the label didn't hear a single so they went back and recorded one

LOL, "Love Song" might be the only example of the relevant artist writing a song about not wanting to succumb to record label pressure to write a hit song (see Korn; also LCD Soundsystem's "You Wanted A Hit" though I'm not aware of that being written in response to any specific pressure) and yet still executing the brief so perfectly that the resulting song is far and away their biggest hit and the only one most people will remember them by/for.

I must hang out with too many musical theater nerds, I was thinking "wait, the woman who wrote Waitress had a hit single?"

Blur, For Tomorrow and Chemical World

nb that the UK label didn't a single so they wrote For Tomorrow, and the US label still didn't hear a single so they additionally wrote Chemical World

Paranoid wasn't so much a "label didn't hear a single", it was "album was too short".

After recording some of the new songs for radio presenter Bob Harris's Sounds of the 70s as the newly dubbed Spiders from Mars in January 1972, the band returned to Trident that month to begin work on "Suffragette City" and "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide". RCA executive Dennis Katz had complained that the album did not contain a single, so Bowie wrote "Starman", which was completed on 4 February 1972.

After a few listens, the top brass at RCA reportedly did not hear a single on Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, requiring Lou to hastily book studio time to quickly write and record "Metal Machine Music, Part 4." Thanks to Lou's determination to kick up some serious downtown dirt, RCA was able to release the album in July, just in time for the Captain Daryl Dragon "randomly-placed locked grooves" remix of "MMM, Part 4" to enter 1975's competitive battle for Song of the Summer.

Guided by Voices - "Chasing Heather Crazy"

hahaha xpost

White Whale Records was bugging the Turtles to record more stuff like "Happy Together" instead of the Pysch-stuff they'd put out on some subsequent singles, so Howard Kaylan bashed out "Elenore" as a joke, 'the dumbest Pop Song ever', and ended up with one of the band's last big hits.

75% of these answers are made up, right?

The Metal Machine Music one is 100% true, iirc

After submitting Master of Puppets, Metallica were told they needed another Beatles-esque Top 40 jaunt like the previous album's "Trapped Under Ice", so they went back into the studio that night and banged out the skiffle classic "Damage, Inc". Daryl Hall was in the studio next door so he lent his backing vocals

silver "wham bam" (at least according a statement in the wikipedia article, w/ no source attached)

i am sometimes skeptical of these claims, because they make good stories/pr. not as good of pr as the claims that no one at the label/at radio/etc. believed the song would be a hit, but still. (this was recently claimed about "havana", lol)

I wish more bands would do this.

Missy Elliot, Get Ur Freak On. She tweeted about it recently, not sure if it was label motivated but definitely a classic 'we need one more, let's throw this together quick'.

Ween's "Japanese Cowboy" was one of these.

They worked with the legendary Ben Vaughn on 12 Golden Country Greats, who heard the demos and "I don't hear a single here". so Dean & Gene went back to their hotel room and wrote "Japanese Cowboy" in about an hour, subconsciously plagiarizing the Chariots of Fire theme. apparently they didn't even notice until Vangelis sued them (and won, he now has an official writing credit on that song)

given the way singles (and albums) are released these days, i get the feeling that the majors are severely lacking in people who have any idea whatsoever what's likely to be a hit or not

Suede's Trash could work here. The band thought that Beautiful Ones or a couple of other songs could be the lead single from Coming Up, but people at the label thought they still hadn't quite found the song that would work as their big comeback statement. When they later came up with Trash, it was immediately seen as the one.

"Living With A Hernia" from Polka Party! was one of these

Always preferred James Brown's version

Lauryn Hill - Can't Take My Eyes Off You

Wait, the label didn't hear ANY single on Lauryn Hill's album !??

XTC with Great Fire, which is weird because it's arguably equally as uncommercial as anything on Mummer.

Wait, the label didn't hear ANY single on Polka Party !??

p sad that "Living With A Hernia" appeased them - worst song on the album and possibly Al's all-time worst single

that is heresy

especially in a world where the star wars american pie thing exists

okay i checked and "Toothless People" and "Don't Wear Those Shoes" are both on that album so i withdraw the first charge

the star wars thing is def in his lower tier but it was at least funny a couple times. "a long, long time ago.... in a galaxy far away" is a good opening gag. the wistful delivery on "the battle droids were broken" also gives me a smile just thinking about it.

now you've got me pondering a Weird Al ballot poll, tho probably someone's already in the dusty queue for that one

the star wars american pie is the only Al song I hate, because I despise the original song & star wars nerdery after 1983. though "Yoda" rules so who knows

Only "Dog Eat Dog", however, appeared on Yankovic's 2009 Essential collection

that's a weird choice!

It's part of his goal to get young Weird Al fans into Talking Heads.

First thing that comes to mind is Cherry Pie by Warrant.

"Cherry Pie" was not originally planned to be put on the album, and lead guitarist Joey Allen has stated that the album was originally going to be called Quality You Can Taste (frontman Jani Lane recalled this differently, stating that the title was supposed to be Uncle Tom's Cabin[5]). The president of Columbia Records, Don Ienner, wanted a rock anthem, so he called frontman Jani Lane (according to Lane, he wanted a "Love in an Elevator" type song), who wrote the song in about fifteen minutes. Allen stated that "the whole marketing and everything for that record changed. It was definitely driven by the label and not the band."

"Cherry Pie," of course, shows up in "Polka Your Eyes Out," on Off the Deep End.

Quality You Can Taste
Great Horrible 70s Album title!

the title was going to be Uncle Tom's Cabin? really?

I know a secret that I just can't tell
I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cabin
I know who put the bodies in the wishing well

listening to Polka Party rn and man Al otm, "Dog Eat Dog" is fantastic. def did not appreciate the spot-on-ness of it at age 14. see also "Mr. Popeil," his B-52's tribute.

Deftones, "Back to School (Mini Maggit)"

would argue that this song does not rule and is the worst song on white pony when included

Didn't Tom Scholz famously pretend to re-record the entire first Boston album to make the label happy?

the artist parodies are consistently Weird Al's best stuff - Dare to be Stupid, Close But No Cigar, Everything You Know is Wrong...

Can only assume that Gorky's Zygotic Mynci had a few of these, even if they weren't necessarily requested by the label...

Sweet Johnny, Poodle Rockin', Mow The Lawn

― PaulTMA, Tuesday, January 14, 2020 11:09 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

All in the same vein. All horrible. All break up the flow of the album.

Same as Boo Radleys- Free Huey, which ruins Kingsize in many ways.

would argue that this song does not rule and is the worst song on white pony when included

et tu, brad :(

It doesn't work as a tacked-on opener but it's a very fun digression that would sound great on the second half of the record imho

I think Gary Numan claimed "Cars" was one of these

Same as Boo Radleys- Free Huey, which ruins Kingsize in many ways.

it ruined it so badly for me that I don't think I ever really listened to the rest of the album. tbh I wasn't much of a fan of Wake Up or C'mon Kids so I was halfway off the Boo Radleys bus by that point anyway, but I'm pretty sure when I bought Kingsize and put it on I got about halfway through that song, ejected the CD and promptly sold it

as in you unwrapped the disc, put it in, got halfway through the song, ejected the CD, handed it to the guy to your right, and he gave you ten bucks?

This scenario has the perfect alchemy of being at peak studio form + having already gotten all your precious overworked ideas out of your system + deadlines/restrictions that require not over-thinking things.

... and so on in an endless cycle so that literally no-one has ever heard this album the beyond the halfway mark in the song "Free Huey". (xp)

The Beach Boys - Sail On Sailor

I think their record company said "We don't hear a single here" about every Beach Boys album from "Pet Sounds" onwards.

Poodlen rocken

"songs that inspired a band member to quit" would be another good topic

That could be Russell Senior with Pulp's Help The Aged

it's true that i don't like the post-gorky 5 stuff nearly as much as the lawrence-era stuff but calling euros childs a "pop sellout" is, uh, a fairly severe mischaracterization of the man i'd say

shame that the "hush the warmth" single never came out - there's a nice cover of richard thompson's "poor ditching boy" that was intended as a b-side. that could be another thread, b-sides the label didn't release because they pulled the single... i know ultrasound originally recorded "goodbye 25" as a b-side to something or another but that single was never released.

B-sides they didn't release because the label pulled the release?

"Superintendent" and "Tomorrow (from Bugsy Malone") from the last Boo Radleys single "Kingsize" - I had to visit MVE daily until I got the promo!

Lauryn Hill - Can't Take My Eyes Off You

― fetter, Wednesday, January 15, 2020 3:32 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

nope, it was previously recorded for the movie Conspiracy Theory then became a radio hit that summer before the album's release. they tacked it onto the end of Miseducation because it was already a currently popular song of hers

“Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Rhythmic Songs chart despite never officially being pushed to radio. According to Williams, it was never meant to be a commercial single.

“It was originally recorded for [the soundtrack for the movie] Conspiracy Theory and ended up on the radio, became popular, and that’s how it ended became a bonus track,” Williams explained.

I read some horrible article in Shiding recently which goes by the idea that they were pop sellouts after John Lawrence left, becoming "the Euros Childs show" afterwards, which is kind of laughable
― PaulTMA, Friday, January 17, 2020 10:02 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Don't know about "pop sellouts" (wrong decade), but they certainly took a sharp right turn around that time.
"Euros Childs show" is understandable, though basically amounts to giving JL all the credit for their previous David Bedford-inspired lunacy which strikes me as dubious (but I wouldn't know).

I’m straining to imagine a world where Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci was ever considered anything like a commercial proposition.

The 90s really were a long time ago, weren’t they?

Patio song got a fair bit of daytime radio play

Funnily I just happened upon a Netflix documentary about Clive Davis where they tell exactly this anecdote about Clive "not hearing any singles" from Bruce, and Bruce therefore obligingly going off to write "Blinded by the Light" AND "Spirits in the Night."

The implication being, of course, that Springsteen is apparently a talented enough songwriter to quickly write songs of the quality of "Blinded by the Light" and "Spirits in the Night," sure, BUT the true visionary genius in this story is the pudgy bald guy in a suit who told him to do it.

"and then old Clive Davis said he surely gonna make us a star, he gonna make us a star"

If Gorky's didn't refuse to play the double-formatting game, then most of their singles from Patio Song onwards would have made the top 40 with ease.

There was a little story about the Commodores on Decades last night, and they said "Brick House" was sort of one of these (producer told them they needed one more song).

Mac Demarco - "Let Her Go" is one of these

superdrag - "do the vampire"

p sad that "Living With A Hernia" appeased them - worst song on the album and possibly Al's all-time worst single

You can go straight to hell.

i will admit that after listening to the album again it rose a bit in my estimation, there's some good lyrics. i'd have to look thru his singles discography to see what could go below it tho.

This thread title makes it sound like the label got fed up with the band and recorded the hit single themselves, incognito

While on tour in 1968, the band (Ohio Express) found out they had a new single, "Chewy Chewy" when they heard it on the radio and had to deal with fans yelling for a song they didn't know at their concert that night.

Heat of the Moment by Asia!

“It was an afterthought,” Downes told Prog in a new interview. “We were going to lead off with ‘Only Time Will Tell,’ but the label said, ‘Do you have anything else?’ So John [Wetton] and I came up with ‘Heat of the Moment’ in one morning. Literally, the bones of the song were written in maybe a couple of hours.”

checks out