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

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