I had to stop listening to Bang a Gong (get it on) when I realized that it was just two phrases “Bang A Gong” and “You’re dirty sweet” repeated over and over with a few other words to fill in the empty spaces.
Similarly, in the Beatles’ song “Blackbird”, there’s a percussion that sounds * exactly* like a scratch or dust on a phonograph record (tock, tock, tock…). So, in the days of phonograph records, I was always thinking, “Oh, crap, I’ve got schmutz on the record again”.
might just be me but about 18 seconds into “Breath” by Prodigy I can hear a sound or a sample that reminds of the scene in “Aliens” where Ripley is in the loader and is battling with the Queen.
The Queen’s tail whips around and “clangs” into the loader superstructure.
It might not be it, and my wife thinks I am hearing things but I am contractually obliged to disregards her comments and rely on more solid doper opinion.
A Day in the Life by the Beatles. Somewhere or other, I had learned that to get that world-record longest sustained chord, the soundbooth engineer kept cranking up the recording volume as the chord was fading out. Toward the end, the level was so high that the studio air conditioner is audible in the background.
It doesn’t ruin the song for me, but I can’t not hear it now.
If that bothers you than I suggest never listening to anything by Fatboy Slim.
My contribution to the OP is the J. Geils song “Freeze Frame”. I had a friend sing along with the “dee-da-lee-da-dee” at the end of every line and now that is all I hear.
While it will no doubt continue to bother you, this at least explains it,
CMC fnord!
There’s a point in the Mamas and the Papas’ “I Saw Her Again Last Night” where Denny jumps the gun and starts singing before he’s supposed to. I spend the time before it waiting for it, and the time after it chuckling about it.
From Wikipedia:
In Billy Squier’s My Kind of Lover, you don’t hear anybody else until 1:59 when Squier sings, “rock me, sock me,” another voice can be heard. Seconds later, the same is true when Squier sings, “rake me, shake me.” The other voice doesn’t even sound like singing; it’s more of someone just saying it out loud.
Can’t recall the song title, but there’s a song on Styx’ “Grand Illusion” album that’s preceded by a ticking noise, that I’ve been told was a match being struck. Before I heard that, I just assumed it was a little scratch on the record.
There are some noises at the beginning of R.E.M.'s “Exhuming McCarthy” that I finally realized came from the keys of a manual typewriter. Prior to that, their song “We Walk” has some “explosions” towards the end, only they’re not explosions. They’re colliding billiard balls recorded at half speed, my favorite bit of R.E.M. trivia. 
The only thing that springs to mind is the end of “Money” by Pink Floyd. I am always driven to distraction trying to hear what they’re saying in the background. I’ll catch snippets like “I was drunk at the time” and “…and I tell her ‘why?’” Positively drives me batty. Wiki doesn’t seem to know, either.
Hah, you want to hear something you can’t unhear and that you’ll always remember whenever you hear that song?
Yep, and that’s actually the surviving members of the band that produced that gem for Kraft!
Beatles sound engineer Geoff Emerick wrote about this in his book “Here, There and Everywhere”. I’ve never picked up on the air conditioner, but I love Ringo’s shoe squeak at the end.
James Brown’s Sex Machine also needs some lube.
Holy shit, that’s awful!
I don’t hear a beep, but there’s what sounds to me like a relatively high-pitched bongo being hit right around the spots in the song you mentioned.
I don’t care for the velcro sounds at the beginning of Paul Simonon’s Guns of Brixton, but the “boing” sounds later on more than make up for it. Allegedly, the song’s character is supposed to be a little off-kilter, so the boings make perfect sense, but it still doesn’t account for the velcro sounds at the start, IMWO*. Damn, the Clash rocks.
*In my worthless opinion
I wonder how many people these days know that the double beeps in Supertramp’s The Logical Song (near the end right before he sings “One…two…three…FIVE!”) are actually the sounds from Mattel Electronics football which means you didn’t make it on 4th down.
It doesn’t ruin it for me, but I always listen for it.
They discuss this on an episode of “Classic Albums” or whatever that show was called.
Roger had a bunch of index card with questions on them, like “What’s your favorite color?” and random stuff. The questions got a little more serious as you went thru them. Roger had people who were hanging around the studio answer them while he recorded them. One of the questions was something like, “When was the last time you were violent?” and “Were you in the right?”. The answers to these two questions are mostly what you hear at the end of Money.
I’m going by memory, but I think it is Mick Ronson who says, “I don’t know, I was really drunk at the time” and his girlfriend who says, “He was cruisin’ for a bruisin’”. Some stagehand nicknamed “The Hat” is heard saying, with a thick accent, “I certainly was in the right!”.
Hope this helps.
In the middle of Yes’s “It Can Happen” there’s a sound that sounds just like a teakettle whistling, so much so that on several occasions I’d take my headphones off to check the stove. I listened to again recently in a new format and still heard it plainly, so it wasn’t just a crappy tape.