Pie" on a 12 hour drive today and I smiled from ear to ear.

One of my all-time fave Beatles songs.

"Fitter Happier" is a great piece of filler.

aenima's filler makes an album that's already too long even longer. therefore, dud

There are couple great filler moments on "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". "Hairless Heart" in particular.

and "Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats" for real

but none of this is "filler" and this thread teeters over a black hole of semantic craziness

Surely MBV are the kings of this with their dreamyshimmer interludes on Loveless!

blur's 13 is full of this stuff. 'caramel' even has TWO distinct filler 'tracks' in its closing minute!

Yes - these interlude things are not filler! I refer you to my post on the other thread for some examples of true filler :

No band can be said to be truly great without perfecting the art of writing a good filler. It's not easy, but instinctive knowledge of the rules of filler can pay off :
1)Get someone else in the band to write it. The Jam, possibly the kings of filler used Bruce Foxton in this key strategic role for the likes of 'London Traffic' and 'Don't Tell Them You're Sane'. He even wrote that rarest of breeds - a filler SINGLE! Yes, News Of the World of course.

2)Get someone else to sing it. Note DeeDee's, or was it Richie, vocals on the Ramones uber-filler Wart Hog. See also Ringo Starr, for whom 'Act Naturally' also obeyed rule 3 of filler...

3)Use the 'Country and Western' idiom. It might get a grin, and it show that you're, like, having fun. Can also be extended to include semi-jammed blues knock-offs and even jugband workouts. (See recent thread on this re : American 60's psych)

4)Another useful trick is to rewrite a hit. Or do such a generic mish-mash of all of your hits that the listener continues to tap his feet in the belief that it might actually have been a hit. Mr Robinson's Quango and It Could be You are splendid examples.

5)Disguising the filler. A true master of filler knows that adding a little something in the way of sound effects to spice it up a bit. London Traffic and Don't Tell Them You're Sane are garnished by wait for it....'traffic' noises and creaking doors/footsteps respectively. Nice! Roger McGuinn was fond of aircraft noises on several Byrds albums. See also many examples of 'noises of war' and gunfire.

6) As noted above - an instrumental is always good filler.

But an interlude is just a short instrumental?!

Good point on "Caramel" Louis. BLUREMI has an ending bit like that too. Actually I find myself skipping that end bit of Caramel!

"before they make me run"?

"voices of old people"

Well, my first post on this thread highlights what I think Dr.C is on about: a 3-minute symphony for harpsichord, opera singers and Tom Baker reading Rolling Stones death poetry. Funny but engaging; what more could you want?

Trayce, you'll like this one: Engineers' BOC rip-off 'Peter Street'

I think I have that song ackshully!

...and to round off my list of LJ Faves, the debut Working For A Nuclear Free City record is almost entirely made up of little filler-esque segments. Electro-prog of the most concise, agreeable kind! "England" especially, a segue between "The Tape" and "Over" (two of the stronger songs proper), is utterly beautiful. And the outro to "Forever", aside from being stunning, is once again pitch-perfect BOC-homily.

If a "reprise" counts as filler, then "The Light Dies Down On Broadway" from "The Lamb..." is also excellent. (And, in many ways, better than the original)

but isn't the lamb lies down filler from start to finish?

i'm not happy with any of these definitions of filler. i don't think filler can *ever* be seen to be a good thing. calling a song filler is effectively writing it off, and this thread contains far far too many great pieces of music/silliness for anything to qualify.

when a review slags off an album for containing "too much filler", what it invariably means is "other than the singles, the *overall musical/artistic quality* of this album is lacking".

as noted, some albums are apparently basically *all* filler by nick/dr c's definition! this makes absolutely no bloody sense to me at all. that just makes it a shit record, end of.

The point is that what many people recognise or refer to as 'filler' is actually the good stuff to other people (myself and Dr C, perhaps...).

Badly Drawn Boy gave good filler: little instrumental bits & pieces that went nowhere. His first eps & albums are full of it. It reached its apotheothis with the "About A boy" s/t. Then he stopped & got serious & dull.

There was a small vogue for it in the mid/late 90s (Cornershop, Beck, Beastie Boys etc), perhaps started by Money Mark? "Mark's Keyboard Repair" was ALL brilliant filler

I'll think of a better way to express it...

But sometimes you just know that a band has had to come up with a couple of tracks to fill up an album, so they either go for something with novelty value (different writer, a cover, an instrumental) or just something that repeats their trademark sound by numbers, maybe even sounds exactly like another of their songs. Often these tracks reveal something about an artist that you wouldn't necessarily get from their 'best' work. I just find that fascinating.

something that repeats their trademark sound by numbers, maybe even sounds exactly like another of their songs

ah, now there's the rub.

i think filler can only be a good thing on an album if most songs of the album in question are excellent. the occasional filler track can then be a welcome change or can fulfill the function of a breathing space for the listener.

an example of filler at the end of an album: "after hours" on "the velvet underground". it's an amateurish song i don't like at all but at the end it kind of makes sense. the album is over, it is just a bonus. it's a nice way to say good-bye with a song everybody and his monkey could sing.

what about hidden filler? how can that possibly be justified? eg that stone roses one, and the cure's 'the weedy burton'.

I was going to say that (whether it's filler or not) I am very much in favour of goofy short instrumentals (back when I made tapes side A would always close with Flipside by Breeders, which kind of suffers for being on a one-sided format; the surf closer on Watusi by the Wedding Present is the best damn bit of the whole album), but then I read:

I was just reading about how Boards of Canada kinda like making the little interludes more than the actual songs.

and realised that I couldn't draw the line between the above and roygbiv (short, cheerful interlude, pretty different in sound to the rest of the album, and, y'know, THE track that everyone picks).

But yeah, I like this stuff.
(xposts, heh, only last night I was admiring "after hours" after not really having paid it much attention before. those lyrics...)

The filler is never hidden.

The filler on 3 Imaginary Boys is Foxy Lady - classic filler, that : sung by the bass player, only put on the record at the insistence of the producer, cover version, faux-joky 'chat' before it. Lovely!

yes, hidden filler is a contradiction in terms!

yes, hidden good filler is a contradiction in terms!

fixed.

well yes

The Beatles' version of "Twist And Shout" may be the best piece of filler ever, considering all of their cover versions may be seen as filler.

Are non-album b-sides filler?

if we think of filler as being part of an album which makes sense i think the answer must be no of course. filler can't exist on its own without reference points. it is part of a flow or destroys a flow.

B-sides are in most cases filler in singles though. Or, at least they were back in the day of the vinyl 7 incher.

Are non-album b-sides filler?

almost inevitably.

Semantic interjection: people are seriously privileging connotation over denotation when they say filler is necessarily bad! We have a word for bad songs, and that word is "bad." Filler has more nuance: it is the stuff that fills stuff out! Saying filler is necessarily bad is like saying bread crumbs are necessarily bad, due to their role in filling out, umm, meatloaf.

I prefer Dr. C's notion of filler -- knocked-off, off-topic, "just having fun" stuff used to stretch a record from Six Songs We're Really Insisting On to Ten Songs You Buy.

(Not necessarily fun -- I forgot an "or" in there. Knocked off, or off-topic, or "just having fun," or genre pastiche, or anything where it feels like the band is spacing out the main display by going "oh hey look we made this thing, too.")

all the basement jaxx *ludes

xxpost that's why i said filler isn't *necessarily* bad but i don't think it can ever be good. and yeah in my working def. of the word filler as pertains to the album format might as well be a different word than 'meatloaf' filler, which is integral to meatloaf in a way that filler is not considered integral to an album.
I might be totally totally wrong too, it's just how i've used it and how I thought I'd seen it used since forever. At any rate stuffing like 90% of what constitutes the average modern album into the filler category isn't any more workable, surely.
gosh for someone who never even uses the word i sound like i care haha.

Non-album b-sides are/were my very favourite filler.

I love "Treefingers" on Kid A.

"Flying" by the motherfuckin' Beatles

I liked Madonna filler, especially on earlier albums like True Blue. 'Jimmy Jimmy' and 'Love Makes the World Go Round' etc.