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Flip the Record: My Twelve Favorite B-Side Songs
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Vinyl records have made a massive comeback of late (much to the delight of Terry Barr), but when they basically disappeared around 1989, we lost something special: the B-sides of 45 rpm singles. It’s hard for kids raised on streaming services to grasp, but there was a time when singles mattered. Sales of singles determined what songs reached the top of the Billboard charts, drove album sales, and took bands from obscurity to fame.
The other thing those singles had was a B-side song, usually one from the album the band had less faith in or sometimes one that had not made the album at all. Occasionally, however, the B-side tune was even better than the A-side. Those rare times were pure magic, and below I give you twelve of my favorite B-sides of all time.
“Roulette” (B-side of “One Step Up”) — Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Bruce has an infuriating habit of leaving his best songs in the vault, and this masterpiece about the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant may be…
