A friend and I have been listening to the classic albums that are always on the critics’ lists as the best of all time. Or albums that other musicians have described as hugely influential and game changing. Stuff like Exile on Main Street, Pet Sounds, Highway 61 Revisited…you get the idea.
We noticed something. It seems like there are usually four or five songs on each album that have become classics and are therefore already familiar to us from constant radio airplay. We realized that it was these songs that made the albums masterpieces (no question) but the rest of the tunes - while not exactly ‘filler’ - kind of make the experience of listening to the album in full for the first time kind of a letdown.
Take Sgt. Pepper for example. Today, someone listening to it for the first time has without doubt already heard the title track, With a Little Help from My Friends, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, A Day in the Life, and When I’m 64. (A Beatles album is probably not a great example but I’m making a point). Hearing it called the greatest album ever, would the rest of the tracks live up to expectations? I don’t know. Maybe Fixing a Hole? But the rest might leave you feeling underwhelmed.
Anyway, so here’s the question: ARE there any ‘classic albums’ that you think contain a masterpiece track that has flown under the radar all these years?
ETA: I meant to put a question mark in the thread title.
Well, “Bargain” and “Apeman” and “Levee” get played a lot on classic rock stations. I know “I Will” because I’m a huge Beatles fan. The others, though, I am not familiar with. Thanks.
I suppose most of us have heard “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35”, “I Want You”, and “Just Like a Woman” from Blonde on Blonde. I don’t recall hearing “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” from the same album very much, if ever, but I think it’s the one of the best songs on the album.
RealityChuck, I like your list, but note that “Dear Doctor”’ is from Beggars Banquet. I’d nominate “Monkey Man” as maybe the less-well-known good track from Let it Bleed.
As for the OP… how about “Mother Goose” from Jethro Tull’s Aqualung? Or “The Rover” from Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffitti?
Boz Scaggs’ 1976 album Silk Degrees is loaded with Top 40 hits, but it also features two “slow” songs that are among his best work ever: We’re All Alone and Harbor Lights.
Good example. I don’t think Revolver would have topped all those Best Albums of all Time lists without that song. It wasn’t a single, so it could never qualify as a “greatest hit” and it’s importance (arguably, the most important song in the Beatles discography) is only apparent after the release of Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane and Sgt. Pepper’s.
I rediscovered this due to its use in a movie by the same name. (They didn’t get the rights to a Beatles tune so they switched to this.) Now it’s one of my RS favs.
Do we consider A Trick Of The Tail by Genesis a classic album? The first one with Phil Collins on vocals.
If so, I’ll submit Mad Man Moon. Never done live and certainly doesn’t get radio play on commercial radio, but I think it’s up there with their absolute best.
