Pretty sure Marilyn Manson did this exact same thing with Antichrist Superstar.
Well most of these examples are jokes and gimmicks or non-musical tracks, but for the shortest examples you really can consider songs, I knew that I had to look no further than for the Minutemen and Wire:
Wire - Field Day For The Sundays (0:28)
The Minutemen - Ack Ack Ack (0:28)
For chart hits, the shortest track to chart Top 40 was the 1960 number one “Stay” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs at 1:36, and for a very long time the shortest to chart top 100 was “Little Boxes” by the Womenfolk, I think in 1963, I think at 1:02. That is until 2016 when something called “PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen)” (?) charted at #77, clocking in at 0:45.
Sgt Pepper’s Inner Groove is apparently just short of 2 seconds, following the orchestral climax (and air conditioning system turning on) of A Day In the Life. I’ve just been to a few blogs and several fora discussing that track alone. :dubious:
I don’t have the track any more, but I think Her Majesty was two verses and 12 seconds long. Mine was from the Beatles’ Rarities album, but apparently the original was on one of the later albums which I never bought (I stopped with Abbey Road and got into other bands).
–G!
Old Mother Reagan by the Violent Femmes comes close at 0:32 and is also definitely a song. Although my previous example of Weinerschniztel is arguable: at what point does yelling with little or no music turn into an a capella song with little or no music?
Fire and Rain by Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies comes in at 1:23 while its not the shortest by the standards of this thread but they were the first band I though of and its their second shortest song. Of course number 1 for them is Sodemy at only 0:30 which is at least competitive.
Ministry did it at least twice, with 10 or so songs, then dozens of ~4s blank tracks, followed by a 69th track. Tool did the same on Undertow, but also the last track is in 2 sections with crickets chirping in the middle 7 minutes.
The X-Files soundtrack did it best with a Nick Cave 0th track. You had to start track 1 and then rewind past 0:00
Not music, but there is the 1 Second Film.
An entire album: Short Music for Short People.
The real question is what is the shortest song in your music collection? I have You Suffer.
Short Songs–Dead Kennedys
I don’t think inner/runout grooves should count as “tracks” but if they do: The James Gang “Yer Album” had short ones (1 second?) on both sides. Voice saying “Turn Me Over” on side a; “Play Me Again” on side b.
I’l see your 0:32 Violent Femmes and raise (well, lower) with 0:25 Carpenters.
ETA: Apparently I’m also seeing Wire and Minutemen.
“Receive Him” by Vengeance Rising is shorter than the 5 seconds it’s allotted on You Tube.
Bet you never thought Christian music could sound like that.
Wire’s first album has 6 tracks under 1:00 (of 21 total, or 23 in the reissue).
Nvmd
It’s relatively long by the standards of this thread, but We Are 138 by the Misfits is exactly 1:38 long and that fact amuses me.
Brutal Truth - Collateral Damage (2.18 seconds)
“Nutopian International Anthem” from Mind Games. Three seconds of silence. Nutopia was a conceptual country described in the liner notes, a country with no borders and no passports. One of the clear influences of Yoko Ono’s avant-garde conceptual art on John Lennon.
An actual song you can get an earworm of, Michael Hurley’s Ol’ Ratface won’t set any records either but it comes in at a buxom 24 seconds.
Possibly the shortest prog track out there, Ayreon’s “The Argument 1” is only 25 seconds. Off the 42 track The Theory of Everything album.
4’33 by John Cage. If you exclude the fade-in and the fade-out.
j
I forget, was “I’m Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group” its own track, or tacked onto a longer one?