Please tell me about some songs (popular ones especially) where an alert listener can pick up a flaw; for example, the musician hits a sour note, the drummer misses a beat, a musician screams “Fuck!” in the background, etc.
What Beatles song is it that has an electronic tone generated “beep” in the middle of it? It drives me crazy whenever I hear it because it seems like something that should never have found its way into a studio recording.
REM’s The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, Stipe laughs after the third verse, leading into the chorus. It makes the vocals there a little shaky, but he basically keeps pace with the band.
On the Nine Inch Nails song Piggy, the drum solo is way out of time. It was a test that went wrong, but they decided it worked so it went on the album.
One of the episodes of Peter Schickele’s Schickele Mix was about mistakes in recordings. At the beginning of the program he talked about the thought process behind decisions to leave or fix mistakes. If it’s too close to perfect, it sounds phony, but if there’s too many or really egregious errors, it sounds incompetent. The art is in finding a good balance.
My favorite flub is the electric piano intro on Why Can’t We Be Friends? by War. Makes it sound like a spontaneous jam session.
Some are so obvious that a listener doesn’t have to be particularly alert.
- Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - “Even the Losers”- At 8:04 (“It’s just the normal noises in here.”)
Eric Burdon & the Animals: “Sky Pilot” - Burdon stumbles over the line “But he’ll stay behind,” pronouncing it “but he stale behind.”
I Saw Her Again Last Night by the Mamas and Papas. Denny comes in early after the solo and sings “I saw her a…” one bar earlier than everyone else. They all liked it so they left it in.
At the beginning of the Led Zeppelin song “Black Country Woman” there is the sound of an airplane flying overhead (the song was recorded in the garden of Mick Jagger’s home). You can hear the engineer mention it, followed by Robert Plant saying “Nah, leave it.” So they did.
ELP > Trilogy > “The Sheriff”
Carls opens the song with a mini drum solo, is only a few seconds in when he hits a rim. Stops, mutters “Shit”, starts over without further mishap.
Beatles> John flubs a pronoun in Please Please Me; Paul’s voice cracks in If I Fell; John sings different double-tracked lyrics in Slow Down; (stereo versions in these examples). Lots more to choose from by the Fabs.
Stones> “Satisfaction” Keith vs the fuzztone switch. Switching from “regular tone” to fuzztone, Keith is late on the switch and botches the first note of the “horns” riff. Next time it comes around, he overcorrects by hitting the switch with time to spare (you can hear the click) but plays a wrong extra note by accidentally touching a string.
I love the two flubs, puts you right there in the studio with them.
It’s Nowhere Man. It sounds like a bit of feedback that they decided to leave in. I like it!
It’s at 1:03 here.
Also, in Here Comes the Sun, George can’t decide if it seems like years, of feels like years, so according to him it “seels” like years: it’s at 2: 21 here.
ETA: Apparently Morrison is loaded and hiccups on Five to One, but I’ve never heard it. Anyone?
I always assumed that was a little ‘ping’ note that George hit to finish the solo, but you may be right.
Louie Louie- another instance of coming in early (1:55).
Speaking of Zep, there’s a flubbed note on the keyboard solo of “All of My Love” that sticks out like a sore thumb to me, and I can’t explain it away as being a “grace note” or something like that.
Also, there’s parts of “Black Dog” where Jimmy Page really gets off the beat (and, yes, I know it’s 9/8 over 4/4 drums, but I’m not talking about that) and has to kind of speed up to catch up. That one doesn’t bug me so much anymore, but I remember the first time I noticed it while listening to it with my cousin (who plays guitar) on the radio and both of us turning to each other to say “did you catch that?” For me, it just crosses the line of pushing and pulling the beat into being sloppy, but reasonable people can disagree on that.
I’ve never noticed a hiccup but it wouldn’t surprise me. He was shitface drunk during some (if not all) of the vocal sessions for that song.
This is what I’ve always heard. I don’t think it’s unintentional. BTW, FWIW and IF I remember correctly, George and John played that solo together, making it a tandem duet solo. Or something.
It’s George hitting a harmonic. I know how to play that solo, and that wouldn’t happen by accident. He’s jumping several frets to gently touch a string so that the harmonic rings out when he hits it. It’s supposed to be there.
In the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There,” Michael Jackson was supposed to say, “just look over your shoulder, honey.” He accidentally said “shoulders” instead of “shoulder.” In the miniseries about his life that came out in the early 1990s, they even had a reenactment of this error.
In “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind, at around the 3:32 mark, there’s what sounds like microphone feedback or some other squeak. I’ve always wondered if this was an actual error, or if the song was supposed to have that noise.
You’re correct. As I recall, for this song they both play…Stratocasters!
What’s this mean?
Thanks.