In Praise of Filler

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.