When any musician spends a long time writing an album, quite often the respective quality of the individual songs in contention for the album can start to blur. After hearing things so frequently, labouring over their arrangements or fiddling with their mix, it’s understandable that some artists can think less of songs that, to anyone else listening, would automatically point to as a hit. Or at the very least, a damned good song.
In our last round-up of B-sides that became unexpected, monster hits, we documented tracks that defied rejection, helmed by the likes of U2, Green Day, the Smiths and Carl Douglas.
While some of the songs featured in that list were surprise successes, others were songs that its creators knew had something, returning to the songs years later to finesse them and let them have their moment.
It’s a similar picture for the six that we're highlighting here.
It’s quite astonishing how many of these songs would become so central, not just to the artist’s narratives, but to popular music as a whole. Yet, at the time, were not deemed worthy enough for A-side status, or, in the case of a couple, merely regarded as a space-filling afterthought.
But, those who bothered to flip the record (vinyl buyers), or listen beyond the lead track (the CD generation), or encountered the song via other means (the online generation), thought otherwise…
Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets
Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets
The original rock ‘n’ roll floor-filler was certainly not thought of as such when it was written.
Penned in 1952 by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers, it was Bill Haley & His Comets’ stop/start, dance hall-ready arrangement that everybody would become familiar with.
In many ways, it was the song that popularised the whole concept of rock ‘n’ roll as an oncoming cultural whirlwind.
It set, in many minds, the basic structural template of what a rock 'n' roll song, at its most basic level, was.
With a bluesy chord structure, but an (at the time) high-octane, party-angled vibe, the song had been taken on by the band as part of their regular repertoire during the preceding year.
When Decca Records (to whom they’d signed in 1954) pushed the group to record the single Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town), a B-side was needed. Sensing an opportunity, the group finally cut the live favourite.
Though that single flopped, a year later, Rock Around the Clock was used as the title music of the rock ‘n’ roll-charged school drama Blackboard Jungle.
For many, this was the first experience of the emerging genre they’d ever heard. It soon became a regular DJ spin and a dance hall favourite.
Reissued as a single on July 9, 1955. It became a huge success, ultimately becoming the first rock ‘n’ roll song to top the Billboard charts.
Not many B-sides have reversed their fortunes in quite as dramatic a way as that.
But, as we'll see, some had equally astonishing second lives…
Harness Your Hopes - Pavement
Harness Your Hopes - Pavement
It took decades, and a whole new generation to make this forgotten Pavement studio off-cut a viral sensation.
First recorded in 1996 with the aim of it being included on the lo-fi indie pioneers’ fourth studio album, Brighten the Corners, Pavement frontman, Stephen Malkmus ultimately decided to reject it from the final running order.
While Pavement aficionados warmed to the song when it was included as a B-side on the release of Spit on a Stranger a few years later, Malkmus - frustrated with what he considered a butchered production - forgot about the track.
Cut to 2015, and Stephen is waiting in line at a gluten-free bakery. Suddenly, he notices the track wafting out of the bakery’s speakers.
“I thought that was weird. But I was also naive enough to think that that was a fan that was just playing their own music,” Malkmus told Vanity Fair
In actual fact, Spotify - for still unclear reasons - had added the song into some of its most popular playlists, which then led it to wider exposure.
Soon sniffed out by 90s nostalgia-devoted TikTok-ers, Harness Your Hopes was soon daubed onto a plethora of memes and short-form videos, reflecting this retro-aesthetic.
”My daughter, who’s really into TikTok, would tell me about it, and then I wouldn’t really understand. I assumed it was a micro thing. But it wasn’t,” Stephen told Vanity Fair.
The popularity of the song with a new generation ultimately led it to being the band’s most streamed track across Spotify and Apple Music.
It became - quite remarkably - Pavement's biggest ever song.
Reflecting on its belated success in an interview with NME, Stephen said, “It was a weird cultural thing, but by putting yourself out there, you have the opportunity for that to happen, even if you’re insecure or think your music is crap. You go ahead and do it, and then the world sees you. That’s a pretty fun part of doing any art, but specifically ours.”
Malkmus went on to say that its take-off made him, "feel bad that I didn’t put it on the album. Like, nobody said, ‘That’s a great song’ or something.”
Green Onions - Booker T. & the MG’s
Green Onions - Booker T. & the MG’s
Not only was this super-cool instrumental masterpiece originally a hastily put-together B-side, it was also born quickly from studio improvisation by Booker T. & the MG's back in 1962.
The four-piece houseband of Stax Records, led by the keys maestro Booker T. - were left without a singer to record with one day when a planned session failed to take place.
As the band had all their gear set-up, they began to jam around various different riffs and ideas - feeling their way around numerous grooves.
Amongst them, the foundation of that would become Green Onions.
Also laid down that day was Behave Yourself. Upon hearing it, Stax Records’ bigwig Jim Stewart immediately implored them to release it as a single.
To back it up, a tightened up version of the group’s sultry, bluesy jam, named ‘Green Onions’ (after being inspired by watching cat with the same name walking peculiarly), was promptly cut.
When a DJ at the nearby Memphis radio station WLOK aired Behave Yourself's flip side, the overwhelmingly positive public reception pushed the group to re-issue the single with the sides reversed. A smart move.
Hitting no 3 in the Billboard charts, the sexy, slinky instrumental quickly became an out-and-out classic, and a firm radio favourite.
The perfect musical articulation of laid-back cool, Green Onions continues to be a popular culture stalwart. Memorably cropping up in the last season of Twin Peaks, soundtracking a purposefully drawn-out sweeping scene.
I Feel Love - Donna Summer
I Feel Love - Donna Summer
Although I Feel Love was the final track on Summer’s I Remember Yesterday, the fact that it wasn’t a screamingly obvious single seems flabbergasting in retrospect.
But I Feel Love - propelled by Giorgio Moroder’s pulsing drum machine and laddering synth lines - was something quite innovative and new at the time.
Intended to reflect the sound of the ‘future’ after the album’s genre-hopping through different stylistic periods, the arrangement's now-familiar electronic framework was not something that the record buying public had ever encountered before.
Being somewhat dubious of the song, Moroder and Summer decided to put it on the B-side of the Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk it Over) single. But its synthetic, hyper-coloured arrangement and indomitable drum machine throb under was perfect for the club and disco scene.
So too were Summer's divine vocals, adding a touch of ethereality to the track's super-modern, hi-tech sonics.
Growing increasingly aware that they had something quite special on their hands, the single’s A and B sides were flipped on July 2, 1977, and I Feel Love became a huge smash.
We’ve recently penned a lengthy piece on the making of I Feel Love, which you can read here. In which we quoted producer Ewan Pearson, who summed up the magnitude of what the song achieved; “It's easy to underestimate it now; it's like Blade Runner - whenever you show that to someone younger, they're not impressed because it looks so familiar. Well, yes - that's because Blade Runner invented our idea of the future. It's the same with I Feel Love.”
Unchained Melody - The Righteous Brothers
Unchained Melody - The Righteous Brothers
This staple romantic torch song was already pretty well known prior to its most famous interpretation (with four separate people charting with the song in the 1950s) but the Righteous Brothers’ 1965 single resurrected the then-dated piece and landed it firmly into the public consciousness. Forever.
It’s the ‘Brothers’ (Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield) immaculate version that many future interpretations crib from. Tweaked arrangement and all (their version was the first to add the high ‘I need your love’ during the third verse).
Odd then, that their version was not considered for an A-side from the very outset.Instead, the Righteous Brothers’ version of Unchained Melody was cut as a B-side
At that time, the pair's main producer, Phil Spector, only had eyes for what he deemed the hits, and left the production of their B-sides and album tracks to the brothers themselves.
Mainly this fell to Bill, who helmed the recording of Unchained Melody, with Bobby taking the lead vocal.
Upon release on July 17th 1965 on Spector’s Phillies Records, the A-side garnered little interest, but DJs instead gravitated towards the sweeping emotion of the cinematic B-side. Its regular rotation encouraged a new generation fell in love with it.
By all accounts, this B-side's unexpected successs infuriated Phil Spector, who allegedly called up the radio stations and demanded they cease and desist playing this ‘lesser’ cut (on which he didn’t have a production credit, we might add).
It didn’t work.
The song eventually became one of the all-time great pop songs. And Spector forced a production credit onto the track after the fact.
“[Phil] would do all the singles,” Medley told The Arizona Republic. “Unchained Melody wasn't the Wall of Sound or any of that. I think maybe that's why disc jockeys liked it. It wasn't necessarily the Wall of Sound. But you just never know. You think they're all hits. Then the public will tell you what it is.”
I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
A karaoke classic for the ages, the ultimate going-it-alone, middle-finger-to-the-ex anthem was, at first, considered a meagre side-filling necessity.
Written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris, the song’s triumph-against-the-odds spirit was actually inspired by Fekaris being laid off by Motown Records after a career writing lyrics in-house.
Hearing one of his tracks on TV, the downbeat Ferakis got a second wind. “I took that as an omen that things were going to work out for me,” Dino told Songfacts. “I remember jumping up and down on the bed saying, 'I'm going to make it. I'm going to be a songwriter. I will survive!”
Though Ferakis’ sentiments were assembled into a lyric (with the help of his songwriting partner Freddie Perren) the track wasn’t developed until two years later, when Perren was invited to produce Gloria Gaynor’s Substitute.
Needing a B-side for the single, Perren offered up the lyrics for I Will Survive to Gaynor. By all accounts, she was struck by its powerful simplicity.
Work on the A-side consumed much of the single's studio session, leaving just 35 minutes to record the B-side.
As the track's session guitarist, Robert ‘Boogie’ Bowles revealed in his book, Behind the Boogie, the studio's band had very little to go on; “I didn’t even know what the song was called, we hadn’t heard the words and melody,” Bowles shared. “When we played the arrangement for I Will Survive, everyone was relaxed and had the attitude that this song wouldn’t get airplay anyway. Even our [chord] charts had very few notes written down, just some chord changes. We made up a lot of that stuff. That sounds hard to believe now but it’s true.”
But Gaynor just knew that this song was special.
After Gloria personally saw to it that the track got some airplay at New York’s legendary disco club Studio 54, I Will Survive's pounding drive and thematic message of self-affirmation went down extremely well.
Upon re-release as an A-side in December 1978 (after much insistence from Gloria), the song gradually ascended to the very summit of the Billboard charts - a damn sight better than the original Substitute single, which stalled at 78.
In the years since, it has become Gaynor’s signature song. “I was given a wonderful gift with the song I Will Survive to share with the world,” Gaynor told the Associated Press. “To help them to grow and to inspire, uplift, empower, encourage them. And I hope that that's my legacy.”
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