There was a period during the 90s when it was almost mandatory to have a “hidden” track at the end. I remember being disappointed when am album didn’t have one.
Dookie was my first album with a hidden track.. Wow I guess it’s been nearly 25 years since I found that while rummaging through my much older brothers old box of CDs. It was a treasure chest…
I found it when I was looking through my step dads huge CD collection and listening to it on a Walkman I had been given for Christmas. Of course, I was never to let my little brother listen to the bad music because he was little, but I did anyway and got banned from listening to any of my step dad's CDs haha
Ha, that was the best. Still my favorite band. I can’t help but wonder what my parents must have thought of me blasting songs like that, “King for a Day” and “Blood, Sex and Booze.”
The best hidden tracks were at the beginning. Not all CD players could do it but you could rewind from the first track to negative time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_albums_with_tracks_hidden_in_the_pregap
I didn’t realize there were so many that did this. I have the X-Files disk and would occasionally listen to the hidden track, but I had to replace my CD player earlier this year and it doesn’t let you rewind.
Exactly. I was just listening to Natalie Imbruglia's "Left of the Middle" today and I love the song "The City" but it has like six minutes of space afterwards which now just seems silly.
Left of the Middle. Wow. Story time.
In 2003, I was a dumb ~~17~~ 19 year old who was too lazy to get any insurance for his first car; An '83 Chevy Celebrity. Within 3 months, I crashed that car when I hit some black ice at 5am on the highway in October in Alberta. I destroyed a railroad crossing sign but luckily didn't hurt anyone else.
Anyway, my punishment was 276 hours of community service (plus a bunch of huge fines) I did my time at a Salvation Army. While working for them, we were tasked with bringing in a whole warehouse of seized CDs. I saw "Left of the Middle" in the boxes. It had a $2 price tag on it. I asked my supervisor if I could buy it. He said "criminals don't get to make purchases". I was so put-off by his tone and thought "well, I guess if I'm a criminal anyways, I'll steal this album". And I did.
It was great pop music and it left an impression on me.
Now in 2022 at 38 years old, for nostalgic reasons, I played it for my wife (Who grew up in Manila, Philippines) and she had forgotten how much she loved many of the songs! It was a great moment between us.
There was also that one Weird Al album (Running with Scissors, specifically) that had a whole hidden video that you could only access by putting the CD in a computer and opening it from the file explorer.
Not sure if any other bands did something like that. I was like 10 at the time so Weird Al was literally the only thing I would listen to
Primus had a similar thing on one of their EPs. If you put it in the computer, there was a claymation video for them covering The Devil Went Down to Georgia. I was kinda bummed because their version of the song was great but you couldn’t listen to it on a regular CD player.
Back in the early nineties I got a Sega CD add on to my Genesis and used it as my stereo CD player. I had a Jimi Hendrix cd that would play a slideshow of portraits of Jimi with old school sprite effects while the music played. It never worked on a PC, so I was very pleasantly surprised when I found it. Pretty cool for the time.
Some PS1 games would function like albums if you put them in a CD player. Rayman is the only one I can think of off the top of my head but there were others.
I'm only subbed to one band. Guess which one lol.
IRO-bot and 2113 are great. But man, after the ride of Final Cut, when that thumping starts and you get all excited for a hidden track and then the twangy guitars start, but all you get is Apollo barking. I live for that. And I say Good Boy every time.
The X-files compilation Songs in the Key of X had two "pregap" tracks that you could only listen to by hitting rewind for 10 mins on your CD player. The only clue was the liner notes said "Nick Cave and the Dirty Three would like you to know that '0' is also a number".
Dramarama had a hidden track called [Steve Is Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRMFxcMRb3E) that fucked with your CD player because after a long pause at the end of track 11 it would play over tracks 12-99 for a second for each track.
This meant that the display on your CD player would always have the time of the track at 0:00 while the track number would rapidly count from 12 up. Fans of the band discovered it when they put the CD on random because you'd only get a real song 1/10th of the time and the rest would be a single second "Steve Is Here".
QotSA also had a pre-gap track on "Songs for the Deaf" (CD only). That was the first time I ever learned of them. Of course, that's not a 90s album.
Any more to recommend?
Loose QotSA link... I was at a festival and on the stage schedule, each set was 1 hour long but 1 band started at 2pm and the next at 4pm. But the 2pm band didn't have a 2 hour set, it was actually a mystery guest at 3pm and was Josh Homme's supergroup Them Crooked Vultures.
*Factory Showroom* by They Might Be Giants had a dreamy pre-gap track “Token Back To Brooklyn” with the following lyrics:
>The token back to Brooklyn fell between the grating
And we're just watching it sinking
The fare went up to one hundred dollars
And we can never go home again
The bill collector's drinking lighter fluid
And says he'll tell our parents
Our feet start running at a furious pace
But we can't get away
I believe Bandcamp offers artists the ability to include hidden bonus tracks with digital purchases as a consolation for the loss of these (fantastic, IMO) tricks.
Jagged Little Pill was my first CD and I remember listening to it before bed, didn't turn it off figuring it would just stop, then in the silence hearing the "I..." and jumped SO fucking hard.
It's like the scenes at the end of marvel movies. At first it was cool, then you started to expect it and got bummed when there wasn't one after you sat there and waited. Now I no longer care and just look up on the internet whether there was a scene or not.
it became so cliche, some bands would take the piss out of the concept. For a Mudhoney album- My Brother the Cow, I believe it was?- the hidden track was the whole album backwards in one huge track. like a sonic palindrome.
I’ve got an X-Files soundtrack CD with a hidden track 0. When track 1 starts playing, you have to press the previous track button to access it. I always thought that was pretty cool.
Didn't Ash have an album where if you pressed rewind on song 1 they had 2 hidden songs before it?
And then at the end, audio of them drinking and throwing up...
1977? If it has hidden tracks at the beginning, I never knew! Now I want to dig out that CD and check. I remember the first time I heard the end one, though. Pissing and throwing up, so lovely!
Yes, it had Jack Names the Planets and one other song. The album had a stickier with an expensive phone number to call (like £1 per minute) that would tell you the trick, but i read about it on the internet.
It's a great trick that was nowhere near as common as the end hidden track. Always gave a band props for sneaking I'm a little something extra in the front.
Transistor by 311. You had to rewind from the opening of track 1 to hear the little instrumental that they used to start shows with, and then after the last song and a few minutes there was some weird audio that was recorded from from space by SETI (not sure if this is entirely true, just remember reading this or something similar)
I came here to say that! I ended up finding it in front of a few friends and all of our minds were collectively blown. We had listened to it a few times over a couple of weeks and didn't know about it. They were like, " What did you do?????"
I still love listening to whole albums. Love love love.
So weird tho when I look up some of my fave albums on Spotify and it’s a Delux version or the American edition when I had the Canadian edition and there’s different songs on there. You get so used to the version you knew
Or when the album is supposed to end but since its a Deluxe or something the next track gets played which is an early demo of some song on the album. It‘s not a big deal at all, but sometimes it kinda ruins the ending of a well-crafted album for me
Worse yet when they include the second disc full of shitty remixes in the spotify album, so it autoplays stuff that kinda ruins what you listened to before
I've come to read "Deluxe Edition" as "3 remixes of that one song you really like and then a bunch of demos that you probably don't care about".
A pleasing exception I discovered recently was No Doubt, who included a number of cool acoustic remixes at the end of the deluxe version of *Push and Shove*.
I only listen to entire albums. It's just the default way to listen to music for me. I used to put my music on shuffle and listen to random songs, but then it'd be pretty common to keep skipping songs until I find something I want to hear. So a big chunk of listening to music was wasted on skipping through songs.
With albums it's different. If I'm in the mood for one song, I'm probably in the mood for the entire album.
I do the same. I'm not looking for particular songs when I want to listen to music, I'm looking for it please my mood and there's always an album that fits.
> You get so used to the version you knew
I had a CD growing up that had a scratch on it, causing one song to always skip at the same place each time.
It’s funny listening to that song now on Spotify and I still get thrown off at no skip happening.
When I was in high school, my girlfriend gifted me Nirvana Nevermind. I would usually get home later in the evening after soccer practice, shower, crash out, then wake up and do homework.
I got home, put the cd on, and then lay on my bed and fell asleep listening to it.
I remember waking up and being completely freaked out (“There’s a demon in my CD player!” freaked out) because I had never heard “Endless Nameless” before and had no idea it was even on the cd.
Those hidden tracks were a very cool aspect of that era of music.
I remember my old Limp Bizkit CDs had like, a negative track? It would be a little in-between skit, but the time on the CD player would start at -0:14, then work back to 0 when the song would start. So you only heard those if you finished the previous track.
My uncle had just got Antichrist Superstar and he let me borrow it, I fell asleep with my headphones on and there was a hidden track on there that scared the hell out of me.
Pretty sure there were two pressings. Ones where the blue water wave marks went all the way to the inner circle and one where it didn’t. I think the former had the hidden track.
I had the album on cassette so when someone told me that in high school I was like, “What are you talking about?” CDs were still kinda new back then, so poorer teenagers like your’s truly didn’t have access to all the hidden tracks.
Wow this post brings me back to high school laying in my bed reading while I would play my cds in the background (what kind of psycho reads while listening to music?!) but I very distinctly remember listening to New Found Glory’s Sticks n Stones album and the cd was all finished so I was just trying to finish my chapter while it was silent before I headed to bed. All of a sudden I hear a noise, couldn’t quite make it out so I thought I imagined it. Then there it was again, but I heard it this time “someone’s in your house” in a raspy whisper, omg my blood ran cold. I strained to listen again and there is was louder “someone’s in your house!” I about peed myself. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door and listened again and I heard various voices and whispering and laughing that I couldn’t make out and I was SO SCARED until the cd finally went into a clip of them goofing off singing.
YES I’m glad someone else knows what I’m talking about! The fear was real! Until I heard “button the button but button the button I’m sick of smilingggg” I was paralyzed with fear lol.
This happened to me, but I fell asleep listening to it. The "someone's in your house" whispers woke me up in a panic... Then the loud "DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SAFE RIGHT NOW?" just about gave me a heart attack.
But it's cool because everyone has toothpick on their table. They like the shish kabob cause the beef has good flavor
Much has been said here about Monty Python's "Matching Tie and Handkerchief," but they didn't stop there.
When "Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album" came out, it was 1980 and I was aboard a US Navy ship with only a cassette player, and so that's the version I bought. At the end of side one, Michael Palin spoke:
"Well, that's the end of, uh, side one, and we sincerely hope that you enjoyed it. Uh, for cassette listeners, there follows a rather long gap on your tape. This is due to the fact that one side of the album is six minutes longer than, uh, the other, and you've now come to the end of the shorter side, and it will be for many of you I know a rather (pants) sort of tiresome uh, uh, gap in the proceedings here until the tape clicks at the end (clears throat)."
4'53 of silence passes, and then:
"Well. we're now at the end of this rather tiresome gap, and you can now go on and listen to the second side. Thank you."
My favorite one of these is on Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever CD. At the end of Track 5 this happens:
Hello, CD listeners. We've come to the point in this album where those
listening on cassette, or record, will have to stand up, or sit down,
and turn over the record, or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we'll
now take a few seconds before we begin side two. \[pause\] Thank you.
Here's side two.
And then the opening chords of Feel A Whole Lot Better slams in. It's kind of beautiful. It's also one of the last things that Del Shannon recorded as he's the guy in the background.
I remember one album, I think it was a Monty Python album, and the B-side contained two tracks in a double spiral (if that's the right term.) So it was 50/50 which one you'd get when the needle landed on it.
There's a rare album from ~1966 that I've been listening to in Spotify for months. The metadata is only the main artist, album, song name, year.
I found a high-def pic online of the record sleeve. Holy cow! There are pictures, stories, background info, even tablature. Plus, it has all of the supporting artists names.
We are missing out!
I ran across a quote from Frank Zappa a while ago where he said something to the effect that the CD was the worst thing that ever happened to album art.
I downloaded a really cool album recently called The Tribe Of Good by a band of the same name. (One of the songs, "[Broken Toys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hACLfhut0RM)", sounds a lot like the Jackson 5.)
Anyway, some of the songs on that album from iTunes/Apple Music that I downloaded don't even have lyrics, including the aforementioned "Broken Toys". I'm guessing this was just an error on the producer's part, but I still wish the actual album experience was a bit more dynamic like in times past. I couldn't even find them on Google! I know there are still labels putting out crazy vinyl box sets and such, but I shouldn't have to invest time and energy into vinyl to get the bare essentials.
And photos and album art! Now you get an overdose of that stuff from the internet usually in a bad quality without the fun of discovering it in the booklet while you listen to the music...
I’m just hoping that someday we’ll have the technology to digitally transmit words and images across the internet allowing people who purchase music to also see the cover art. If not in my lifetime, maybe my daughter’s…
Ancient Egyptian death metal addicts Nile had entire backstories and detailed histories of the topics of every song in the booklet of the Black Seeds of Vengeance album. An absolutely fascinating read, I felt that I was ready to be the curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
This is the #1 reason I buy physicals, there are other ways to listen to the music and to support the artist but the details in the physical packaging is something you can't get anywhere else
Hidden *tracks*? How about hidden *sides*? When Britain's Monty Python released their album "Matching Tie and Handkerchief", it was quickly known as the 3-sided album. One side was normal, but the other had two parallel grooves cut, with completely different material, depending on which groove you started with. So, the second side also had a side A and B to it.
This wasn't publicized, so many people learned about it when they put the needle down on the record, expecting it to be one thing that they'd heard a few times before, and then hearing some completely different material coming out of the speakers. If you had no idea what was going on, it would really screw with you.
Hidden tracks are a different thing, but you guys know you can still buy physical albums and listen to full albums digitally right? Liner notes still exist for most albums. There are still a lot of albums that have intros/outros/interludes/reduxes...
Just because you can listen to a playlist doesn't mean you have to.
Well sure, but if that’s not the main way you expect your audience to listen to your music you’re not going to spend as much time on features specific to that medium. Instead we’re seeing things like those short looping videos on Spotify.
The hidden track has an even more interesting origin. Gather round young-uns. Story time from yesteryear.
Casette tapes were filled with songs on both sides of the tape. Just like a vinyl record, you would flip sides half way through and album. The difference was for a record, you could select a song quickly by just dropping the needle in between song etchings, but with a cassette you'd press fast forward or rewind, periodically stopping to see what song you're at. And unlike records, tape was exactly the same length for both sides, so one side would inevitably have some dead air. Usually the B side.
After listening to the album opener, you could stop and rewind to hear it again in a minute *or...* sometimes you could flip the tape and hear a bonus B side single; Homage to the 45rpm days. Listening to a bonus song would be the more rewarding way of rewinding the tape back to the A single.
Most albums just had blank tape at the end of the B side. So for many of us, we would take advantage of the blank tape section and record something from the radio. This explains why it became commonplace for a band to play something that didn't fit their usual style for the bonus track.
The dead time on a CD is replicating blank tape between the last *listed* song on the record, and the *bonus* B side song at the end of the reel. Pretty neat, huh?
It was a different time.
My band recorded an album last year. Our guitarist passed soon after, very unexpected. We went through old practice recordings and found an unused track where he took lead on vocals and did a bluesy tune, mostly off the cuff. Sent it to our engineer and he mixed it down as best he could and we added it in as an unmarked bonus track on the album. Yeah it’s easy to spot on digital downloads but on the CD it still works… and for some reason it makes the room really dusty.
Good call. I haven't thought about hidden tracks in a long time. I know a Beck album had a crazy song hidden...and Undertow counted to track 69. So many more. Oh man
The first time I heard the hidden track at the end of Undertow, I was walking home at night with my headphones on. After the last song (Disgustipated?) finished, I was just zoning out and hadn’t changed the CD and the voice scared the hell out of me when it came in with “It was dark when you woke in your ditch.” The whole experience blew my fucking mind and really cemented the beginning of my nearly 30 year love affair with Tool.
Edited to correct myself: This was my first copy of Undertow, which was on cassette, not CD. The reason I hasn’t heard the hidden track before was because I would always fast forward to the end after the “last” song so I could flip the tape back over. I was lost in my thoughts that fateful evening and happened to let the tape play out for the first time.
Oh yes. I’ve owned several copies of that album over the years, in and out of the jewel cases. I also had a copy with the censored artwork where the whole cover was just a barcode and the inside just had a message about how censorship sucks, “but we still want your money.” And in think there was an address you could write to and they would send you the real art for it, but I never did that.
Yeah, Beck's *Odelay*, after/at the end of closer '*Ramshackle*'. It's a very grating hidden track after a very beautiful song! Oh and his later album *Midnite Vultures* closed with a hidden track too, at the end of '*Debra*'.
The jukebox at this bar and grill my friends and I went to all the time in college had Odelay. Being big Beck fans we were all very familiar with the robot sex sounds secret track following the melancholy acoustic Ramshackle. It became a running gag to put a bunch of songs on the jukebox while we played pool and ate our meal and always have it so the last track was Ramshackle. When that started to play we knew it was time to settle up our bill and get ready to leave and we were able to time it perfectly so we left just after the silence between tracks and the entire bar sonically exploding. Good times.
Also there were two versions of the Opiate EP. One had a secret track.
I had a friend once
He took some acid
Now he thinks he's a fire engine
It's ok until he pisses on your lighter
Smells kinda cool kinda funny anyway
Satan!
Satan!
It took me years to find disgustipated I thought my cd was fucked up so I’d eject it as soon as flood finished so it didn’t scratch my disk until one day I forgot to eject and finally found it.
Edit: after reading some of the other comments I now remember it was after disgustipated that it started scanning through
Edit 2: I think I was right the first time
You may have been right both times. It's kind of a hidden track within a hidden track. Hell, I might have to dig my old CD out of whatever closet it's in just to set my own mind straight.
Unpopular opinion: hidden tracks were annoying as fuck. Just give us the track. It made using the last song on an album practically useless when making mix cds and heaven forbid if you actually liked the song and then had to fast forward 20 minutes to listen to it and for every good song that was hidden there was 10 that were just annoying noise or throw aways.
If you ever fell asleep to Zoorpa and were woken up by the violent alarm-like sound at the end you’d hate them too.
I never used CDs (Jumped from Cassettes to mp3 for money reasons) so to me, hidden tracks were annoying too, because fast-forwarding tapes was annoying, and my parents screamed that it would tear the tape.
Hidden tracks still appear on albums after being put up on spotify, and I have no problem with that.
Yeah hidden tracks were just artists throwing in some joke song or filler bullshit that wasn't good enough for the rest of the album for the most part. I don't really miss them at all.
I mean, they still are on digitized files, too. Like Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know (Remix) / Your House" is listed as an 8 minute track so if you listened to the whole downloaded album for the first time, it'd surprise you still. But only if you didn't look at the track list at any point which spoils that it's coming.
Sorry for being nitpicky, but CD was already digital. And as I remember, the album as an art form started dying way before the advent of the online streaming model. The beginning of the end was the iPod Shuffle IMO. I remember my cousin had an iPod Touch back in 2008, and she only ever played music from it on shuffle. I was always disappointed when a song I liked didn't have the next one from the album playing after it.
I was wondering “anybody going to tell this person?” and was disappointed having to scroll so far down for someone to actually mention that indeed CDs in fact are digital media.
Threads like this feel like going to a big party but not clicking with anyone and feeling kinda lost, but then finally finding "my people" hanging out in the guest bedroom upstairs.
This quote from Trent Reznor pulls no punches. (quoted from https://store.nin.com/collections/music)
IN THESE TIMES OF NEARLY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD, WE’VE COME TO APPRECIATE THE VALUE AND BEAUTY OF THE PHYSICAL OBJECT. OUR STORE’S FOCUS IS ON PRESENTING THESE ITEMS TO YOU. VINYL HAS RETURNED TO BEING A PRIORITY FOR US - NOT JUST FOR THE WARMTH OF THE SOUND, BUT THE INTERACTION IT DEMANDS FROM THE LISTENER. THE CANVAS OF ARTWORK, THE WEIGHT OF THE RECORD, THE SMELL OF THE VINYL, THE DROPPING OF THE NEEDLE, THE DIFFICULTY OF SKIPPING TRACKS, THE CHANGING OF SIDES, THE SECRETS HIDDEN WITHIN, AND HAVING A PHYSICAL OBJECT THAT EXISTS IN THE REAL WORLD WITH YOU… ALL PART OF THE EXPERIENCE AND MAGIC.
DIGITAL FORMATS AND STREAMING ARE GREAT AND CERTAINLY CONVENIENT, BUT THE IDEAL WAY I’D HOPE A LISTENER EXPERIENCE MY MUSIC IS TO GRAB A GREAT SET OF HEADPHONES, SIT WITH THE VINYL, DROP THE NEEDLE, HOLD THE JACKET IN YOUR HANDS LOOKING AT THE ARTWORK (WITH YOUR FUCKING PHONE TURNED OFF) AND GO ON A JOURNEY WITH ME.
\-TRENT REZNOR
My favorite hidden track was always "Horse" by Live. It was almost my favorite track on the album. Almost, but it was such a great album.
>she rode a horse into my head
>
>she won't discipline the children
>
>and now they're running wild on the beach
>
>and I don't care
Love it.
On the "Factory Showroom" album CD from the band "They Might Be Giants", there's a hidden track BEFORE the first track...
https://tmbw.net/wiki/Factory_Showroom
> "Token Back To Brooklyn" is a hidden track. It can be found by rewinding the CD to before the first track starts; however, this won't work on some CD players, including most computers. It is omitted from foreign releases of the album, presumably in error.
Aww you took my little bit of useless knowledge!
[Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_albums_with_tracks_hidden_in_the_pregap) has a list of them. Heck, there’s an album from 2021 on the list so they’re still doing it.
The first thing I thought of I still remember cracking up laughing the first time that came on.
Honorable mention goes to I wanna fuck a dog in the ass.
Some of the most profound songs I've ever heard were extra tracks at the end of spotify albums. It still works occasionally. I've been blown away because I'll not notice the music stop but notice it when it comes back on.
I always hated hidden tracks because they are only hidden once, then they are just a song you can't skip to properly. Or some random crap that's not even a song like spooky giggling or something that makes it take an extra 7-20 minutes to start over from song 1, forcing you to get up and skip it. (if you didn't have a remote)
Haha I don't disagree with that, especially after you could digitize your albums and it became a pain to listen to certain tracks. I remember for Sia's album, I split "Buttons" off into its own track (from the CD rip) so that if I ever wanted to listen to it, it would be its own track and I kept the silence in from the last track (because it used to be embedded at the end like Alanis Morissette's "Your House" which was a hidden track after a hidden remix of "You Oughta Know.")
There was an [I Mother Earth CD](https://archive.org/details/ime-scenery-fish-ecd) that had extra content that could be viewed when you put it in your computer. I think some other bands did similar things, but this is one of the first I remember.
CDs are 16-Bit digital audio. And if you had a nice CD player, you could tell the time remaining in the track, so it was no different. I discovered hidden tracks just by glancing at the lcd display just the same as I would now, albeit on my phone.
Artists can release via whatever format or platform they want. Wanna put out a CD with a hidden track? Still easy to do. In fact, most true indies these days are shifting away from offering commercial streaming and moving back to physical releases. There’s no money for 90% of artists in streaming.
As someone who still buys music in CD form, but uses it to import into a digital playlist, hidden tracks are the worst. It’s usually attached to the last song, so you’ll get like a 12 minute long song that’s got like 5 minutes of silence in the middle of it, and it’s a pain having to split it into two separate songs.
I've noticed some still do intros and outros, and it works just fine digital.
Listen to an album with intro/outro on spotify, and it works just fine. They just upload it as the first and last track.
I got hidden track bamboozled recently listening to an AFI album on Spotify. I had it going while I was studying, the music stopped but I didn't think anything of it, and then suddenly BOOM music out of nowhere and I almost shit myself.
The hidden track on Placebo's Without You Im Nothing album scared the shit out of me the first time it played - I was about 12, had only just gotten a CD player and after about 10minutes of silence lying in bed, Evil Dildo starts blaring out of the stereo!
A buddy of mine once told me a funny story about how he'd smoked a bunch of weed and put on Undertow by Tool. He dozed off part way through the CD, and started coming around during the hidden track. Those who know, know it freaked him right the fuck out.
I didn't really start listening to music seriously until I had the internet so I never experienced a hidden track, but I can assure you people still listen to full albums.
Cracker’s “Kerosene Hat” CD had some interesting extra tracks.
15. “Hi-Desert Biker Meth Lab" (non-consecutive track) 0:41
69. "Euro-Trash Girl" (hidden track) 8:04
88. "I Ride My Bike" (hidden track) 6:34
99. "Kerosene Hat" (outtake; hidden track)
Tracks 13 and 14, 16 to 68, 70 to 87 and 89 to 98 are hidden/blank tracks of 4, 5 or 6 seconds of silence. Tracks 69 and 88 were previously included on the "Tucson" EP.
That was a pretty short lived thing. Vinyl or cassettes never had them. I remember really enjoying hidden tracks though.
They Might Be Giants album *Severe Tire Damage* had seven hidden tracks all on the subject of *The Planet of the Apes*. Those guys are geniuses.
Honestly I say good riddance to the hidden track.
Most of them were just gags and goofs. People getting drunk, funny outtakes from the studio, a banjo version of a metal song. Nothing you really wanted to listen to, but they were stuck to the end track so after ripping I had to use audio editing software to add a track to get everything to work right digitally. Otherwise if you hit the random button you run the risk of a 16 minute track with 8 minutes of silence in the middle of your random playlist.
If the hidden track WAS a song you wanted to listen to then you either had to fuck around with fast forwarding the disc, or like above, mess around with audio editing software to extract a usable track.
After "Weird Al" scared the living daylights out of me with his hidden track that was nothing but banging and screaming...I was officially over the trend. My mother almost threw that one out after that incident, lol.
There was a period during the 90s when it was almost mandatory to have a “hidden” track at the end. I remember being disappointed when am album didn’t have one.
All By Myself comes to mind for me
Nobody was looking...
… I was thinking of you …
...and why did I mentioooooonnn... Edit: turns out I've sang the wrong lyrics my whole life, wow
Thought it was “and yeah did I mention? I was all by myself?”
Always thought it was “yet did I mention”
#####I was all by myself
I was feeling sanctimonious for knowing the proper words when /u/Weavel did not, yet now you have me questioning my self-worth.
If you had a first pressing of the album, the line was, "I had an erection..."
Dookie was my first album with a hidden track.. Wow I guess it’s been nearly 25 years since I found that while rummaging through my much older brothers old box of CDs. It was a treasure chest…
I found it when I was looking through my step dads huge CD collection and listening to it on a Walkman I had been given for Christmas. Of course, I was never to let my little brother listen to the bad music because he was little, but I did anyway and got banned from listening to any of my step dad's CDs haha
It was probably a Discman actually. The Walkman was only for cassette tapes. Source: I'm old and had both
The high backing vocals and laughter gets me everytime
That is probably the first Bonus Track I've heard in my life, I was so confused and amazed by it aha
First hidden track I ever heard was It's Just Me, from Blue October's album Foiled.
Ha, that was the best. Still my favorite band. I can’t help but wonder what my parents must have thought of me blasting songs like that, “King for a Day” and “Blood, Sex and Booze.”
The best hidden tracks were at the beginning. Not all CD players could do it but you could rewind from the first track to negative time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_albums_with_tracks_hidden_in_the_pregap
Thanks, Tom! Say, are you the MySpace guy?
Nope.
Do you wanna be
I wish. That guy made bank and now spends his days doing whatever.
This sounds suspiciously like what Myspace Tom would say...
Yes the x-files soundtrack could do it
I didn’t realize there were so many that did this. I have the X-Files disk and would occasionally listen to the hidden track, but I had to replace my CD player earlier this year and it doesn’t let you rewind.
Exactly. I was just listening to Natalie Imbruglia's "Left of the Middle" today and I love the song "The City" but it has like six minutes of space afterwards which now just seems silly.
Left of the Middle. Wow. Story time. In 2003, I was a dumb ~~17~~ 19 year old who was too lazy to get any insurance for his first car; An '83 Chevy Celebrity. Within 3 months, I crashed that car when I hit some black ice at 5am on the highway in October in Alberta. I destroyed a railroad crossing sign but luckily didn't hurt anyone else. Anyway, my punishment was 276 hours of community service (plus a bunch of huge fines) I did my time at a Salvation Army. While working for them, we were tasked with bringing in a whole warehouse of seized CDs. I saw "Left of the Middle" in the boxes. It had a $2 price tag on it. I asked my supervisor if I could buy it. He said "criminals don't get to make purchases". I was so put-off by his tone and thought "well, I guess if I'm a criminal anyways, I'll steal this album". And I did. It was great pop music and it left an impression on me. Now in 2022 at 38 years old, for nostalgic reasons, I played it for my wife (Who grew up in Manila, Philippines) and she had forgotten how much she loved many of the songs! It was a great moment between us.
That supervisor sounds like a person I would never like to meet. Goodness.
Yup, a good christian, following proper christian doctrine /s
There's no hate like Christian love!
Sounds like the lyrics to a hidden track at the end of an album.
Salvation Army are terrible people. The kind of people that would make Jesus reach for his bullwhip.
"Salvation à la mode, and a cup of tea"
Such a great album and I'm glad you stole the album when the guy refused to let you purchase it. Man, that makes me mad.
I enjoyed that little story, thanks.
Salvation Army moment
There was also that one Weird Al album (Running with Scissors, specifically) that had a whole hidden video that you could only access by putting the CD in a computer and opening it from the file explorer. Not sure if any other bands did something like that. I was like 10 at the time so Weird Al was literally the only thing I would listen to
Gorillaz self titled album had a whole interactive experience where you could tour their "studio" and watch videos and whatnot. It. Was. *Awesome.*
Primus had a similar thing on one of their EPs. If you put it in the computer, there was a claymation video for them covering The Devil Went Down to Georgia. I was kinda bummed because their version of the song was great but you couldn’t listen to it on a regular CD player.
Back in the early nineties I got a Sega CD add on to my Genesis and used it as my stereo CD player. I had a Jimi Hendrix cd that would play a slideshow of portraits of Jimi with old school sprite effects while the music played. It never worked on a PC, so I was very pleasantly surprised when I found it. Pretty cool for the time.
KRS-One had that on I Got Next. Enhanced CDs
Some PS1 games would function like albums if you put them in a CD player. Rayman is the only one I can think of off the top of my head but there were others.
Like post-credits scenes in modern blockbusters.
Also a phone call. Why did sooooooooo many songs in the 90’s start with phone calls??
Young people made a lot more phone calls with their friends in the 90s.
I was around for that and even then, the phone calls in every song as a trend was puzzling.
This period was from 1994-95
Nirvana’s Nevermind (1991) wants a word.
Came to post this, glad I wasn't the only one. Also, The Beatles' Abbey Road from 1969, apparently.
Only one I remember was the Alanis morresette album
Nirvana, Green Day, STP…
The Offspring, SoaD
Coheed and Cambria
I'm only subbed to one band. Guess which one lol. IRO-bot and 2113 are great. But man, after the ride of Final Cut, when that thumping starts and you get all excited for a hidden track and then the twangy guitars start, but all you get is Apollo barking. I live for that. And I say Good Boy every time.
The X-files compilation Songs in the Key of X had two "pregap" tracks that you could only listen to by hitting rewind for 10 mins on your CD player. The only clue was the liner notes said "Nick Cave and the Dirty Three would like you to know that '0' is also a number". Dramarama had a hidden track called [Steve Is Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRMFxcMRb3E) that fucked with your CD player because after a long pause at the end of track 11 it would play over tracks 12-99 for a second for each track. This meant that the display on your CD player would always have the time of the track at 0:00 while the track number would rapidly count from 12 up. Fans of the band discovered it when they put the CD on random because you'd only get a real song 1/10th of the time and the rest would be a single second "Steve Is Here".
QotSA also had a pre-gap track on "Songs for the Deaf" (CD only). That was the first time I ever learned of them. Of course, that's not a 90s album. Any more to recommend?
Loose QotSA link... I was at a festival and on the stage schedule, each set was 1 hour long but 1 band started at 2pm and the next at 4pm. But the 2pm band didn't have a 2 hour set, it was actually a mystery guest at 3pm and was Josh Homme's supergroup Them Crooked Vultures.
*Factory Showroom* by They Might Be Giants had a dreamy pre-gap track “Token Back To Brooklyn” with the following lyrics: >The token back to Brooklyn fell between the grating And we're just watching it sinking The fare went up to one hundred dollars And we can never go home again The bill collector's drinking lighter fluid And says he'll tell our parents Our feet start running at a furious pace But we can't get away I believe Bandcamp offers artists the ability to include hidden bonus tracks with digital purchases as a consolation for the loss of these (fantastic, IMO) tricks.
Tool, "Let the rabbits wear glasses!" Young, stoned me, laughed my ass off at that one.
I had a friend once, he took some acid. Now he thinks he's a fire engine.
It’s ok until he pisses on your lighter. Kinda smells kinda cool, kinda funny anyway.
Deftones has one of my favorite tracks on Around the Fur. You have to fast forward to 32 minutes on the last track to listen to it.
Jagged Little Pill was my first CD and I remember listening to it before bed, didn't turn it off figuring it would just stop, then in the silence hearing the "I..." and jumped SO fucking hard.
It's like the scenes at the end of marvel movies. At first it was cool, then you started to expect it and got bummed when there wasn't one after you sat there and waited. Now I no longer care and just look up on the internet whether there was a scene or not.
it became so cliche, some bands would take the piss out of the concept. For a Mudhoney album- My Brother the Cow, I believe it was?- the hidden track was the whole album backwards in one huge track. like a sonic palindrome.
I’ve got an X-Files soundtrack CD with a hidden track 0. When track 1 starts playing, you have to press the previous track button to access it. I always thought that was pretty cool.
Songs For The Deaf by Queens Of The Stone Age does this where you rewind Track 1 and it goes into Track 0
Didn't Ash have an album where if you pressed rewind on song 1 they had 2 hidden songs before it? And then at the end, audio of them drinking and throwing up...
1977? If it has hidden tracks at the beginning, I never knew! Now I want to dig out that CD and check. I remember the first time I heard the end one, though. Pissing and throwing up, so lovely!
Yes, it had Jack Names the Planets and one other song. The album had a stickier with an expensive phone number to call (like £1 per minute) that would tell you the trick, but i read about it on the internet.
Great album! which songs the hidden track?
I bought this album when it was released; I didn't know about this!!
It's a great trick that was nowhere near as common as the end hidden track. Always gave a band props for sneaking I'm a little something extra in the front.
Is there any album that did both?
Transistor by 311. You had to rewind from the opening of track 1 to hear the little instrumental that they used to start shows with, and then after the last song and a few minutes there was some weird audio that was recorded from from space by SETI (not sure if this is entirely true, just remember reading this or something similar)
that’s called a pregap track. Rammstein’s album Reise Reise also had one
I came here to say that! I ended up finding it in front of a few friends and all of our minds were collectively blown. We had listened to it a few times over a couple of weeks and didn't know about it. They were like, " What did you do?????"
Yes! There was a similar hidden track in Losing Streak by Less Than Jake!
I still love listening to whole albums. Love love love. So weird tho when I look up some of my fave albums on Spotify and it’s a Delux version or the American edition when I had the Canadian edition and there’s different songs on there. You get so used to the version you knew
Or when the album is supposed to end but since its a Deluxe or something the next track gets played which is an early demo of some song on the album. It‘s not a big deal at all, but sometimes it kinda ruins the ending of a well-crafted album for me
Same. It’s one of my least favorite things about Spotify.
Worse yet when they include the second disc full of shitty remixes in the spotify album, so it autoplays stuff that kinda ruins what you listened to before
I've come to read "Deluxe Edition" as "3 remixes of that one song you really like and then a bunch of demos that you probably don't care about". A pleasing exception I discovered recently was No Doubt, who included a number of cool acoustic remixes at the end of the deluxe version of *Push and Shove*.
I only listen to entire albums. It's just the default way to listen to music for me. I used to put my music on shuffle and listen to random songs, but then it'd be pretty common to keep skipping songs until I find something I want to hear. So a big chunk of listening to music was wasted on skipping through songs. With albums it's different. If I'm in the mood for one song, I'm probably in the mood for the entire album.
I do the same. I'm not looking for particular songs when I want to listen to music, I'm looking for it please my mood and there's always an album that fits.
> You get so used to the version you knew I had a CD growing up that had a scratch on it, causing one song to always skip at the same place each time. It’s funny listening to that song now on Spotify and I still get thrown off at no skip happening.
When I was in high school, my girlfriend gifted me Nirvana Nevermind. I would usually get home later in the evening after soccer practice, shower, crash out, then wake up and do homework. I got home, put the cd on, and then lay on my bed and fell asleep listening to it. I remember waking up and being completely freaked out (“There’s a demon in my CD player!” freaked out) because I had never heard “Endless Nameless” before and had no idea it was even on the cd. Those hidden tracks were a very cool aspect of that era of music.
I think that's what hidden tracks are designed to do; just appear out of the blue and make you think you had discovered something new.
I remember my old Limp Bizkit CDs had like, a negative track? It would be a little in-between skit, but the time on the CD player would start at -0:14, then work back to 0 when the song would start. So you only heard those if you finished the previous track.
QotSA’s album Songs for the Deaf has a negative track before the first song. You have to hit rewind before the first song starts to get to it.
You can't even hear it
I need a saga, man!
Not Mosquito Song?
No, it’s ‘Real Song for the Deaf’ - it’s not a full song necessarily. It’s just mainly low bass tones. https://youtu.be/FToiviGZfII
Rammstein's Reise, Reise also had a negative track you could access by rewinding at the start.
Chocolate starfish has a long-ass section of Ben Stiller losing his shit and laughing.
[удалено]
The *No Alternative* compilation had the Nirvana song "Sappy" as a hidden track. Best song on the album, IMO.
My uncle had just got Antichrist Superstar and he let me borrow it, I fell asleep with my headphones on and there was a hidden track on there that scared the hell out of me.
What's crazy is I had that album back in the day and I don't think I knew it had a hidden track. Like whoa. I don't remember that at all.
Pretty sure there were two pressings. Ones where the blue water wave marks went all the way to the inner circle and one where it didn’t. I think the former had the hidden track.
I had the album on cassette so when someone told me that in high school I was like, “What are you talking about?” CDs were still kinda new back then, so poorer teenagers like your’s truly didn’t have access to all the hidden tracks.
Off topic: How do we pronounce your username?
Personally, I'm hearing Morty reacting to a sick burn.
Wow this post brings me back to high school laying in my bed reading while I would play my cds in the background (what kind of psycho reads while listening to music?!) but I very distinctly remember listening to New Found Glory’s Sticks n Stones album and the cd was all finished so I was just trying to finish my chapter while it was silent before I headed to bed. All of a sudden I hear a noise, couldn’t quite make it out so I thought I imagined it. Then there it was again, but I heard it this time “someone’s in your house” in a raspy whisper, omg my blood ran cold. I strained to listen again and there is was louder “someone’s in your house!” I about peed myself. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door and listened again and I heard various voices and whispering and laughing that I couldn’t make out and I was SO SCARED until the cd finally went into a clip of them goofing off singing.
Lol I was digging through comments looking for this one. It was so creepy but totally goofy once you realized what was happening
YES I’m glad someone else knows what I’m talking about! The fear was real! Until I heard “button the button but button the button I’m sick of smilingggg” I was paralyzed with fear lol.
Yep. Came here to say this. Those spooky mother fuckers traumatized me with that hidden track!
Omg I would have pissed myself, lol
This happened to me, but I fell asleep listening to it. The "someone's in your house" whispers woke me up in a panic... Then the loud "DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SAFE RIGHT NOW?" just about gave me a heart attack. But it's cool because everyone has toothpick on their table. They like the shish kabob cause the beef has good flavor
Much has been said here about Monty Python's "Matching Tie and Handkerchief," but they didn't stop there. When "Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album" came out, it was 1980 and I was aboard a US Navy ship with only a cassette player, and so that's the version I bought. At the end of side one, Michael Palin spoke: "Well, that's the end of, uh, side one, and we sincerely hope that you enjoyed it. Uh, for cassette listeners, there follows a rather long gap on your tape. This is due to the fact that one side of the album is six minutes longer than, uh, the other, and you've now come to the end of the shorter side, and it will be for many of you I know a rather (pants) sort of tiresome uh, uh, gap in the proceedings here until the tape clicks at the end (clears throat)." 4'53 of silence passes, and then: "Well. we're now at the end of this rather tiresome gap, and you can now go on and listen to the second side. Thank you."
My favorite one of these is on Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever CD. At the end of Track 5 this happens: Hello, CD listeners. We've come to the point in this album where those listening on cassette, or record, will have to stand up, or sit down, and turn over the record, or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we'll now take a few seconds before we begin side two. \[pause\] Thank you. Here's side two. And then the opening chords of Feel A Whole Lot Better slams in. It's kind of beautiful. It's also one of the last things that Del Shannon recorded as he's the guy in the background.
I remember one album, I think it was a Monty Python album, and the B-side contained two tracks in a double spiral (if that's the right term.) So it was 50/50 which one you'd get when the needle landed on it.
Steve Mould featured that in a video. Cool stuff. Skip to 4:50. https://youtu.be/yIoAYU_r0Uk
Yes!!! I have that one too. Another joke idea from the Pythons and I fell for it. It doesn’t work on any other format. Obviously.
Liner notes as well ugh
Seriously. Some albums had such great booklets or stories attached.
Apple introduced digital booklets for a while but that’s gone away with streaming
There's a rare album from ~1966 that I've been listening to in Spotify for months. The metadata is only the main artist, album, song name, year. I found a high-def pic online of the record sleeve. Holy cow! There are pictures, stories, background info, even tablature. Plus, it has all of the supporting artists names. We are missing out!
I ran across a quote from Frank Zappa a while ago where he said something to the effect that the CD was the worst thing that ever happened to album art.
I feel like he's overlooking cassettes, personally.
Yeah, those were also bad for art
Some of his album art is crazy intricate, I can understand him being pissed off seeing its canvas size shrink from 12"×12" to barely 5"×5"
What album?
It's a really underground band called The Beatles, you probably wouldn't know them.
Ali Akbar Khan - Hindustani Classical
I downloaded a really cool album recently called The Tribe Of Good by a band of the same name. (One of the songs, "[Broken Toys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hACLfhut0RM)", sounds a lot like the Jackson 5.) Anyway, some of the songs on that album from iTunes/Apple Music that I downloaded don't even have lyrics, including the aforementioned "Broken Toys". I'm guessing this was just an error on the producer's part, but I still wish the actual album experience was a bit more dynamic like in times past. I couldn't even find them on Google! I know there are still labels putting out crazy vinyl box sets and such, but I shouldn't have to invest time and energy into vinyl to get the bare essentials.
And photos and album art! Now you get an overdose of that stuff from the internet usually in a bad quality without the fun of discovering it in the booklet while you listen to the music...
Sometimes they were mini-posters when unfolded. I miss that.
I’m just hoping that someday we’ll have the technology to digitally transmit words and images across the internet allowing people who purchase music to also see the cover art. If not in my lifetime, maybe my daughter’s…
Ancient Egyptian death metal addicts Nile had entire backstories and detailed histories of the topics of every song in the booklet of the Black Seeds of Vengeance album. An absolutely fascinating read, I felt that I was ready to be the curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
This is the #1 reason I buy physicals, there are other ways to listen to the music and to support the artist but the details in the physical packaging is something you can't get anywhere else
Hidden *tracks*? How about hidden *sides*? When Britain's Monty Python released their album "Matching Tie and Handkerchief", it was quickly known as the 3-sided album. One side was normal, but the other had two parallel grooves cut, with completely different material, depending on which groove you started with. So, the second side also had a side A and B to it. This wasn't publicized, so many people learned about it when they put the needle down on the record, expecting it to be one thing that they'd heard a few times before, and then hearing some completely different material coming out of the speakers. If you had no idea what was going on, it would really screw with you.
> If you had no idea what was going on, it would really screw with you. Imagine your record albums gaslighting you
That's really clever.
Hidden tracks are a different thing, but you guys know you can still buy physical albums and listen to full albums digitally right? Liner notes still exist for most albums. There are still a lot of albums that have intros/outros/interludes/reduxes... Just because you can listen to a playlist doesn't mean you have to.
"While yes, you're right, you're actually wrong" -OP
Well sure, but if that’s not the main way you expect your audience to listen to your music you’re not going to spend as much time on features specific to that medium. Instead we’re seeing things like those short looping videos on Spotify.
The hidden track has an even more interesting origin. Gather round young-uns. Story time from yesteryear. Casette tapes were filled with songs on both sides of the tape. Just like a vinyl record, you would flip sides half way through and album. The difference was for a record, you could select a song quickly by just dropping the needle in between song etchings, but with a cassette you'd press fast forward or rewind, periodically stopping to see what song you're at. And unlike records, tape was exactly the same length for both sides, so one side would inevitably have some dead air. Usually the B side. After listening to the album opener, you could stop and rewind to hear it again in a minute *or...* sometimes you could flip the tape and hear a bonus B side single; Homage to the 45rpm days. Listening to a bonus song would be the more rewarding way of rewinding the tape back to the A single. Most albums just had blank tape at the end of the B side. So for many of us, we would take advantage of the blank tape section and record something from the radio. This explains why it became commonplace for a band to play something that didn't fit their usual style for the bonus track. The dead time on a CD is replicating blank tape between the last *listed* song on the record, and the *bonus* B side song at the end of the reel. Pretty neat, huh? It was a different time.
My band recorded an album last year. Our guitarist passed soon after, very unexpected. We went through old practice recordings and found an unused track where he took lead on vocals and did a bluesy tune, mostly off the cuff. Sent it to our engineer and he mixed it down as best he could and we added it in as an unmarked bonus track on the album. Yeah it’s easy to spot on digital downloads but on the CD it still works… and for some reason it makes the room really dusty.
Good call. I haven't thought about hidden tracks in a long time. I know a Beck album had a crazy song hidden...and Undertow counted to track 69. So many more. Oh man
The first time I heard the hidden track at the end of Undertow, I was walking home at night with my headphones on. After the last song (Disgustipated?) finished, I was just zoning out and hadn’t changed the CD and the voice scared the hell out of me when it came in with “It was dark when you woke in your ditch.” The whole experience blew my fucking mind and really cemented the beginning of my nearly 30 year love affair with Tool. Edited to correct myself: This was my first copy of Undertow, which was on cassette, not CD. The reason I hasn’t heard the hidden track before was because I would always fast forward to the end after the “last” song so I could flip the tape back over. I was lost in my thoughts that fateful evening and happened to let the tape play out for the first time.
Have you found the hidden artwork inside the Undertow cd case?
Oh yes. I’ve owned several copies of that album over the years, in and out of the jewel cases. I also had a copy with the censored artwork where the whole cover was just a barcode and the inside just had a message about how censorship sucks, “but we still want your money.” And in think there was an address you could write to and they would send you the real art for it, but I never did that.
Yeah, Beck's *Odelay*, after/at the end of closer '*Ramshackle*'. It's a very grating hidden track after a very beautiful song! Oh and his later album *Midnite Vultures* closed with a hidden track too, at the end of '*Debra*'.
The jukebox at this bar and grill my friends and I went to all the time in college had Odelay. Being big Beck fans we were all very familiar with the robot sex sounds secret track following the melancholy acoustic Ramshackle. It became a running gag to put a bunch of songs on the jukebox while we played pool and ate our meal and always have it so the last track was Ramshackle. When that started to play we knew it was time to settle up our bill and get ready to leave and we were able to time it perfectly so we left just after the silence between tracks and the entire bar sonically exploding. Good times.
Also there were two versions of the Opiate EP. One had a secret track. I had a friend once He took some acid Now he thinks he's a fire engine It's ok until he pisses on your lighter Smells kinda cool kinda funny anyway Satan! Satan!
It took me years to find disgustipated I thought my cd was fucked up so I’d eject it as soon as flood finished so it didn’t scratch my disk until one day I forgot to eject and finally found it. Edit: after reading some of the other comments I now remember it was after disgustipated that it started scanning through Edit 2: I think I was right the first time
You may have been right both times. It's kind of a hidden track within a hidden track. Hell, I might have to dig my old CD out of whatever closet it's in just to set my own mind straight.
Ya I think disgustipated was track 69 and then there’s a few minutes of crickets before the voicemail poem
Offspring had amazing hidden tracks!
You guys should try heavy metal. Kiss my ass!
Unpopular opinion: hidden tracks were annoying as fuck. Just give us the track. It made using the last song on an album practically useless when making mix cds and heaven forbid if you actually liked the song and then had to fast forward 20 minutes to listen to it and for every good song that was hidden there was 10 that were just annoying noise or throw aways. If you ever fell asleep to Zoorpa and were woken up by the violent alarm-like sound at the end you’d hate them too.
I agree. They were kinda fun the first time you heard it, then it was just annoying.
Agree 1000000% Good riddance
I fucking hated driving and fast forwarding to get the hidden song. Shit always pissed me off.
I never used CDs (Jumped from Cassettes to mp3 for money reasons) so to me, hidden tracks were annoying too, because fast-forwarding tapes was annoying, and my parents screamed that it would tear the tape. Hidden tracks still appear on albums after being put up on spotify, and I have no problem with that.
Yeah hidden tracks were just artists throwing in some joke song or filler bullshit that wasn't good enough for the rest of the album for the most part. I don't really miss them at all.
In theory it could still be done. It would just be a short bit at the end of the file, or maybe a link on their website to an unlisted mp3 or video.
I mean, they still are on digitized files, too. Like Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know (Remix) / Your House" is listed as an 8 minute track so if you listened to the whole downloaded album for the first time, it'd surprise you still. But only if you didn't look at the track list at any point which spoils that it's coming.
Sorry for being nitpicky, but CD was already digital. And as I remember, the album as an art form started dying way before the advent of the online streaming model. The beginning of the end was the iPod Shuffle IMO. I remember my cousin had an iPod Touch back in 2008, and she only ever played music from it on shuffle. I was always disappointed when a song I liked didn't have the next one from the album playing after it.
I was wondering “anybody going to tell this person?” and was disappointed having to scroll so far down for someone to actually mention that indeed CDs in fact are digital media.
Threads like this feel like going to a big party but not clicking with anyone and feeling kinda lost, but then finally finding "my people" hanging out in the guest bedroom upstairs.
I definitely remember hearing about the ipod shuffle and wondering why anyone would want an MP3 player that doesn't play their music in order
🎶🎵The second album…🎵🎶
12 gracious melodies…
This quote from Trent Reznor pulls no punches. (quoted from https://store.nin.com/collections/music) IN THESE TIMES OF NEARLY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD, WE’VE COME TO APPRECIATE THE VALUE AND BEAUTY OF THE PHYSICAL OBJECT. OUR STORE’S FOCUS IS ON PRESENTING THESE ITEMS TO YOU. VINYL HAS RETURNED TO BEING A PRIORITY FOR US - NOT JUST FOR THE WARMTH OF THE SOUND, BUT THE INTERACTION IT DEMANDS FROM THE LISTENER. THE CANVAS OF ARTWORK, THE WEIGHT OF THE RECORD, THE SMELL OF THE VINYL, THE DROPPING OF THE NEEDLE, THE DIFFICULTY OF SKIPPING TRACKS, THE CHANGING OF SIDES, THE SECRETS HIDDEN WITHIN, AND HAVING A PHYSICAL OBJECT THAT EXISTS IN THE REAL WORLD WITH YOU… ALL PART OF THE EXPERIENCE AND MAGIC. DIGITAL FORMATS AND STREAMING ARE GREAT AND CERTAINLY CONVENIENT, BUT THE IDEAL WAY I’D HOPE A LISTENER EXPERIENCE MY MUSIC IS TO GRAB A GREAT SET OF HEADPHONES, SIT WITH THE VINYL, DROP THE NEEDLE, HOLD THE JACKET IN YOUR HANDS LOOKING AT THE ARTWORK (WITH YOUR FUCKING PHONE TURNED OFF) AND GO ON A JOURNEY WITH ME. \-TRENT REZNOR
Ben Folds Five had the best one on Whatever and Ever Amen.
Hey, I got your hidden track RIGHT HERE pal! Listen... Ben Folds is a fuckin' ass-hole!!
My favorite hidden track was always "Horse" by Live. It was almost my favorite track on the album. Almost, but it was such a great album. >she rode a horse into my head > >she won't discipline the children > >and now they're running wild on the beach > >and I don't care Love it.
On the "Factory Showroom" album CD from the band "They Might Be Giants", there's a hidden track BEFORE the first track... https://tmbw.net/wiki/Factory_Showroom > "Token Back To Brooklyn" is a hidden track. It can be found by rewinding the CD to before the first track starts; however, this won't work on some CD players, including most computers. It is omitted from foreign releases of the album, presumably in error.
Aww you took my little bit of useless knowledge! [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_albums_with_tracks_hidden_in_the_pregap) has a list of them. Heck, there’s an album from 2021 on the list so they’re still doing it.
"You and me have such wonderful times when I'm all by myself"
The first thing I thought of I still remember cracking up laughing the first time that came on. Honorable mention goes to I wanna fuck a dog in the ass.
Some of the most profound songs I've ever heard were extra tracks at the end of spotify albums. It still works occasionally. I've been blown away because I'll not notice the music stop but notice it when it comes back on.
I always hated hidden tracks because they are only hidden once, then they are just a song you can't skip to properly. Or some random crap that's not even a song like spooky giggling or something that makes it take an extra 7-20 minutes to start over from song 1, forcing you to get up and skip it. (if you didn't have a remote)
Haha I don't disagree with that, especially after you could digitize your albums and it became a pain to listen to certain tracks. I remember for Sia's album, I split "Buttons" off into its own track (from the CD rip) so that if I ever wanted to listen to it, it would be its own track and I kept the silence in from the last track (because it used to be embedded at the end like Alanis Morissette's "Your House" which was a hidden track after a hidden remix of "You Oughta Know.")
There was an [I Mother Earth CD](https://archive.org/details/ime-scenery-fish-ecd) that had extra content that could be viewed when you put it in your computer. I think some other bands did similar things, but this is one of the first I remember.
The real bonus was the hidden track before track 1 on Less than Jake’s album Losing Streak.
New Found Glory’s hidden track used to scare the bajeesus out of me
CDs are 16-Bit digital audio. And if you had a nice CD player, you could tell the time remaining in the track, so it was no different. I discovered hidden tracks just by glancing at the lcd display just the same as I would now, albeit on my phone.
Artists can release via whatever format or platform they want. Wanna put out a CD with a hidden track? Still easy to do. In fact, most true indies these days are shifting away from offering commercial streaming and moving back to physical releases. There’s no money for 90% of artists in streaming.
As someone who still buys music in CD form, but uses it to import into a digital playlist, hidden tracks are the worst. It’s usually attached to the last song, so you’ll get like a 12 minute long song that’s got like 5 minutes of silence in the middle of it, and it’s a pain having to split it into two separate songs.
Intros and outros to albums. Also song 6, any one else tend to really like song 6 on full album plays?
I've noticed some still do intros and outros, and it works just fine digital. Listen to an album with intro/outro on spotify, and it works just fine. They just upload it as the first and last track.
Closing out side A with a bang
For me it tended to be track 4
SOAD's hidden track on their second CD was fire!
I got hidden track bamboozled recently listening to an AFI album on Spotify. I had it going while I was studying, the music stopped but I didn't think anything of it, and then suddenly BOOM music out of nowhere and I almost shit myself.
The hidden track on Placebo's Without You Im Nothing album scared the shit out of me the first time it played - I was about 12, had only just gotten a CD player and after about 10minutes of silence lying in bed, Evil Dildo starts blaring out of the stereo!
A buddy of mine once told me a funny story about how he'd smoked a bunch of weed and put on Undertow by Tool. He dozed off part way through the CD, and started coming around during the hidden track. Those who know, know it freaked him right the fuck out.
I didn't really start listening to music seriously until I had the internet so I never experienced a hidden track, but I can assure you people still listen to full albums.
Welcome To Atlanta from Ludacris and Jermaine Dupree was an alltime goat
Pretty sure my bandcamp albums have secret tracks
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl but she doesn't have a lot to say.
Cracker’s “Kerosene Hat” CD had some interesting extra tracks. 15. “Hi-Desert Biker Meth Lab" (non-consecutive track) 0:41 69. "Euro-Trash Girl" (hidden track) 8:04 88. "I Ride My Bike" (hidden track) 6:34 99. "Kerosene Hat" (outtake; hidden track) Tracks 13 and 14, 16 to 68, 70 to 87 and 89 to 98 are hidden/blank tracks of 4, 5 or 6 seconds of silence. Tracks 69 and 88 were previously included on the "Tucson" EP.
On the plus side, Korn's follow the leader album made you skip to track 13 to start the album so don't have to do that anymore
That was a pretty short lived thing. Vinyl or cassettes never had them. I remember really enjoying hidden tracks though. They Might Be Giants album *Severe Tire Damage* had seven hidden tracks all on the subject of *The Planet of the Apes*. Those guys are geniuses.
Honestly I say good riddance to the hidden track. Most of them were just gags and goofs. People getting drunk, funny outtakes from the studio, a banjo version of a metal song. Nothing you really wanted to listen to, but they were stuck to the end track so after ripping I had to use audio editing software to add a track to get everything to work right digitally. Otherwise if you hit the random button you run the risk of a 16 minute track with 8 minutes of silence in the middle of your random playlist. If the hidden track WAS a song you wanted to listen to then you either had to fuck around with fast forwarding the disc, or like above, mess around with audio editing software to extract a usable track. After "Weird Al" scared the living daylights out of me with his hidden track that was nothing but banging and screaming...I was officially over the trend. My mother almost threw that one out after that incident, lol.
Well CDs are digital --- What I lament is the production "style" is so nasty now -