What are some songs that were either recorded before a live audience (viz, at a concert), or have crowd noise in the background (real or artificial)? I’m asking about singles that make the charts; so for example, Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me,” of which I hear the Live at Budokan version far more often than the studio version on my Classic Rock station, counts. Some deep cut from some band’s live performance album, that’s never played on the radio, wouldn’t count.
“All Night Long,” Lionel Ritchie, with FX (or maybe there was a real audience in the studio??) intended to make it sound like there was a crowd enjoying the music.
“The Rhythm Of The Night,” DeBarge, same as above.
Ricky Martin had a big Spanish-language hit* in 1997 (originally released 1995), María. At the very end of the obviously studio-recorded track, a few seconds of cheering crowd noise is edited in. I always thought it sounded wrong.
From the Guinness Book of World Records, 1997: “Ricky Martin’s recording of ‘(Un, Dos, Tres) María’ was a hit in many countries around the world in 1997 and sold over 5 million copies.”
(There’s some other hit – English-language, and I think more recent – that does something similar. I’ll post here when I think of it.)
Pink Floyd’s “Fearless” has real crowd noise at the end of the song: a crowd singing part of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” followed by cheering (starting at about the 4:50 mark of the linked YouTube video. However, the noise was from a field recording of the crowd at a Liverpool soccer match, not from a Pink Floyd concert or anything like that.
That said, now that I read back through your OP, it probably doesn’t count, as it wasn’t ever released as a single (though it was apparently the B-side of “One of These Days”).
Electric Light Orchestra’s “All Over the World,” from the Xanadu soundtrack, has crowd noise (which sounds like indistinct conversations) at the beginning of the song, and more crowd noise (including some applause) at the end. I suspect that it’s much like the crowd noise in “Benny and the Jets” – recorded live somewhere, and then manipulated and inserted into the recording in the studio.
(Unlike my earlier post of “Fearless,” this one does count, as it was a top-20 hit in the U.S. and UK.)
Rush put in artificial crowd noise after the “concert halls” line in Spirit of Radio. Fans added it at every live performance after that.
Live recordings aren’t always so live. I seem to recall that the Cheap Trick album had the crowd noise greatly enhanced in the studio. Few live albums are released sounding exactly as they sounded live.
I’m not sure how elegantly it fits into the “radio-friendly” category, but I’ve heard it on FM stations more than once. Studio recording with added crowd noise and a Bill Graham (I think) intro:
Years ago, my kid asked “Did Cheap Trick ever do a studio album?”
Are you saying this is live, or artificial? The video has the USC marching band playing with the band. But what about the album version?
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I was around when a New Orleans folkie (Johnny Rivers) worked his way up to becoming the “house band” at the Whisky À Go-Go.
The recordings seem too good to have been made live, but the energy certainly feels real.
