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

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.

It doesn’t rule and I don’t think it was requested by the label but “How You Remind Me” by Nickelback was a last addition to the album and recorded in 15 minutes iirc.

on another cancon note, MGB's "Anti-Pop" is either one of these or was painstakingly crafted to evoke that tossed-off spiteful single vibe

I like the Cheap Trick scenario where the asshole suits, after already demanding they work with outside songwriters for their album and lecturing them on why they'd failed previously, basically said "We got The Flame or Look Away, your choice, but you have to record one or the other". Then Nielsen heard it for the first time he hated it so much that he smashed the cassette with his boot.

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

― Frozen Mug (Tom D.), Wednesday, January 15, 2020 10:46 AM bookmarkflaglink

they should have just kept making sequels to "Sail On, Sailor"

What about "Kokomo" !

bermuda, bahama, oh i wanna vomit

Arctic Monkeys 'Cornerstone' was supposedly written after James Ford suggested that the rest of the album was a bit on the dark side. It does stick out a mile on there. Of course then it wasn't even a hit.

Not a label, but when Pete Townshend played what the Who had recorded for Tommy to fellow pinball fanatic and critic Nik Cohn, the reception was lukewarm. So Pete said, "Um...ok...so...what if the messiah figure was...also a pinball champion?" Cohn loved the idea, so Townshend wrote "Pinball Wizard" that night, and slotted pinball references into the rest of the record.

Another category should be 'the label didn't hear a single so the artist said 'so what?'' into which you could file Kate Bush's The Dreaming and Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden and i'm sure a few others.

Quiet Riot- Cum On Feel the Noise
"Kevin DuBrow was dead set on not covering the song, because he wanted the band to write every song on the album. In addition, he was not a big fan of Slade. Instead, the band decided to try to cover the song as badly as they could so the label would refuse to release it."

America- A Horse With No Name

Trying to find a song that would be popular in both the United States and Europe, Warner Brothers was reluctant to release Beckley's "I Need You" ballad as the first single from America. The label asked the band if it had any other material, then arranged for America to record four more songs at Morgan Studios, Willesden in London.[9] "A Horse with No Name" was released as the featured song on a three-track single in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy and the Netherlands in late 1971.

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.

Yeah and you have the perfect excuse to write something more mainstream and poppy than your normal stuff. If it's good, you get the credit, if it's bad, well, it's what they wanted and you didn't have much time.

Climax Blues Band - "Couldn't Get It Right":

The song was recorded for their eighth studio album, Gold Plated, which was named after Pete Haycock's Veleno guitar and produced by Mike Vernon. The song was specifically written and produced after the manager of the band, Miles Copeland III, demanded that the band append a radio-friendly song to the track listing. The band at the time had released eight albums and although that had translated into fame, they did not have a great impact on the charts.[8] Copeland suggested a cover version of an Elvis Presley song; this suggestion was ignored, and instead the band came up with an original composition[9] "from absolutely nowhere". It was simply a case of sitting in the studio, conjuring up a rhythm, appending the traditional dual vocals for which Climax Blues Band were known, and coming up with a couple of hooks. The sudden emergence of the song irritated the producer, as he thought the band had been withholding a hit from him.[4]

Didn't "Love Me Do" come about because George Martin didn't think their songs were strong enough to be singles, and sourced "How do you do it" for their first a-side? He wasn't all that convinced by "Love Me Do" either, but noticed the lack of enthusiasm in their rendering of HDYDI, so went along with it "for now"

DC “Living With A Hernia” and “Don’t Wear Those Shoes” are two of my all time faves

we need a weird al poll

What about "Kokomo" !

neither written by the Beach Boys, nor part of an album!

The sudden emergence of the song irritated the producer, as he thought the band had been withholding a hit from him.

lol this is great

GIMME ANOTHER. NOW. *fires gun at feet*

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

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 15, 2020 10:14 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

He arranged for decoy sessions in an LA studio specifically for record company weasels to attend and be assured that the album was not mostly being recorded in his basement in Boston.

The album was mostly recorded in his basement in Boston.

Couldn’t Get It Right is a good one!

/What about "Kokomo" !/

neither written by the Beach Boys, nor part of an album!

"the flame" is better than the other cheap trick hit i know. poor them.

an interesting subset of these is those that the artist pretended weren't forced upon them by the label -- like in interviews they'll say they just happened to be inspired to record this song two weeks before its release which just happens to be one of the two on the album without their name in the songwriting credits. christina aguilera's "not myself tonight" is one of these iirc

Another category should be 'the label didn't hear a single so the artist said 'so what?'' into which you could file Kate Bush's The Dreaming and Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden and i'm sure a few others.

― piscesx, Wednesday, January 15, 2020 8:28 AM (thirteen hours ago)

kelly clarkson's my december, semi-famously

it was co-written by a BBoy

only in Mike's standard "change a word, take a third" approach (tbf the bit he changed was a big improvement)

"The Flame" is dogshit

I used to hear it on the way to baseball practice and I don't want to say it's at fault, but I think my strikeouts were tied to whether I heard it or not before practice

it has terrible lyrics, that song

Smash mouth “all star” and “walking on the sun” both

Kokomo ended up on Still Cruising, but I think they only made the rest of that album after they stumbled into a #1 hit.

Except for the three old songs they tacked on to the end of that album, to bring up the running time to an acceptable 33 minutes. It was my favorite album when I was 8.

re: Free Huey - it's such a shame because Kingsize is more or less a legit good album AND also a couple of tracks too long. Programme-out 'Free Huey' and it's really consistent. I was convinced it was not the case at the time.

Didn't "Love Me Do" come about because George Martin didn't think their songs were strong enough to be singles, and sourced "How do you do it" for their first a-side? He wasn't all that convinced by "Love Me Do" either, but noticed the lack of enthusiasm in their rendering of HDYDI, so went along with it "for now"

― Mark G

lewisohn tells the story a little differently. i don't remember the details precisely, but the writer of "how do you do it" was not in emi's good books by the time of the recording session - there was some sort of financial deal they were going for with the songwriter but it didn't work out, which meant that any incentive they had to release that writer's songs as singles was significantly diminished. "love me do" (which was not a new song, having been recorded with martin at the band's demo session in june with pete best) seemed to martin to at least have some small potential, particularly the novelty of the harmonica.

at the sessions for their next single they brought "please please me" which martin found much more impressive.

Except for the three old songs they tacked on to the end of that album, to bring up the running time to an acceptable 33 minutes. It was my favorite album when I was 8.

― Frederik B, jeudi 16 janvier 2020 11:08 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

eheh. I have to confess I still have a soft spot for "Getcha Back" for that reason !
When I think the first BBoys tracks I loved were that one and "Kokomo"... (the rest came much later, being french, their 60s output was not as part of the global culture as in the US, I guess)...
I think there's a thread about that kind of situations where you only knew very MINOR songs from a band/artist before the big hits.

fred b and i don't always see eye to eye but I love that he, too, dug "still cruisin'" as a kid. "somewhere near japan" and "in my car" are both jams imo.

re: the producer being annoyed about band holding out ---- not to bring anybody down but this has the sound to me of something told as a chuckling, mildly embellished anecdote in a VH1 special and then reported po-facedly in wiki text years down the line. i agree tho that it's better as written.

thread question is a classic ILM puzzler in that i would have sworn i knew fifty of these but, on the spot, can't think of a single example.

also now i have "couldn't get it right" stuck in my head

i'm sure I read this somewhere about Talk Talk's Life's What You Make It. Can't find the source but it's mentioned uncited on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life's_What_You_Make_It_(Talk_Talk_song)#Conception

Same as Boo Radleys- Free Huey, which ruins Kingsize in many ways.
― doorstep jetski (dog latin),

Ah, thanks for the reminder about Kingsize. I think that album is way overdue for a revisit.

Also loving the amount of Weird Al discussion in this thread.

we need a weird al poll

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes)

lewisohn tells the story a little differently. i don't remember the details precisely, but the writer of "how do you do it" was not in emi's good books by the time of the recording session - there was some sort of financial deal they were going for with the songwriter but it didn't work out, which meant that any incentive they had to release that writer's songs as singles was significantly diminished. "love me do" (which was not a new song, having been recorded with martin at the band's demo session in june with pete best) seemed to martin to at least have some small potential, particularly the novelty of the harmonica.

at the sessions for their next single they brought "please please me" which martin found much more impressive.

― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Thursday, January 16, 2020 5:36 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is what I remember from Lewisohn's bio, too. The Beatles were essentially signed for their material, so that EMI/Parlophone could own/control some song publishing. The Beatles as recording artists were forced on Martin as punishment for him having an affair with his secretary. I believe Martin still pushed for "How Do You Do It" after "Love Me Do"'s success -- he was sure it would be a #1, and it was later for Gerry And The Pacemakers -- but changed his mind after hearing their new sped-up arrangement of "Please Please Me."

Oh god, Free Huey *is* bad. I can't say this is one of the songs I remember from the album.... it seems like the label asked them for a "Song 2"

Does anyone remember an interview with Lily Allen in '07 or '08, where she said that she didn't like "Take What You Take" from Alright, Still because it was basically pushed on her by producers or label honchos as a peppier potential single? At least she prevailed in regards to single selection (it didn't get slated as one).

Kingsize is indeed a great album, possibly their best IMO. Think I'm the only person who likes Free Huey

xxpost My recollection of the Boston s/t story (from the liner notes of the 2006 remaster) was that Tom presented the album completed to the label. The label, knowing they were recorded in his basement, insisted they were demos, and told him he had to rerecord it in a studio. Tom refused, saying (correctly) that the sound quality was already comparable to what he would get out of studio recording. I don't recall if it was a compromise, or if it was a decoy as suggested by Tarfumes, but the only song they actually recorded in LA was "Let Me Take You Home Tonight," which was the one song on the album Scholz did not have a writing credit on. And they didn't record the whole song, iirc: the electric guitars were recorded in Scholz's basement, and Tom himself did not attend the LA sessions.

This is what I remember from Lewisohn's bio, too. The Beatles were essentially signed for their material, so that EMI/Parlophone could own/control some song publishing. The Beatles as recording artists were forced on Martin as punishment for him having an affair with his secretary. I believe Martin still pushed for "How Do You Do It" after "Love Me Do"'s success -- he was sure it would be a #1, and it was later for Gerry And The Pacemakers -- but changed his mind after hearing their new sped-up arrangement of "Please Please Me."

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)

right, yeah, that played into it too - that's what i enjoyed about lewisohn's bio, he pushes past all the polite half-truths and reading it honestly gave me a new respect for causality. the actual story of how the beatles got to a point where they could record "please please me" is even more interesting and god-plays-dice-with-the-universe than all that stuff about george martin's tie is!

A large chunk. of the Boo Radleys' single tracks sound forced and out of place on the albums I think. It's Lulu is ghastly. What's In The Box and C'mon Kids are irritating attempts at punky fun times but just come off shrill and unimaginative compared to the rest of the album

i just read about that Martin affair elsewhere; apparently Giles Martin won't speak to him