Sometimes I’ll be listening to a CD and hear two consecutive songs that sound better together as if they were one song then separately. The three that come to mind are:
Pink Floyd: Brain Damage/Eclipse [Dark Side of the Moon]
Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness/Tonight Tonight [Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness]
Beastie Boys: 5 Piece Chicken Dinner/Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun [Paul’s Boutique]
What are some other pairs that should be combined into one song? The only requirement is that they must be consecutive songs on the album.
True, but every so often there are 2 songs that sound like they should be one song. In fact, the three I mentioned in the OP I’ve combined into one song as an MP3.
Whenever a radio station plays the single version of Def Leppard’s “Bringing on the Heartbreaks,” it feels utterly incomplete without the instrumental “Switch 625.”
You Never Give Me Your Money/Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came in Through the Bathroom Window/Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End.
Yes, but suppose I have 3,000 songs on my iPod and then hit “Shuffle.”
I can hear any Beatles song from, say “Revolver,” and it won’t feel at all odd to me to hear a song by a completely different artist afterward. And it’s fine if I hear “Things We Said Today” followed by a dissimilar song by a wholly dissimilar band.
But if I hear “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” well, it feels all wrong if “With a Little Help from My Friends” doesn’t come on right afterward. It feels WEIRD when, say, “Polythene Pam” is played by itself without the rest of that “Abbey Road” medley.
It’s fine if Zeppelin’s “How Mnay More Times” is followed by Enya. But if “Heartbreaker” isn’t followed by “Living Loving Maid,” the song feels unfinished.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Once I’m named Supreme Highlord, one of my first acts will make it a felony (punishable by not less than 10 years in my slave mines) for any DJ to play the Live At Budokan version of I Want You To Want Me without letting it play through to Surrender.
Sure, I’d never shuffle those bits separately. Cool as “Pam” sounds, it’s just a fragment. There’s not enough there to call it a song in its own right.
I regret the decision to separate out the passages of “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” on similar grounds.
I agree, though those are strong enough to fly on their own. The Airplane certainly played them independently of each other.
Then there are cases where an extended passage contains a sort of flagship song, which could and would be played independently, but which existed on album as part of an extended suite, like “Lady with a Fan” as the flagship of the Jerry side of Terrapin Station. A lot of Deadheads didn’t like the progginess of the rest, the orchestra and so on, but I do.
on their own. The Airplane certainly played them independently of each other.