Readers, we’ve made it past Blue Monday relatively unscathed.
Now it’s giveaway Friday!
For fans of ye olde vinyl singles, I’m offering a €25 Golden Discs voucher to one lucky reader who tells me below: what is your favourite B-side and why?
Here’s mine.
The winner will be chosen by my AI robot.
Lines MUST close at at MIDNIGHT!
Please include video link where possible.
Nick says: Good luck!
Sponsored Link
There can only be one greatest B side of all time. It’s You can’t always get what you want, the B side to Gimme Shelter. https://youtu.be/krxU5Y9lCS8
Rain
https://youtu.be/cK5G8fPmWeA
Party Girl. By U2. Early 80’s. B side to A Celebration. Brilliant live.
https://youtu.be/Pq6jgy76Q3g
Party Girl. By U2. Early 80’s. B side to A Celebration. Brilliant live.
https://youtu.be/Pq6jgy76Q3g
Give him a Ball (and a yard of grass) [B-side of Stupid Kid] by Sultans of Ping FC
Just love this song, definitely gets way more play at home than it’s A side. Have plenty of other singles where there are good B-side, but these guys are just pure joy to listen to see and see live.
“A man can’t have no greater love than give ninety minutes to his friends”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzDMgANEsA
I’m in Love With my Car – B side to Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen’s drummer Roger Taylor felt so strongly he apparently locked himself in a cupboard until it was agreed it would be the B-side to thier most famous song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaEM4JYFPfw
Bowie – The Man Who Sold the World (B side to Life on Mars in the UK and Space Oddity in the US.)
Or
Wham – Everything She Wants (B side to Last Christmas)
I am the son
And the heir
of a particularly vulgar morrissey, but still an absolute belter of a song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnpILIIo9ek
1 )Butterfly Collector, b side to when you are young – the Jam
2)Liza Radley, b side to Start – the Jam
3)Tales from the riverbank, b side to Absolute Beginners – the Jam
One of my favourite songs of all time.
The Smiths – How Soon Is Now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztC_7nkAd8
‘Silver Spings’ – Fleetwood Mac
B-Side to ‘Go your own way’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDwi-8n054s
The junior B side I played football with back in the day, great bunch of lads.
Computer Love the B side of The Model by Kraftwerk
T’was originally the other way around. The Model was the b-side!
Dunno about greatest. But on “b side”that Surprised me was Visions in the night by the Police. https://youtu.be/aKrbhuGK8B4
B side of walking on the moon.
My entry Is Gloria from Them.
B side to Baby Please Don’t Go.
https://youtu.be/VlWiQ69DGE0
Rock and Roll Part Two. Gary Glitter
Oooh. Edgy. Like Joker. And no. I don’t wanna be in your gang.
I think an honourable mention has to go to I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. Originally released as the b-side to her cover of Substitute (by the Righteous Brothers).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARt9HV9T0w8&ab_channel=SolracEtnevic
Substitute was much better covered by Clout, whose version I heard before I knew the Brothers did it originally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fgA_yNCeq4&ab_channel=TopPop
God Only Knows – the B-side to Wouldn’t It Be Nice by the Beach Boys. Well, it’s the ‘perfect song’, in the golden era of pop music which I’m partial to, beautiful harmonies, sophisticated arrangement, yadda yadda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWPo5SC3zik
Hard to beat, but I’ll have a go. A quick sconce at my collection of 7” singles sees the excoriating Blues for Ceaucescu by the Fatima Mansions (b side to You’re A Rose).
https://youtu.be/FnvsgWD_pAQ
Honourable mentions to:
Time After Time/ Red Rain/So. Central Rain live medley – REM (b side to Finest Worksong)
Theme from Great Cities – Simple Minds (b side to Promised You A Miracle)
Last Great American Whale – Lou Reed (b-side to Dirty Blvd)
It Says Here – Billy Bragg (b side to Between the Wars)
And from 2019
The Jazz version by Winton Marsalis which was the b side the 7” of Thom Yorke and Flea’s Daily Battles from the Motherless Brooklyn OST
By the 1950s and 60s, the African-American musical styles of rhythm and blues and gospel had become absorbed into mainstream American culture – and there’s a case to be made that the white artists who adopted those expressive styles didn’t have quite the same authenticity as their counterparts. However, I would say that’s definitely not the case with ‘Unchained Melody’ (the B-side to “Hung on You” by the Righteous Brothers) which is a soul classic up there with the best of them – in my opinion!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYj2hex99gY
Oasis – Half the world away
The B-Side to Whatever
The Theme tune to the Royle Family
Nick, what was that the b-side to?
Orange Crush. 1988.
“There’s only one way out of Dun Laoghaire, you know what it is?
Off the mail boat piery”
https://youtu.be/8la0hug9tRY
Dunlaoghaire – B-side to Like Clockwork by the Boomtown Rats.
Love the Irish accents done by the band in this song. (it’s only on the Irish pressing of the single)
Acquiesce – Oasis
B-side to 1995’s Some Might Say.
Always a crowd pleaser, arguably better than the single.
Dirty, dirty riff. Liam on verse, Noel on chorus. Both at their best and maybe a paean to the tumultuous relationship that made the band.
Booker T & the MGs released Behave Yourself with Green Onions on the B side and six months later it became their defining hit. If you’re looking for B-sides that completely outclass their A’s, then this has to be it. As a pervy aside, this song more than any is responsible for my fascination with watching women’s bums while they dance.
THE FALL
45 84 89 : B SIDES
I’ll go with Australians in Europe!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=StNEZugOZ_k
Bowie B-Side ‘Velvet Goldmine’. Dirty dirty song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfRgd9REzAs
I was subjected to ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ by Procul Harum in my youth. I know it’s a classic but…ugh…so depressing.
So glad I flipped it!
This Hammond organ stuff I later got addicted to with The Zombies et al.
‘I’m running around in my underpants’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUqaieKiELc
In 1989, a little known rapper from south Florida named Robert Van Winkle released a song called “Play That Funky Music (White Boy)” based around the infamous 70s funk tune by Wild Cherry (a play on the fact Van Winkle was white).
It received a relatively luke-warm reception until months later a New York DJ (David Morales) played the b-side on his show and the rest, as they say, is history….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rog8ou-ZepE