I’m a huge Billy Joel fan, but a lot of his best songs never made it as singles, or, if they did, weren’t as ubiquitous as his classics. I’m thinking of songs like Sleeping With the Television On, And So It Goes, Tomorrow Is Today, Sometimes A Fantasy, and Laura are a few gems that never quite became as popular as his biggest hits.
Alice Cooper: “Generation Landslide” off of the “Billion Dollar Babies” album. A wonderful masterpiece of a song that wasn’t one of the singles releases. A deep track favorite among fans, but unknown otherwise.
Van Halen: “Drop Dead Legs” off of “1984”. Again, not one of the singles, and one of my favorites of theirs.
And, honestly, unless one is an ELP fan (or a general fan of 1970s progressive rock), those are probably the only two songs of theirs you’re likely to ever hear.
ELP does get play in the “classic rock” format, but primarily just those two songs (with “From the Beginning” and “Still…You Turn Me On” getting played on rare occasions), and “I Believe in Father Christmas” getting some play on radio stations that do a holiday format.
I was 17 at he time it came out and it hit a little to close to home and was being played constantly. I wore out several copies of the cassette before i got the CD. I have alsways hoped to hear her live but now she is no longer perfoming.
Thinking about albums that are in of themselves greatest hit albums like Beach Boys Pet Sounds, U2 Joshua Tree, The Police Syncronicity, ISTM that this is a question about the singles chosen thus more popular than the other songs not rather Greatest Hits versus non.
In the case of Men at Work, while Down By the Sea is the best song on the album, I will admit that it would not have played well on radio. I guess they knew what they were doing.
I like their version of Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo” (a.k.a. the “Beef - It’s What’s For Dinner” music). They also did a pretty good version of “Fanfare for the Common Man”.
My favorite anti-Christmas song. His solo version is better than the ELP version, too. But Mariah Carey will get played a thousand times for each time somebody is brave enough to program Lake.
Oh all right, I settle for 95%. Regarding the seriously awful Love Beach: 10 tracks, five of which were Greg ballads. As mediocre as the five other tracks were, any one of them was still better than Greg’s five combined. All this is of course one old fart’s opinion.