I Love Deep Cuts

Also yeah great post Austin!

I have also been constantly obsessed about the “deep cuts” since early age. I remember back then I didn’t have much to choose from as my parent’s vinyl and cd collection wasn’t that extense but I remember hearing songs like idk Cat Stevens’ “was dog a doughnut” and thinking whoa this is the “moonshadow” guy? This song rocks!

A deep cut ending up my favorite song of the artist happens a lot.

Another example top of my mind:

My father had several “silvio rodriguez” albums - an artist which I always found a tad corny - honestly find the trova genre in general pretty corny - but one evening with nothing to do I ended up playing the full albums to see what I missed since he has so many fans and I ended up with “sueño con serpientes” which is by far my favorite thing of his. Turns out the whole album is quite good - still not my cup of coffee.

A couple of years ago Jose Gonzalez made a cover of it - and I think even named it one of his top 10 fave songs of all time - which helped a little for other people to discover it but it’s still pretty much a deep cut.

yes great post - there is another really cool thing about deep cuts and that's the fact that every so often you see a band live and they dig something awesome out you never expected them to play. in fact I try to never look at setlists for that reason because it's so cool when it happens out of the blue. it almost feels like a secret handshake with the band. one of the coolest live moments I can think of is seeing Sparks and having them pull out "The Toughest Girl in Town" - a deep cut off a deep cut album. and it happens to be one of my favorite songs of theirs. but I never hear anyone mention it.

trying to think of similar moments...maybe Animal Collective doing "Wide Eyed" last year.

...speaking of trova, what _genres_ could be considered deep cuts? ...or does that even make sense...

isn't that kind of what northern soul is?

(i think i sorta get what you mean...)

every so often you see a band live and they dig something awesome out you never expected them to play.

i remember being really active on a cure fan forum about a decade ago and there were some band insiders that lurked and sometimes posted. the band was doing a charity gig at some tiny pub or something and some posters had gained entry. they just happened to play "push" for the first time since the 80s that night. an audience recording eventually surfaced; there were audible gasps when folks realized what song it was.

(wonder if that recording is still floating around. it was the barfly show.)

I may have dreamed this because it seems so unlikely, but I think I saw Fleetwood Mac play "Never Make Me Cry" off Tusk

Many thoughts about this topic. Too many to make coherent. Anyway. I love deep cuts. A lot.

I almost exclusively listen to full albums, so yeah, deep cuts for the win.

Keep thinking when I read the thread title "I love deep cuts and I cannot lie."

love this out-of-character let's-try-to-be-accessible Amon Duul II track. Won't you come to my heartbeat party?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChzqIyKfLjQ

is the deep cut now a phenomenon of the past?

Surely it's more prevalent than ever, since supposedly most current listeners don't care about albums or even artists anymore, just playlists presumably consisting of hits?

Wes Anderson etc movies killed “deep cuts”

it's not really a deep cut anymore if it becomes a massive hit imo, like if it goes viral because of a system glitch

corrs that's what i was thinking about...
deep cuts might be fan favorites, but when folks who don't normally listen to the artist know the song —whether it was a promoted single or not— it's no longer a deep cut. and again: if streaming numbers are accurate, it really has leveled the playing field. was "cranes in the sky" a promoted single or didn't it just take off as a fan favorite? anyway, i think the next step for deep cuts has actually already been around for a while and that's: catalogue music where the catalogue is in licensing purgatory — obvious example here is the sst catalogue. and just the other day, ya'll reminded me that the best throwing muses album (limbo) isn't on streaming. so, i mean... who knows, maybe "ruthie's knocking" will become a deep cut in time.