In today’s streaming-dominated, everything on-demand world, the giddy thrill of discovering an absolutely belting B-side increasingly feels like an experience from a world long gone.
Originally a necessity borne out of the need to have something - anything - on the flip side of a 7 inch vinyl record single, the esoteric allure of the B-side begun to grow when self-writing bands like the Beatles (who had a surfeit of brilliant songs - too many for their studio albums) would add extra off-cuts to the flip side. Some of which were truly mind-blowing.
As times (and formats) changed, the industry, at the time of the CD generation, capitalised on the completist hunger of music fans.
They would put out multiple releases of the same single (aka, formatting) resulting in often quite a lot of B-sides to collect. Often 4 to 5 per-single.
But while some acts became notable for having consistently exemplary B-sides during this period, many were sub-par.
Quite often, there's a clear reason these tracks didn’t make the album proper, they're just not up to scratch. The lion's share of most B-sides serving as functional filler.
But then, of course, there’s the exceptions that prove the rule.
There's the amazing stories of those songs that, on sheer virtue of their brilliance, fought free of their B-side relegation status and ended up being huge hits, or beloved set staples. Often, the most flabbergasted are their creators.
Our list below compiles some of the most astounding of these. Though some were later released as A-side singles, others found fame years later (or in one case, was switched to the A-side at the eleventh hour - yes, we're stretching a bit, but as we argue, it's still worthy of inclusion).
There’s actually far more than just the six listed here - and we’ll bring you another curated serving of these soon.
How Soon is Now? - The Smiths
How Soon is Now? - The Smiths
It’s arguably The Smiths most well-known song (certainly from an international perspective), but the Smiths hazy, tremolo-soaked gem was originally borne out of a time-filling studio experiment.
The band and producer John Porter had studio time left over after already recording both A and B-sides for the 1984 single (William, It Was Really Nothing and its utterly gorgeous B-side, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want).
They concocted this studio-crafted masterpiece in one session, its groove tightly synchronised to a LinnDrum.
While the producer and Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr were giddy at the new frontiers the track pushed them into, management politics meant the track was relegated to become an additional B-side for ‘William…’. “Sadly, Geoff Travis [the founder of The Smiths’ label, Rough Trade] didn’t like it, and I got fired shortly after.” Porter told us in an interview recently. “Geoff’s view was that I was having too much fun, and it didn’t sound like the Smiths. He put it on the B-side”
Regardless of its demotion, the danceable groove and stop/start arrangement meant the cut got a second wind as a dance club favourite. So much so that the track was put out as a single in 1985.
It has subsequently become one of the band’s most enduring songs. This was elevated further when a cover of the song, performed by Love Spit Now, was used as the opening of the popular TV show Charmed. “When I lived [in the US], that’s the one I used to hear on the radio or on TV most frequently,” its producer told us.
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) - Green Day
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) - Green Day
Green Day’s graduation and break-up staple is firmly entrenched in popular culture. It's the song that the band, to this day, conclude all of their (now arena-sized) shows with.
Released as the second single from Green Day’s fifth album Nimrod in December 1997, the song originated as far back as 1993. Well before the release of their 1994 major label debut Dookie.
Some sources state that the first version of the song was written following Billie Joe Armstrong's former girlfriend Amanda jetting off to Ecuador - ending their relationship and leaving the future pop-punk pioneer despondent.
Allegedly, the relatively basic chord sequence was strung together during a houseparty, during which Billie Joe Armstrong was handed an acoustic guitar. We can't imagine what else might have been handed round…
![Green Day - Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) [Official Music Video] [4K UPGRADE] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/CnQ8N1KacJc/maxresdefault.jpg)
Despite trying to make the song work for both Dookie and 1995's Insomniac, the band jettisoned the song as it was so far away from the punchy brand of pop punk they and producer Rob Cavallo had perfected.
However, as Billie Joe didn’t want the song to be completely forgotten, a scrappy and straightforward acoustic guitar version was recorded as the B-side to Insomniac single, Brain Stew/Jaded in 1996.
By that point, the song’s potential had started to shine through, with Cavallo and Armstrong working further on the track, adding violins and strings to the arrangement and making it into the beautiful end result it became.
“We always thought it had something,” Cavallo told The Ringer. “All of Billie’s songs always have something, there’s always something good. [But] that one was a pretty exceptional one.”
Kung Fu Fighting - Carl Douglas
Kung Fu Fighting - Carl Douglas
Yes, the Carl Douglas disco classic was originally - up until the last possible minute - planned to be a B-side.
It was written to be in fact.
Originally assembled to back up I Want to Give You My Everything, the irresistibility of Kung Fu Fighting led to it being switched and made the A-side at the eleventh hour.
Perhaps, you might say, that means it shouldn’t be included on this list, but its story gets to the absolute heart of the overriding theme that many of these songs share - that its writers or producers might have not seen the potential in it, but the song itself had other ideas.
Douglas was hired as a vocalist by songwriter and producer Biddu Appaiah to specifically sing his song I Want to Give You My Everything - then being prepared for release as a single.
When it came to what would back it, Douglas proposed a sketch of something more lighthearted and throwaway that he’d been working on himself, inspired by witnessing a couple of kids fighting in an arcade.
"Looks like everybody's kung fu fighting," Douglas remarked to himself. Before pausing and thinking 'hang on a minute, that gives me an idea…'
“Kung Fu Fighting was the B-side so I went over the top on the 'huhs' and the 'hahs' and the chopping sounds. It was a B-side - who was going to listen?,” Carl told the Metro newspaper in 2004. “I played the A-side to the guy at Pye Records, Robin Blanchflower, and he said: 'Can I listen to the rest of the reel?' When he heard it, he said: 'This should be the A-side.”
Blanchflower’s instincts were correct. After a modest start, Kung Fu Fighting's irresistible funk groove and Douglas' divine vocal elevated the track to very summit of the Billboard Top 100 chart. It remains an immediately recognisable, disco pop classic and shaped Carl's future career.
From that moment on, Douglas and martial arts were forever intertwined.
It's perhaps the lighthearted, breezy fun of the song that is the real secret sauce, stemming from the sheer joy that Douglas was having in the studio, consciously making a B-side.
Or so he thought.
The single was also notable for being the first single to star a Jamaican-born singer to reach the number one spot in the US, as well as the first British singer to top the R&B chart. The songs' producer, Biddu, became the first Asian producer to oversee a number one hit in the UK charts.
Maggie May - Rod Stewart
Maggie May - Rod Stewart
It’s perhaps Rod's most well-known song, but ironically the track which actually broke Rod Stewart through to solo commercial success was at fist dismissed as a B-side to the lesser Reason to Believe.
As Rod relayed to Howard Stern in a 2013 interview, part of the reason the song lacked enthusiasm in the studio was its weak melodic structure. "It was just so rambling. It didn’t have a catchy chorus, like you needed."
Recorded quickly in just two straight takes, the slick little tune - allegedly penned by Stewart after an early sexual encounter with an older woman (not called 'Maggie May' we might add) - turned out to be the perfect song to spotlight Rod's soon-to-be iconic gravelly tones.
Upon the single’s release, radio DJs and tastemakers were far more drawn to the flip side, and regular rotation of Maggie May ensued.
“At first, I didn't think much of Maggie May,” Rod told the Wall Street Journal in 2015. “I guess that's because the record company didn't believe in the song. I didn't have much confidence then. I figured it was best to listen to the guys who knew better. What I learned is sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.”
Sweetest Thing - U2
Sweetest Thing - U2
Hastily scribed by Bono as an apology present after forgetting his wife’s birthday, the first version of Sweetest Thing was originally tacked on the B-side of their 1987 epic, Where the Streets Have No Name and thought about no more.
But, Sweetest Thing finally got its moment in the sun over a decade later when a re-recorded version (with added chords, supplied by The Edge) ended up being reworked and made into a hugely popular single. Its aim, to promote the band’s greatest hits compilation, The Best of 1980–1990.
Sweetest Thing itself would end up being a big seller, topping the charts in the band’s native Ireland (the Dublin-shot, Boyzone-guesting video certainly helped). It went top 10 in the UK, where it's still regularly featured in advertisements and soundtracks. In the states it rose to 9 in the US Billboard Modern Rock Chart.
“It was actually the one song that we always felt that we could have nailed better than we did,” The Edge reflected when the band had just brought out the new, single version. “In my mind it was always a pop song and I just felt we could do it better. We went in for a couple of days to try rewriting and Bono re-sang and we remixed it. It came together very quickly and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.”
Just a Day - Feeder
Just a Day - Feeder
Another example of a track kicking around for a while and being cast off as a B-side before ending up becoming the signature song of the artist in question (although in this case, Buck Rogers would like to have a word, Ed).
Just a Day’s insistent two note guitar riff and thrusting, power-chord drive makes it easily one of the most memorable British rock tracks of the early 2000s.
Originally demoed during sessions for their second studio album Yesterday Went Too Soon, the band couldn't quite get the track right, and left it off both that record and its 2001 follow-up Echo Park.
The studio cut of this punchy little number was put out as the flip side to their grunge-leaning Seven Days in the Sun
But the song's signature use on the soundtrack of popular video game Gran Turismo 3: A-Specexploded Just a Day's popularity. Its surging momentum a perfect fit for the high-octane racing simulator. A generation of gamers took to it.
Its high regard - it soon became one of their most beloved B-sides - caused the band to release the song as the lead track of an EP, accompanied by a rather brilliant video.
That video, compiled many of the band’s young fans miming to the track in their poster-daubed bedrooms. It's a little cringe now, but its camcorder-quality aesthetic still make us feel a sense of warm nostalgia.
“I would say that’s as popular as ‘Buck Rogers’, if not more with some people. In Japan they go absolutely apeshit to it! I mean, we’ve had stage invasions in Japan on that song!", Feeder's frontman, Grant Nicholas told Drowned in Sound.
“It’s a very youthful, young song. It’s got an innocence and a charm to it and people go mad to it. I’m not going to second guess myself as to why: it just does. It’s got something in it, some formula or sound. And you know, it’s not... in the chorus it’s ‘I don’t want to bring you down’, it’s in this dark place. That’s what’s really weird about it! But it has this feel-good factor about it.”
Sadly, shortly after Just a Day's release, the band's drummer Jon Lee took his own life. It was a devastating end to the band’s most successful year.
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