The Blackburns will be available on Digital download, CD and Cassette and is available to pre-order now. They recently released the debut single off the album “Hooks.” Stream that below and keep on reading!
If you are so kind as to stream my band’s debut album, The Blackburns, this April, you will hear ten songs. If you are extra kind, and purchase a cassette tape copy of the album, it will have five songs on each side. It’s a ten song album. And if you want that sweet, sweet fidelity only found on a compact disc, take a look at the back cover and count ten songs listed. Of course, because that’s how many songs it has.
But, what’s this? Your Magnavox AK601 CD player is reading the information stored on the shiny side of the disc and telling you that there are actually FIFTEEN tracks! And one of those extras is an actual song – a hidden bonus track.
Ah, the hidden bonus track – one of my favorite aesthetic signifiers of the final decade of the previous century. A place for the artist to stretch out, goof off, dump garbage, or show some extra personality. Perfect for the CD; you can visibly count the tracks on a record, and there’s no place to hide on a streaming platform (thus, the hidden bonus track becomes simply, the bonus track), but the back of the CD is a mirrored mystery.
Since we decided to include a hidden bonus track on our CD, I’ve been thinking about my favorite hidden bonus tracks, and I’ve picked 10 to discuss below (because the internet seems to like a list). Most of them are from the golden age of the hidden bonus track, the CD era, but I’ve also included a couple stone-cold-classic predecessors that I just couldn’t ignore.
After defining a decade, The Beatles put out their final record during the final year of that decade, and the final song is called “The End.” Perfect. And the final lyrics – “and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make” – perfect! Except there’s one more song. Oh, and except there’s one more album the following year. Oh, and then two more songs in the 90s. Ugh, and one more song in 2023. Oh, well.
The Clash were on such a prolific creative tear in the late 70s that they wrote and recorded one of their best and most well known songs after the sleeves for the record were already done!
In Nevermind’s 12 listed songs, there is menace hiding just beneath the surface, but it’s still pop music. Then, the menace bubbles over. No more pop left, their melodicism is completely spent, and the angst that was part of the formula already, becomes the whole formula.
The Broken EP contains 6 songs, and then 90 silent tracks that are 1 second each, and then 2 more songs, one of which is this Adam & The Ants cover that contains one of my favorite Trent Reznor vocal performances. By the way – 8 songs, 32 minutes, labeled (and priced as) an EP. Only in the CD era!
A charming Motown throwback track with a charming video. I guess you’d have to call Broken an EP in an era when a normal full length, like Janet., contained 28 tracks and ran over 75 minutes!
What a CD – opens with one of the major defining songs of the 90s modern rock radio format, “closes” with a Jerry Garcia cover, then two silent 5 second tracks, then a sort of noise collage thing (now labeled “Hi-Desert Biker Meth Lab” on streamers), then a whole lot more silent tracks – and then, buried on track 69 (nice), lives Cracker’s best song.
The perfect hidden bonus track for an album about adolescent suburban boredom. All these years later, I am still charmed and tickled by the cry/laugh delivery of the “all by myself” that comes right after “I went in your room.”
I love physical media for the tactile experience of needing to do things like rewinding, dropping the needle, addressing a skip, opening a tray, etc. With streaming, you can make a 12+ hour playlist, hit shuffle and just passively take it in without touching a thing, no true interaction needed. Unless you include the final track from the Deftones second album on that playlist, because that will contain 30 silent minutes between “MX” and “Damone.” (Ok, it’s not all silence, there’s a bong hit in there somewhere.) It was a real shuffle function ruiner in the six-disc changer days, and it remains one in 2024.
My favorite version of this song (though this is a close second).
The first few notes of “Everything In Its Right Place” send me falling into a dream that I live in for about 45 minutes. Then, after the final song, these ambient 60 seconds hold my hand, back to the waking world.
Post a comment