That song, written by Andy Summers, and Miss Gradenko written by Stewart Copeland, made it pretty clear they should have left the songwriting to Sting.
KISS’s “I Was Made For Loving You” – the band’s first collaboration with songwriter Desmond Child – was the only disco track on their 1979 album Dynasty.
Led Zeppelin III is my favourite Zep album.
I always take it off before Hats Off to (Roy) Harper. What is that track doing on that album? Actually, what is it doing on any album?
It may be a bad song, but stylistically it fits in just fine with the rest of this folksy album – Friends, Gallows Pole, That’s the Way…
One classic example is “Theme One” on Pawn Hearts by Van der Graaf Generator. It’s an instrumental written by George Martin and has an innocuous pop-prog sound that has nothing to do with the rest of the album. It was left off many pressings.
There was this phenomenon in the 60s of producers trying to mold bands into their image, or even putting out tracks under the band’s name that were actually recorded by studio musicians. This resulted in some strangely schizoid albums on which some tracks were by the band in its natural state and others were basically the work of the producer. One example is Ohio Express, on which two tracks (“Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” and “Down at Lulu’s”) are bubblegum of the most saccharine variety, and other tracks (such as “The Time You Spent With Me” and “First Grade Reader”) are garage-psych.
I might also direct your attention to the Buckinghams, James William Guercio’s first project before he became the manager-producer of Chicago. They had a string of sublime sunshine-pop hits in 1967, including “Kind of a Drag”, “Don’t You Care”, “Hey Baby (They’re Playing Our Song)”, and “Susan”, making them one of the top-selling musical acts of that tumultuous year. All of the aforementioned songs, however, were written for them by Jim Holvay of another Chicago-area group, the Mob. The band’s own material was different… not as sublime, but in some ways more interesting. On Side A of their 1968 album Portraits, for example, they get a sort of Moody Blues thing going, and then “Hey Baby” bursts in, sounding like… well, kind of as though the Beatles had plopped “You’re Going to Lose That Girl” in the middle of Sgt. Pepper.
It wasn’t intended to be part of the album; it was a British single that was added to the U.S. version of the LP.
I have a question for those who agree with this - which songs did go together in the classical sense? The music-hallish “When I’m 64” is hardly like the wonderfully weird “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” The mawkish “She’s Leaving Home” and the fun “Lovely Rita?” “Within You, Without You” is kind of closer to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” than that song is to “When I’m 64.” The diversity is one of the things that make the album great.
Are you referring to “Train In Vain”? That was their first American hit.
I agree with this. For a track to be out of place, the rest of the album has to have some uniformity. When all of them differ from each other, there is no consistency in style, so none of them can be out of place.
“I Want to Know What Love Is” really sticks out like a sore thumb on Foreigner’s Agent Provocateur, which is actually somewhat hard-rockin’.
“My World” is a major WTF??? moment on Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion II. Same goes for “Bugs” on Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy.
I can think of a couple of early-70s sort-of-prog LPs that ended with completely incongruous tracks:
“Thoughts on a Grey Day” from Bare Trees by Fleetwood Mac – a poem written and recited by Mrs. Scarrot.
“Thank You” from Bursting at the Seams by Strawbs – sung by a group of small children.
The abomination known as the Crunge from Led Zeppelin’s otherwise perfect Houses of the Holy.
So true. Zep could do a lot of things well, but James Brown wasn’t one of them.
Maybe so, but it wasn’t listed with the other tracks on the early pressings. Still on the album, just not listed.
“Your Honor” by Regina Spektor off Soviet Kitsch. The only guitar driven song on the entire album.
“Benny the Bouncer” by ELP off Brain Salad Surgery. A weird quasi-music hall song in the midst of serious slow songs and bombastic prog epics.
“After Hours” on the third Velvet Underground album. Albums’ heavy on reflective Lou Reed vocals; then Mo Tucker gets the final track, a childlike joy.
“Take It” from Monster Magnet’s God Says No. Not only does it sound like nothing else on the album, it also sounds like nothing else Monster Magnet have ever released. The group is known for sex-drenched, acid-fuelled stoner rock anthems, but this song is just Dave Wyndorf whispering, humming, and whistling to the accompaniment of a cheap 1980s Casio synthesizer. I seem to remember reading a while back that the song was actually produced and recorded with the band’s usual instrumentation, but the master tapes were stolen. With the album’s deadline approaching, the song had to be rerecorded minimalistically at short notice.
It’s about suicide. It’s probably the darkest song on the album.