Words and Guitar, Vol. 5: Unseen Power of the Hidden Track
The fifth entry in a weekly column by Terence Cawley.
Well, I finally did it: I alphabetized my CD collection. Photo evidence below, for anyone who doesn’t believe me/wants to zoom in close enough to read the spines and judge my taste.
I am a staunch defender of the CD as a musical format. Even if there is no practical reason to own albums in physical form in the digital age, I have an immense nostalgia for the tangibility of a real-life music library. Vinyl may be more aesthetically pleasing, both visually and sonically, but you can play CDs in your car (assuming it isn’t too new, which thankfully mine isn’t)! And you can burn them to your iTunes library and put them on your iPod! Because I also still own and frequently use an iPod! They’re great for running and listening to music as you fall asleep!
Another great thing about CDs: hidden tracks! One of the great thrills of CD listening is realizing that the album is still playing after the final listed track has reached its conclusion; I used to eagerly sit through the customary several minutes of silence (never fast-forwarding, because that wasn’t how the artist intended the album to be experienced) before inevitably getting startled when the secret track finally came blasting out of the speakers. This week’s list is a celebration of those fun surprises:
Top 5 Hidden Tracks on CD-Era Alt-Rock Albums
The hidden track was not solely the domain of ‘90s alternative rock acts, nor was it always some weird joke or curio; in fact, some of them ended up being genuine hits, like The Clash’s “Train In Vain” and Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” which were snuck onto the end of London Calling and The Chronic, respectively. On the other end of the spectrum, the lowered stakes of the hidden song may have enabled the creation of the worst song in the history of recorded music.
Yet it was mostly grunge-era bands who toyed with the format, sometimes to undercut their self-serious image with some humor and other times to indulge experimental impulses too half-baked for the main track list. Here are five of my favorites.
- Green Day – “All By Myself,” from Dookie (1994)
An acoustic goof written and sung by drummer Tré Cool (whose real name I just learned is the very un-punk Frank Edwin Wright III), this is, thanks to “Longview,” not even the best song about masturbation on this album. It’s still oddly endearing, with its rudimentary guitar playing, Cool’s childlike vocals, and the multiple times when everyone in the studio fails to stifle their laughter. It’s also…well, not tasteful, exactly, but compared to Blink-182’s joke songs it seems downright wholesome.
- Stone Temple Pilots – “My Second Album,” from Purple (1994)
So this isn’t even a Stone Temple Pilots song- it’s by a Seattle-area crooner named Richard Peterson, written and recorded for his second album. From what I’ve read, Peterson seems to be a sort of eccentric, local-character type- sort of like his fellow Seattleite Artis the Spoonman, who Soundgarden immortalized in their song “Black Hole Sun.”* There’s even a 2004 documentary about him called Big City Dick which seems fascinating and which you can watch for free on YouTube if you so desire.
The members of STP stumbled on Peterson’s music and became obsessed, even putting a phrase from the song, “12 Gracious Melodies,” on a cake which appears on the album’s back cover. You see, Purple was STP’s second album, and it contained 11 songs…but by adding this song, they brought that number up to an even 12. So the song applied as much to Purple as it did to Peterson’s own album- well, except for all the stuff about Johnny Mathis, on whom Peterson was deeply fixated. Peterson says the band paid him $10,000 to use the song, plus an additional $10,000 for every million albums sold. I don’t know enough about royalty rates to say whether or not that was a fair deal, but he seems to still be on good terms with the band, and since Purple has sold over six million copies, it did add up a decent chunk of change.
*Just kidding, of course. The Soundgarden song about Artis the Spoonman is actually “Outshined.”
- Alanis Morissette – “Your House,” from Jagged Little Pill (1995)
Perhaps the concert I was most excited for this summer was Alanis Morissette’s 25th-anniversary celebration of her wildly successful album Jagged Little Pill, with support from fellow ‘90s alt-rock greats Garbage and Liz Phair. Alas, that show’s been postponed to September 2021, at which point we’ll finally learn whether she plans to present the album exactly as most people first heard it by observing an extended moment of silence before closing with this song (for what it’s worth, she opened her last three pre-COVID acoustic Jagged Little Pill shows with it).
“Your House” is an acapella track sung from the perspective of a woman who breaks into her lover’s house, hangs out for a while, and then finds a love letter from someone else. It’s all a bit silly in its soapy melodrama, but Morissette sells the transition from besotted obsession to shocked betrayal with her piercing vocals and small, revealing details like the protagonist finding and playing her partner’s Joni Mitchell CDs. Her stellar performance also works as a preemptive strike against those who would disparage her idiosyncratic vocal style in the wake of her meteoric rise.
- R.E.M. – “Untitled,” from Green (1988)
Originally, I wanted to restrict this list to ‘90s albums, but then I would have had to seriously consider including the hidden track on Ash’s 1977 which is just them throwing up. So instead, I’m making room for one of R.E.M.’s best pure pop songs, built around an awkward-but-charming drum pattern played by guitarist Peter Buck. Michael Stipe and Mike Mills trade lines, Mills holding things down as Stipe lets loose with some truly beautiful singing in the high end of his range. The lyrics perfectly complement the melody with their impressionistic vows of support and devotion- “This light is here/To keep you warm/This song is here/To keep you strong.”
Why was this song a hidden track? The guys claims it was partly an allusion to Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album, but mostly just a fun bonus for the fans. It’s an enigmatic gesture perfectly befitting this most enigmatic of bands.
- Nirvana – “Endless, Nameless,” from Nevermind (1991)
I vividly remember getting Nevermind on CD for my 14th birthday, playing it for the first time, and being genuinely surprised when this song started 10 minutes after the last listed track, “Something In The Way.” It was my (and probably a lot of people’s) first exposure to noise-rock; I had never heard anything so unhinged. Banged out in a single take with no overdubs after Kurt Cobain got mad at the band’s inability to nail “Lithium,” even Cobain himself later admitted to having no idea what he was singing. Whatever it was, he must have felt it pretty deeply- producer Butch Vig has said that “the rage and frustration in [Cobain’s] voice was fuckin’ scary to hear,” and that intensity is still palpable on the recording.
Crucially, “Endless, Nameless” isn’t pure noise. Cobain’s pop instinct was simply too strong for him to not sneak a memorable vocal hook in there, while Dave Grohl’s massive, pounding drums and Krist Novoselic’s almost comically distorted bass line provide a necessary anchor for Cobain’s feedback squalls. Placing something this abrasive at the end of an otherwise relatively polished rock album was one of the first, and perhaps strongest, indications that you can take a band like Nirvana out of the underground, but you can’t take the underground out of a band like Nirvana.
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You know the drill- check out the playlist, let me know if I missed your favorite hidden track, and resume your regular lives until I commandeer 5 or so minutes of your attention again next week!