| 1 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[folder:Alternative/Indie]] |
| 4 | * In Beirut's song "My Family's Role in the World Revolution," the pianist screws up eight seconds into the intro, then stops. The band members chatter and fidget with their instruments for a few seconds until someone says, "It's cool, it's cool!" and the song starts over. |
| 5 | * When David Rager was commissioned to design cover art for ''Crazy for You'' by Best Coast, the only specific input the band gave him was a photograph of vocalist Bethany Cosentino's cat Snacks and the instruction to include it on the front cover in some form. The problem was that Snacks wasn't fully in frame in the photo, so his hindquarters would be missing from the resulting collage. He managed to make it work by making it look as though Snacks was emerging from the ocean, and also used the mistake to create a visual EasterEgg - the edge of the cropped cat photo vaguely resembled the shape of the coast of California (the band's home state), so he subtly added California's border line to it. |
| 6 | * At the beginning of the Bettie Serveert song "Hell Is Other People", lead singer Carol van Dyk says something unintelligible, followed by a guy replying "Yeah, cool." Carol can't remember what they were talking about, but she was talking to an American friend of theirs and was unaware that they were being recorded. When they started mixing the song, they just left it like that. |
| 7 | * Music/CamperVanBeethoven intended to call their debut album ''Telephone Tree Landslide Victory'' - advance cassette promos were mislabeled ''Telephone Free Landslide Victory'', and the band decided to change the album name accordingly because it was meant to be a WordSaladTitle to begin with. |
| 8 | * During the production of the [[http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/tally-ho-1981 music video]] for New Zealand alt-rock group The Clean's "Tally Ho", director Chris Knox accidentally exposed half the film stock, causing it to have a distinctive orange flare. The band rather liked the psychedelic effect of the flare, and kept it in. |
| 9 | * After the breathtaking scream that ends Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s song "Let's Make Out," you can hear a voice going "Okay, that was great, but, uh... do it again." Another voice responds with "[[HaHaHaNo Ahahahahaa... no.]]" |
| 10 | * At the end of "Riding Into Work in the Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)" [''sic''] by Music/FlamingLips, while the singer is going "Aaahhh..." over and over, someone can be heard saying "Alright... stop." |
| 11 | ** In "What Is The Light?", the stopwatch function on someone's digital watch can be heard going off; it happened to do so on rhythm, and right before the drums kicked in. |
| 12 | * At the end of "He Doesn't Know Why" by the Music/FleetFoxes, one member can be heard asking "Are we going?" (which is answered by "Yup.") before a piano solo (which sounds completely unrelated to the song) starts. These remarks show up very briefly as text at the end of the music video. |
| 13 | * Music/FranzFerdinand's "Eleanor Put Your Boots On" starts with one band member, apparently Alex Kapranos, asking "You ready, Nick?" (or "mate", according to some sources), to which Nick replies "Yeah." |
| 14 | * Music/GuidedByVoices are known for their lo-fi sound, and sometimes add to this by leaving in obvious recording mistakes. For instance, "Hardcore [=UFOs=]" has a couple of moments where the lead guitar abruptly cuts off mid-note and disappears from the mix, only to come back just as suddenly - apparently parts of that track were accidentally erased and they just left it like that. |
| 15 | ** A similar left-in mistake occurs in "King & Caroline", but with the vocal track: Robert Pollard's vocals briefly get cut off near the beginning of the song, leaving the TitleDrop as just "the king and Carol". They went so far as to print the lyrics that way in the liner notes to ''Alien Lanes'', and Pollard sings the line as "the king and Carol" whenever they perform it live. |
| 16 | * The Hush Sound's "Love You Much Better" ends with improv crowd. During the clapping, you can hear a very loud "YES!" from opposite lead singer Bob Morris. After the applause dies down, you can hear Greta laughing hysterically and mocking Bob, "That yes was ridiculous. YESH." |
| 17 | * Mono's "Yearning" starts out with "We're rolling". It's particularly noticeable as the entire album (''You Are There'') is instrumental. (Well, except the other "throw it in" of one of the musicians asking "I think that was it, right?" in the middle of "Moonlight") |
| 18 | * If you pay extremely close attention to the end of Music/NeutralMilkHotel's "Oh Comely" (recorded in one take) you can barely make out one of the band members saying "Holy shit!" |
| 19 | ** The story goes like this: when Jeff Mangum went into the recording booth, it was assumed by all those present that he was merely testing out the mic. However, after running through all eight minutes of the song, without fault, those present were in awe, including producer Robert Schneider who was awestruck enough to deliver the terribly apt "Holy shit!" |
| 20 | ** Likewise, at the beginning of "Song Against Sex" from their first album, you can hear Mangum play a few notes on guitar, clear his throat, and then hear Robert Schneider talking for a moment before the song starts. |
| 21 | ** At the end of the song "I Will Bury You In Time" from the ''Ferris Wheel on Fire'' EP you can here Robert Schneider say "You're rolling again" and Mangum respond "Thanks, Robert." |
| 22 | * Music/RedHousePainters were notorious for this. From the StudioChatter on "Over My Head", the jazz-like improvisation on the same track, on-the-fly droning that stretched originally 5-minute-long songs to 7+, and the borderline atonal guitar solos Kozelek added on ''Music/SongsForABlueGuitar'', there's a lot that was "thrown in". |
| 23 | * Pretty much the whole first minute of "Don't You Evah" by the indie band Music/{{Spoon}} is requests for recording talk-backs and for the producer to record vocal queues. |
| 24 | * The hidden track on {{Music/Starflyer 59}}'s ''Everybody Makes Mistakes'' came about this way. Producer Gene Eugene was recording an unrelated album with some session musicians, and as a lark, asked the sax player to solo over the rhythm section from [=Sf59=]'s "The Party". Gene showed the recording to Jason Martin, who thought it was ridiculous but decided to include it on the album anyway. |
| 25 | * John Flansburgh's exclamation at the end of the Music/TheyMightBeGiants song "For Science", ''"Let's get those missiles ready to destroy the universe!"'', was ad-libbed. |
| 26 | * The Unicorns were planning out a set-list for a concert when they noticed that, because they were using abbreviated song titles and played the songs "Tuff Luff" and "Sea Ghost" right after each other, part of the list appeared to read "Tuff Ghost". They decided a tough ghost was actually an interesting lyrical concept and wrote a song of that name. |
| 27 | * The recording of "Modern World" by Wolf Parade has a very audible sniffle 44 seconds into the song. However, it was most likely left in there because it occurs precisely in time with the music. |
| 28 | * In the famous music video for Music/YeahYeahYeahs "Maps", Karen O's crying during the video was completely unplanned, and completely authentic: the song was written about her relationship with her then-boyfriend Angus Andrew of the band Liars, whom she had invited to the set for the video's shooting. Andrew showed up several hours late to the set, and O became overcome with emotion and started crying when she didn't think he was going to come (which was all the more hard on her--since she was about to go on tour the next day, and knew that she might not see him again for several weeks). For many fans, knowing that fact just makes the video even more sad to watch. |
| 29 | [[/folder]] |
| 30 | |
| 31 | [[folder:Alternative Rock]] |
| 32 | * Music/TheBreeders' SignatureSong "Cannonball" includes a couple of false starts on the bass before the full band starts playing together. This wasn't a spontaneous studio mistake, but bassist Josephine Wiggs had done the same thing while they were rehearsing the song due to playing the riff flat twice, and they liked it enough that they had her do it on purpose when actually recording. |
| 33 | ** Their cover of Sebadoh's "The Freed Pig" was an in-joke that wasn't initially intended to be recorded: "The Freed Pig" was written by Lou Barlow about the frustrations he had working with J Mascis in Music/DinosaurJr, so when Mascis was producing The Breeders' ''Head to Toe'' EP, the band thought it would be funny to learn it and use it to warm up before he arrived. Mascis walked into the studio in the middle of the song, but it turned out he'd never heard it before, and had no idea why they suddenly stopped playing... Once the joke was explained to him, he said he liked their version anyway, and asked to record a take. |
| 34 | * Music/{{Garbage}}: |
| 35 | ** While recording "Push It" Shirley Manson improvised by singing [[Music/TheBeachBoys "Don't worry baby, it's gonna be alright"]]. Thus Butch Vig sent the song to Brian Wilson to see if he approved the inclusion of his lyric. He did. |
| 36 | ** She also improvised [[Music/ThePretenders "we were the talk of the town..."]] recording "Special". The request for permission led to the amusing response "I, Chrissie Hynde, do solemnly swear that the rock band Garbage can sample my sound, my voice or indeed my very ass." |
| 37 | ** While "Supervixen" was being mixed, the tapes kept slipping, and the band liked how the pauses sounded and incorporated them to the song. |
| 38 | ** "Dumb" opens with a weird voice, which Vig said was a Spanish-speaking taxi radio that was caught in recording the bass. |
| 39 | * Music/KingsOfLeon's famous song "Sex on Fire" got its title from this. The lyric was supposed to be "You'll set us on fire", but someone misheard it during the recording. |
| 40 | * The guitar riff of Music/LinkinPark's "Bleed It Out" was played incorrectly during a practice session. The band liked the result enough to record that arrangement instead of what was written (the song's working title was "Accident" due to this incident). |
| 41 | * About two minutes into Music/{{Lush}}'s "Ladykillers" video, you can see Emma Anderson [[{{Corpsing}} cracking up]] upon belatedly realizing she wasn't supposed to be lip-syncing that particular verse. |
| 42 | * The sound at the end of the drum solo in Music/MidnightOil's "Power and the Passion" is that of Rob Hirst smashing a light bulb over his head. He planned it ahead of time, but didn't tell the band. |
| 43 | * On the song "Polly" from ''Music/{{Nevermind|Album}}'' by Music/{{Nirvana}}, Music/KurtCobain whispers "Polly Said" once during the interlude. This was originally a too-early start on the next verse, but they liked it and left it in. It then became an official part of the lyrics and Cobain sang it (intentionally this time) on the alternate "Polly (New Wave)" version of the song found on ''Incesticide''. |
| 44 | ** Similarly "Come As You Are" has an "I don't have a gun" a little too early, near the end of solo. Again they kept it in because they liked it. |
| 45 | ** Krist Novoselic accidentally had his bass tuned to drop C when recording "Blew" from ''Music/{{Bleach|Album}}'' - he'd been playing in D[[note]]i.e. a whole step down from standard[[/note]] earlier, then tuned it again thinking it was in standard tuning. The strange, low bass tone that resulted made the song sound heavier, so they used that take for the album. |
| 46 | * Music/{{Oasis}}'s "Don't Go Away" was written about Liam and Noel Gallagher's mother Patty, who was in the hospital due to a cancer scare at the time the song was created. Liam started crying while recording his vocals, which were left in the final product. |
| 47 | * Music/PearlJam's "Jeremy": The child actor in the video covered himself in a prop flag because he was cold on the set. The result, seen in the video, was something open to many an interpretation. |
| 48 | * Steve Albini, producer of Music/ThePixies' ''Surfer Rosa'', recorded bits of studio banter and included them on the album. He has since said that he thought it was gimmicky and he doesn't plan to do it again since the band didn't ask him to do it. |
| 49 | * The distinctive guitar crunches in the pre-chorus of Music/{{Radiohead}}'s "Creep" from ''Music/PabloHoney'' were actually [[SpringtimeForHitler an attempt by guitarist Jonny Greenwood to ruin]] what he thought was an awful song. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the band liked it and it stayed in the final mix. |
| 50 | ** The guitar riff that starts at about 2:50 into the song "Fake Plastic Trees" from ''Music/TheBends'' was supposed to start a half measure later, but was put in at the wrong time in mixing. The band decided that it sounded better the way it was, and left it in. |
| 51 | ** The first sound recorded during the ''Music/HailToTheThief'' sessions was kept at the opening track "2+2=5" (Greenwood plugging in his guitar, saying 'We're on', and singer Thom Yorke replying "That's a nice way to start, Jonny..."). |
| 52 | ** The guitars enter at a strange place in "Let Down" because of an error during mixing that the band liked and decided to keep. Unfortunately it turned out to be a bugger to recreate live and they've rarely played it. |
| 53 | * At the start of one chorus of "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" by Music/{{REM}}, Michael Stipe can be heard trying to suppress laughter. This is because the last line of the preceding verse was "a reading from Dr. Seuss" and he kept on messing up previous takes by accidentally singing "Dr. ''Zeus''" instead. |
| 54 | ** The band originally performed "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" in a faster, harder, punk-thrash style in concerts. When time came to record the song for their 1984 album ''Reckoning'', they decided on a whim to instead record the song in a slower, softer country style as an inside joke to their manager, Bertis Downs, who is a fan of country music. The country-styled arrangement has stayed ever since. |
| 55 | * Music/RedHotChiliPeppers' "Did I Let You Know" features the word "Mozambiquey" which was thrown in because it fits the rhythm of the song... but doesn't mean anything. |
| 56 | ** Near the ending of Frusciante's solo in "If You Have to Ask", the rest of the band can be heard clapping and cheering him enthusiastically. Many other tracks on ''Blood Sugar Sex Magik'' have small voice snippets, like Anthony asking "Frankie, is it?" at the end of "The Righteous & The Wicked". |
| 57 | * At the time he was writing songs for ''Music/SiameseDream'', Music/TheSmashingPumpkins' Billy Corgan owned a cheap electric guitar that would start producing odd, whistling feedback whenever he stopped playing it. He decided to exploit it as a {{good bad bug}} by deliberately writing a lot of StopAndGo parts into the song "Mayonaise" and using that guitar for the recording. |
| 58 | ** At the end of "Silverfuck" you can hear Billy Corgan say "This take, don't give a fuck". |
| 59 | ** The song "Hello Kitty Kat" ends with Billy Corgan saying "Song's over". |
| 60 | * At the end of Music/TheSmiths' "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish", lead singer Morrissey turned to producer Stephen Street and asked "Hey Stephen, can we do that again?" - this is audible on the final mix. |
| 61 | * Music/SonicYouth's "Mary-Christ" and "Kool Thing" were supposed to be Main/SiameseTwinSongs, but the band's favorite versions of each song were from different takes. Thus, on ''Goo'', "Mary-Christ" ends with the intro to "Kool Thing" being played, which then fades out, only to start up again immediately on the next track. |
| 62 | * While Stavesacre was recording an acoustic version of their song "An Eclipsing" for their GreatestHits album ''Collective'', lead singer Mark Soloman broke out in laughter after an unexpected vibraslap hit. The take broke down, and one of the other members quipped, "A rattler just invaded our campfire!" The false start and ensuing hilarity were left in the final cut. |
| 63 | * Matthew Sweet's "Sick Of Myself" ends with the band picking up the final coda after the intended ending several times, with the final iteration being kicked off with Matthew saying "One more time." |
| 64 | * The album version of {{Music/Ween}}'s "Birthday Boy" is [[{{Bookends}} bookended]] by lo-fi, abruptly cut off [[{{Sampling}} samples]] of "Echoes" by Music/PinkFloyd because they had resorted to taping over a bootleg audio cassette of ''Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii'' in order to record the song. |
| 65 | * Music/{{Weezer}}'s "Falling for You" has a woman briefly speaking in Korean over the intro. It wasn't meant to be in the song, but an amplifier picked up some radio interference, and they decided to leave it in because it fit with ''Music/{{Pinkerton}}'''s repeated references to Asian women. The Korean in the song translates to "Which company makes this product?", by the way. |
| 66 | * Music/NeilYoung & Music/PearlJam's "Downtown" starts with Neil saying: "I fucked up, let me just play in the groove for a bit." It ends with Neil saying: "Well, we know that one!" |
| 67 | [[/folder]] |
| 68 | |
| 69 | [[folder:Blues]] |
| 70 | * Music/ScreaminJayHawkins' "I Put a Spell on You" was originally intended to be far more sedate, but Hawkins and the rest of the musicians got [[DrunkenMaster blind drunk]] before recording it. The resulting cacophony came to be Hawkins' signature tune. |
| 71 | * As Music/MuddyWaters' remake of "Mannish Boy" fades out, you can hear producer Johnny Winter gleefully yelling "Got that motherfucker!" |
| 72 | [[/folder]] |
| 73 | |
| 74 | [[folder:Classical]] |
| 75 | * The famous clarinet glissando that opens George Gershwin's ''Rhapsody in Blue'' was not in the original score. It was first played during rehearsals by clarinetist Ross Gorman as a joke on Gershwin. Gershwin liked it and asked Gorman to keep playing it that way. |
| 76 | * The famous trombone glissandi in the "Infernal Dance" from ''Theatre/TheFirebird'' (not the ones at the very end) are not part of the original ballet score; they were apparently an improvisation Music/IgorStravinsky approved of and wrote into the 1919 concert suite. |
| 77 | [[/folder]] |
| 78 | |
| 79 | [[folder:Comedy]] |
| 80 | * After recording "Till the Money Comes", Music/JonathanCoulton tripped over his bass. It was kept in at the end of the track. |
| 81 | * At the end of "Nudsie's Wedding Reception" by Michigan comedy band Music/DaYoopers, you can hear then-guitarist Joe Potila mumble "I messed up" at the end. |
| 82 | * The first movement of the song "Suicidio a sorpresa" by Italian band Music/ElioELeStorieTese ends with a barely audible [[Franchise/StarWars Darth Vader]] saying "You don't know the power of the Dark Side", to which one of them replies "Eh sì, ciao! Ciao!". Supposedly, they had a toy Vader helmet in the rec room, and one of them touched it by mistake, activating it. Since their songs are already full of jokes, snippets from other sources, samples and references, Vader's voice was not ''so much'' out of place... |
| 83 | * Several songs on Music/SongsToWearPantsTo contain improvised or unplanned bits. Perhaps the most notable of them comes in "When A Cow Snapping Over Friend Chiken XD" —already a funny song to begin with, it reaches [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments Crowning Moment levels]] when the singer's guitar suddenly malfunctions in the end of the song. |
| 84 | --> "It seems as though the power has just gone out on my guitar pedal. I guess that's what happens when you... cow snap over the friend chicken... XD" |
| 85 | * Music/WeirdAlYankovic has an example on his original song "Albuquerque": the track ends with guitarist Jim West laughing because of the ridiculous chord he plays at the end of the song. |
| 86 | ** Similarly, "Genius in France" features somebody in the studio laughing right before the intro of the song. |
| 87 | ** In the video for "Eat It", a shot-for-shot adaptation of Music/MichaelJackson's "Beat It", the picture falling off the wall was coincidental, but it was left in anyway, since it added to the humor. |
| 88 | [[/folder]] |
| 89 | |
| 90 | [[folder:Country]] |
| 91 | * Music/BrooksAndDunn's "Lucky Me, Lonely You" contains at least three false starts, which may or may not be part of this trope. |
| 92 | * There's an audible click near the end of "Friends in Low Places" by Music/GarthBrooks, which is the sound of one of the musicians [[INeedAFreakingDrink opening a beer can]]. Later on, Garth yells "Push, Marie!" in reference to the wife of one of Brooks' guitarists, who was in the hospital giving birth at the time of the recording. |
| 93 | * Music/BillyCurrington has two examples: |
| 94 | ** Session guitarist Brent Mason ad-libbed some 70's porno-esque "wah wah" guitar sounds on "Don't", which Currington insisted be left in. |
| 95 | ** "People Are Crazy" ends with Currington laughing. |
| 96 | * Similarly to the Pogues example, sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison of Music/TheChicks had written "You Were Mine". Lloyd Maines produced the song's demo, and had his daughter Natalie sing on it instead of the group's then lead singer, Laura Lynch. According to some accounts, this was because Lynch was wanting to leave the group, and due to the success of the demo, she was successfully replaced by Maines. |
| 97 | * Music/DiamondRio's 1992 single "Norma Jean Riley" got its title this way. The song was originally titled "Pretty Little Lady", but their producer said that he would like the song better if the woman in the song had a name. After he told the band "It could be 'Norma Jean Riley', anything!", the song was changed accordingly. |
| 98 | * In a non-recording-related example, country singer Dusty Drake came by his stage name when a concert promoter accidentally called him Dusty (his real name is Dean Buffalini). |
| 99 | * Music/BrettEldredge's CarefulWithThatAxe moment on "Somethin' I'm Good At" was entirely ad-libbed, as he couldn't remember how long the break was before the next chorus. |
| 100 | * Music/AlanJackson began whistling the melody at the end of his recording session for his 1998 single "Right on the Money", unaware that the tape was still running. When he heard the whistling, he and producer Keith Stegall decided to leave it in. |
| 101 | * According to a blurb on ''Radio/AmericanCountryCountdown'', when songwriter Hugh Prestwood wrote "That's That" for Michael Johnson, he composed the song on a sequencer that unintentionally had some instruments set at a different tempo than others. The resulting effect, known as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiola hemiola]], was included in the final arrangement. |
| 102 | * The outro of Music/LadyAntebellum's "Goodbye Town" (most of which was cut from the radio edit) was entirely improvised. It's just the band jamming and co-lead singer Charles Kelley ad-libbing. |
| 103 | * Music/KathyMattea's "455 Rocket" has an example at the end: session drummer Jim Keltner drops his drumsticks, and everyone can be heard laughing. According to Mattea herself, this is because they recorded several takes of the song, and ended up [[OneTakeWonder using the first take]] because it was done at a point when no one knew that they were being recorded (which meant that the recording had a looser, more relaxed feel). |
| 104 | * Music/MartinaMcBride based her vocal performance on "I Love You" on the vocalist who sang the demo. |
| 105 | * Country singer K. T. Oslin accidentally set her keyboard to the guitar patch when she recorded "Come Next Monday". She liked the sound and decided to keep it in. She later used the same setting, intentionally this time, on "Mary and Willie". |
| 106 | * In the final verse of Music/RascalFlatts' "Prayin' for Daylight", after lead singer Gary [=LeVox=] sings the line "Deep in my heart I know that you love me as much as I love you", one of the other members mumbles, "You know I love you, girl." |
| 107 | * Cajun-country singer Eddy Raven came up with his stage name due to a printing error. Born Edward Futch, he recorded a single in 1962 when he was only 18; the single was accidentally credited to "Eddy Raven", but he liked how the name sounded and chose to keep it. |
| 108 | * The invention of the fuzz-box, a type of guitar pedal that creates distortion, was the result of this. During the recording of Music/MartyRobbins' "Don't Worry", guitarist Grady Martin's pre-amp had a fault in it, causing a distorted sound. Robbins' producer, Don Law, liked the sound and decided to have him play it as-is. The recording engineer, Glenn Snoddy, worked with another engineer, Revis V. Hobbs to design a circuit that would recreate the distorted sound of the pre-amp; after selling the design to Gibson in 1962, it was released as the Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz Tone, the first fuzzbox to be released to the public. |
| 109 | * Music/PamTillis: |
| 110 | ** The second verse to "Maybe It Was Memphis" ("Read about you in a Faulkner novel / Met you once in a Williams play") was a filler verse put in by writer Michael Anderson, with the intent of writing a different verse later. [[PermanentPlaceholder He never got around to replacing the words.]] |
| 111 | ** She and producer Paul Worley liked the demo of "Shake the Sugar Tree" (sung by Stephanie Bentley) so much that they just added Pam's vocals on top of it. |
| 112 | * The Tractors [[LeaveTheCameraRunning left the tape running]] between songs on their debut album, including several ad-libs and chatter. |
| 113 | * Music/RandyTravis recorded a cover of Brook Benton's "It's Just a Matter of Time" for a multi-artist covers album. When he liked how the cover turned out, he decided to put it on one of his own albums and release it as a single. His version went to #1 on the country charts in December 1989. |
| 114 | * Music/KeithUrban: |
| 115 | ** "Little Bit of Everything" contains two examples. The "stuttering" ukulele riff on the instrumental breaks was an off-the-cuff idea from producer Nathan Chapman, who was inspired by a similar guitar riff on Music/{{Madonna}}'s "Don't Tell Me". Also, the bassline is played on a synthesizer because the first two bassists that Urban and Chapman contacted were unavailable. |
| 116 | ** A similar thing happened on "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16". After attempting to record a scratch track with an acoustic guitar, he felt that he wasn't getting it right, so he took a bass guitar off the studio wall and accompanied himself on bass. He intended for his own bassline to be replaced by a session musician, but felt that the line he played was good enough to keep in the song. |
| 117 | [[/folder]] |
| 118 | |
| 119 | [[folder:Electronic]] |
| 120 | * Music/{{Crystal Castles|Band}} |
| 121 | ** The track "Alice Practice" on the debut album was just a vocal demo featuring a load of distorted semi-incomprehensible roaring by singer Alice Glass over a chiptune-esque electronic beat. It was accidentally uploaded by the band and their fans reacted positively to it, so they decided to include it on the album, making it an entire song's worth of ThrowItIn. In a statement regarding abuse by former co-member Ethan Kath however, Alice later admitted that the "accidental" recording story was just a ruse she was forced into. |
| 122 | ** The track "Love and Caring" also qualifies - during a short instrumental section, Glass can easily be heard saying "What the fuck is...? Oh, it's the bass... " before launching into more distorted, noisy vocals. |
| 123 | * Music/BradFiedel's theme for ''Film/TheTerminator'' qualifies: Due to the [[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/02/the_time_signature_of_the_terminator_score_is_a_mystery_for_the_ages.2.html tracks that constituted the theme being improperly synchronized]], the time signature of the theme is [[UncommonTime a weird and uncomfortable 13/16]], which fit in with the horror of the setting. |
| 124 | * Music/{{Gorillaz}}: |
| 125 | ** The chorus for their song "Dare" was originally "It's there", but guest vocalist [[Music/HappyMondays Shaun Ryder]] had such a strong Manchester accent, it came out as "It's dare". |
| 126 | ** While recording "Rockit", Damon Albarn let out a slight chuckle at the line "I brought myself together". They decided to leave it in because it fit in character with [[VirtualCelebrity 2D]]. |
| 127 | * The odd, slightly dissonant sequencer pattern on the latter part of Music/TangerineDream's "Thru Metamorphic Rocks" was the result of a burnt-out transistor in the mixing desk. The band liked the sound, though, and improvised over it. |
| 128 | [[/folder]] |
| 129 | |
| 130 | [[folder:Experimental]] |
| 131 | * Music/ButtholeSurfers' "Creep in the Cellar" has a strange backwards fiddle part that almost-but-not-quite fits the chords and rhythm of the song. It's just disorienting enough to seem deliberate, but in fact it wasn't supposed to be part of the song at all: The band were recording over tapes the last band to use the studio left behind, and somehow while they were tracking the song a stray fiddle track running in reverse popped up in the mix. By the time they figured out how to get rid of it, they decided to just keep it in. |
| 132 | ** The band's name itself was originally just supposed to be a song title - they've told two variations on the story in interviews: In one story, fans kept loudly requesting their early song "Butthole Surfer" so often at shows that people in the audience who were there to see other groups assumed it was the name of their band. In the other, they had a friend announce them at their first paying gig, but they had changed their name so many times that said friend couldn't remember what they were calling themselves that day, and just blurted out one of their song titles instead. |
| 133 | * Near the end of "Freeze" by Qui, [[Music/TheJesusLizard David Yow]] spontaneously tells an old dirty joke over what was written as an instrumental outro. The last thing heard on the song is someone laughing at the punchline- according to the band this was [[Music/TheRamones Marky Ramone]], who had been hanging around the studio at the time. |
| 134 | * Frankie Sparo flubs a line in "Akzidenz Grotesk" on ''Welcome Crummy Mystics'', but the lyrics are double-tracked, so in one channel he continues singing, and in the other he curses extravagantly. |
| 135 | [[/folder]] |
| 136 | |
| 137 | [[folder:Hip Hop]] |
| 138 | * During the recording of "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force, Pow Wow suddenly forgot his lines, resulting in the memorable "zuh zuh zuh" verse in the song. |
| 139 | * In the Music/BeastieBoys' "Pass the Mic", Mike D. raps, "Everybody acting like it's a commercial. [[RhymingWithItself Acting like life is a big commercial.]]" The original rhyme was supposed to be "big rehearsal", but Mike accidentally said "commercial" twice. They ended up using this take in the final mix. |
| 140 | * In "Cleaning Out My Closet", Music/{{Eminem}} famously had no snare (drum) in his headphones. A German techno artist made fun of this on one of his songs, as he "found" his snares, in his samples folder in Protools. |
| 141 | * Right at the end of ''Believe Me'' by Music/FortMinor, just as the music finishes fading out, you can faintly hear someone saying "So, here's the thing--", which is actually the start of the conversation that starts the next track on the album. |
| 142 | * "Bitches" by Music/InsaneClownPosse is a "Hail Mary throw" sort of throwing it in. Ol' Dirty Bastard was asked to guest-star on the album, and the band sent him a raw tape of the intended song, with pauses for ODB's contribution. When the tape was returned, they realized that not only had he not listened to the song before recording, he had shouted incoherently over the entire thing, drowning out ICP's verses. Having already paid him, they scrapped the song and edited what little of his bullshit they could salvage into a new song, embellishing with new lyrics. Since most of ODB's ramblings were about "bitches", that was the theme of the song. Violent J is proud of the final result, considering how utterly useless Ol' Dirty proved to be. |
| 143 | * "Gotta Eat" by Music/LupeFiasco, a three-minute running food pun, ends with a barely audible "so stupid." |
| 144 | ** Which may actually also be a TakeThat at Music/SouljaBoy. Before the "so stupid", he mimics Soulja Boy's trademark "Yoooouuuuu!" |
| 145 | * Near the end of "Strange Enough" for N.A.S.A's ''Spirt of Apollo'' album, Karen O cracks up during the chorus and adds, "Something like that, right? Is that what you want?" The producer replies, "Perfect." |
| 146 | * "Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)" was originally intended as a collaboration between [[Music/TheFugees Pras]] and Mya - [[Music/WuTangClan Ol' Dirty Bastard]] was recording with Sunz Of Man in the same building, and burst into the wrong door while they were setting up to record, so he was asked to appear on the song too. |
| 147 | * Music/OutKast's music video for "Ms. Jackson" contains a plethora of animals. In one scene, an owl appears to say the lyric "Forever ever". This was completely accidental, and was kept in because it just looks so damn cool. |
| 148 | ** The entire outro to their song "Prototype" is Andre 3000 ad-libbing...and then asking if they were recording the ad-libs. |
| 149 | * The title of Music/TupacShakur's posthumous album ''Music/TheDonKilluminatiThe7DayTheory'' came about this way. 2Pac originally wanted the album to be titled ''Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory'', released under his "Makaveli the Don" moniker. However, the way the title was printed led people to misread it as "Makaveli - The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory", and it stuck. |
| 150 | * When Sheck Wes was recording "Mo Bamba", the laptop that was looping the beat he was rapping over froze, causing the music to cut off near the end of a bar. His sudden exclamation of [[ClusterFBomb "Oh, fuck! Shit! Bitch!"]] was a spontaneous reaction to this, but the laptop suddenly started working again so he improvised a rhyme to cover for it ("Yeah, Sheck Wes, and I'm gettin' really rich"). |
| 151 | * The Dropout Bear from Music/KanyeWest's debut album, ''The College Dropout'' [[https://www.complex.com/music/2014/02/kanye-west-college-dropout-things-you-didnt-know/dropout-bear wasn’t planned to be on the cover at all,]] it just so happened to be at the high school the photoshoot took place. The only "plans" Kanye had for this cover art were that he didn’t want his face on it, and didn’t want any writing featured on the front side. The Dropout Bear would later be featured on ''Late Registration'', and as an animated character on ''Graduation''. |
| 152 | [[/folder]] |
| 153 | |
| 154 | [[folder:Jazz]] |
| 155 | * Music/LouisArmstrong claimed that while recording the song "Heebie Jeebies", his sheet music fell; he proceeded to improvise a section. |
| 156 | ** It is occasionally reported that this is the origin of Scat Singing; in truth, Scat Singing went back to at least 1911 ("Heebie Jeebies" was recorded in 1926); however, "Heebie Jeebies" definitely was the TropeCodifier, if not exactly the TropeMaker. |
| 157 | * At the end of Blood, Sweat and Tears' song "Spinning Wheel", they got a little goofy and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi9sLkyhhlE overlayed a brass section of their song with merry-go-round music]]. The song ended in such a spectacularly bad way that one band member mutters "That wasn't too good" and they all laugh. |
| 158 | * At one pause during his legendary drum solo on Music/SteelyDan's "Aja", Steve Gadd clicks his sticks together. He's reportedly admitted to people he's talked to at clinics that that happened accidentally. |
| 159 | [[/folder]] |
| 160 | |
| 161 | [[folder:Metal]] |
| 162 | * Music/TheAgonist did this in their song "And Their Eulogies Sang Me to Sleep" - the 'false start' at the beginning is an out-take that the band decided to keep. |
| 163 | * "C-Value Enigma" on Alkaloid's debut album was the result of Florian "Morean" Maier playing "note Lego" in [=ProTools=] with various single notes and short phrases from his guitar that he recorded, then stringing it all together and running the results through various filters just to see what would come out. His rationale was that, as a composer, he had no need to make everything playable and sometimes just wanted to run on RuleOfCool just to see what he could come up with. While he believes that the song is probably unplayable by a human, he acknowledged that there are some people with levels of technical skill that are so absurd that they could conceivably find a way to pull it off. |
| 164 | * Music/BlackSabbath's "Sweet Leaf" begins with a coughing sound. This was Tony Iommi who was getting ready to record a guitar part when the other guys in the band offered him a joint to smoke. This caused him to cough uncontrollably, and the band recorded it and stuck it at the front of the song. This was lampshaded in Godsmack's cover of the same song, which began with a busy crowded bar scene, ending with the coughing sequence, recorded twice- the second time, in the same style. |
| 165 | * While recording the vocals for the song "Blood on the Cornfields", Music/{{Cormorant}}'s vocalist Arhur von Nagel's voice cracked while delivering the lines "Was Christ not crucified?". Producer Billy Anderson told him that there was no need to rerecord it, as it added even more power to the delivery. |
| 166 | * According to the band, Mike Wengren of Music/{{Disturbed}} was noodling around when he created the drum-opener to "Down with the Sickness". Guitarist Dan Donegan heard it and asked "What is that? Keep doing that". It's now one of the band's most famous hooks. |
| 167 | * In Music/DirtyRottenImbeciles' song "Dry Heaves" on their album ''Definition'', the song started with a false start when Kurt Brecht and Spike Cassidy were supposed to count "1, 2, 3, 4" together but only one of them counted. It led to a conversation for the first 20 seconds of the song before finally starting. If you listen closely to before they start the song, you can hear the producer yelling "go!" |
| 168 | * At the very end of Music/DragonForce's "Through the Fire and Flames," guitarist Herman Li broke a string while doing a whammy effect. They kept it in the final cut. |
| 169 | ** Not the only thing Li broke on that song, either - in the video version, you can catch a glimpse of his guitar's whammy-bar snapping off and flying offscreen at the end of his solo. |
| 170 | * Music/DreamTheater keyboardist Jordan Rudess played an improvised, on the fly solo on his continuum at the end of "The Dark Eternal Night" while they were tracking the drums or something, and the band liked it so much that they stuck it on the record. |
| 171 | ** On a similar note, Rudess played the last note of "In the Name of God" with his nose. Apparently Mike Portnoy liked it so much they decided to keep it. |
| 172 | ** Also, John Myung's bass solo in "Metropolis Part 1" was a tapping exercise he used to warm up. The rest of the band liked it and convinced him to throw it into a song. |
| 173 | * Music/IronMaiden's "Music/TheNumberOfTheBeast" features a [[CarefulWithThatAxe high, loud scream]] from singer Music/BruceDickinson. Dickinson just says that he got the ''enthusiasm'' that made it so memorable from doing the repeated takes. |
| 174 | ** Another Maiden example comes at the end of their ''Brave New World'' album ("The Thin Line Between Love and Hate") where a dismayed Nicko [=McBrain=] can be heard to shout "Oh, I [[UsefulNotes/BritishAccents FACKING]] missed it!" after he thought he had messed up the drum track to an eight-and-a-half minute song on the very last hit. |
| 175 | *** Some think it is "Facking missed him", referring to Bruce. |
| 176 | ** The last song from ''The X Factor'', "The Unbeliever", ends with a voice from the studio say "That's the one...yeah, that's it, let's go listen". |
| 177 | ** In Dickinson's solo career, there is a B-side called "Acoustic Song". Roy Z recorded the guitar track in a single take in his bedroom, and the sound of his phone ringing in the background was caught at the end of track. |
| 178 | * Music/{{Korn}}'s song "Clown" from their debut album opens with a bit of random chatter, the band messing up the intro, yelling obscenities at the engineers, complaining about not getting the chance to record a different song [[note]]drummer David Silveria mutters "I wish we could put 'Twist' on the fucking tape", referring to a song that would ultimately be released on their followup album[[/note]] and finally playing the bloody thing. |
| 179 | * Music/LimpBizkit's song "Pollution" from their debut album ''Three Dollar Bill, Y'all$'' ends with someone yelling out "FRED, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!" while the vocalist Fred Durst repeatedly shouts out "BRING [THAT BEAT] BACK". After that, Fred continues to yell out "BACK" and other stuff repeatedly, while the guy's trying to tell him to shut up. Once a second "FRED, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!" gets shouted out, Fred just nonchalantly says "and we're done". And the person telling Fred Durst to shut up is... Fred Durst: He intended to add some [[SelfBackingVocalist self-backing vocals]] to that part of the song, but got annoyed with his own hammy ad-libs on the lead vocal part, so he started heckling himself instead. |
| 180 | * Music/{{Megadeth}}'s cover of Music/BlackSabbath's "Paranoid" contains a flub by the now-late then-drummer Nick Menza, who kept playing after everyone else had stopped at the very end of the song. Mustaine yells, "Nick...Nick...'''Nick'''!"; the drums stop, and then faintly in the background, Menza can be heard yelling "Fuck...me...running!" |
| 181 | * Music/{{Metallica}}: |
| 182 | ** The original ''The $9.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited'' is intentionally lo-fi and not "cleaned up" post production very well, leaving in studio chatter, the sound of amps being turned on and guitars tuned, etc. The (off-key) intro to Music/IronMaiden's [[Music/TheNumberOfTheBeast "Run to the Hills"]] at the end of the CD was improvised last minute during the take of "[[Music/TheMisfits Last Caress/Green Hell]]" used and they decided to keep it, really giving the whole thing a practice in a garage feel. |
| 183 | ** At the end of the song "Blitzkrieg", a member of the band burps loudly and proceeds to laugh about it. Another is then heard saying in the background, "We fucked up in one place." |
| 184 | * The title track to Music/{{Motorhead}}'s ''Overkill'' came about when Lemmy Kilmister and Eddie Clarke bumped into Phil Taylor practicing the double-bass drums and decided to base the song on that. |
| 185 | * Music/OzzyOsbourne's opening riff from "No More Tears" was originally a warm-up riff by then-bassist Mike Inez. Supposedly, Ozzy was hung-over and barely awake when Inez played the riff and Ozzy suddenly sat up and shouted, "That's a song!" |
| 186 | ** Ozzy was asked by the record producer to say something through a certain vocal effect near the end of the fadeout of "Crazy Train". When he couldn't think of anything to say, he was told to just state what he had for breakfast this morning. Thus, the very last thing you hear in the song is Ozzy's maniacal laughter, followed by "Eggs!". |
| 187 | ** He also has a count-off example, at the beginning of "No Bone Movies". And whoever's doing it is clearly having a lot of fun. |
| 188 | * {{Music/Pantera}}'s "Domination" starts off with a short drum intro by Vinnie Paul who can then be heard yelling 'first take like a motherfucker!' before counting in the song. |
| 189 | * Progressive Metalcore band Music/ProtestTheHero's song "Wretch" features meows from a cat that wandered into the studio. The meows fit surprisingly well with the song, thus they were kept in [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments instead of removing the cat and re-trying.]] |
| 190 | * The noise at the end of Music/RageAgainstTheMachine's "Sleep Now in the Fire" comes from Tom Morello's amplifier picking up a radio signal. |
| 191 | * Music/{{Sabaton}}: Joakim Brodén completely forgot to write the lyrics for one of the songs on ''Primo Victoria'' before they went to record the album, and improvised [[SongOfSongTitles "Metal Machine"]] from a stack of rock magazines in the recording studio's bathroom in about 30 minutes. |
| 192 | * At the start of Music/{{Slipknot}}'s "Get This", someone (possibly vocalist Corey Taylor) whispers "fuck", then the producer says, "Gimme a scream, Corey." There's a loud click, and then Taylor obliges him to start the song. |
| 193 | ** Also at the end of "Pulse of the Maggots", a voice (presumably Corey's) can be heard proudly saying "Rockin'!" |
| 194 | * After a minute of silence in Music/SonataArctica's "The Power of One", the song's narrator can be heard muttering, "...and I fuckin' touched the mic. Hold on." |
| 195 | ** "Draw Me" has the band members conversing (in Finnish) about a bird that flew into the recording studio. |
| 196 | * After "I'm Still Alive" by Music/{{Stratovarius}}, two people can be heard talking. |
| 197 | * In Dan Swano's solo album "Moontower" he recorded keyboard tracks as a guide to the lead guitar tracks he'd play later on. He decided he liked the way the keys sounded, so he kept it in and never recorded most of the lead guitars. |
| 198 | * The opening of Music/SystemOfADown's "Chop Suey" is two drumstick taps and the engineer saying "We're rolling 'Suicide'", the song's working name. |
| 199 | [[/folder]] |
| 200 | |
| 201 | [[folder:New Wave]] |
| 202 | * Cindy Wilson of Music/TheB52s didn't realize a section was over while recording one day, so she belted out "TIN ROOF!" and then, chagrined, added "rusted"; this ad-lib made it into "Love Shack". |
| 203 | * While Music/TheClash were recording "Rock The Casbah", Topper Headon's ''Series/TheDukesOfHazzard'' watch alarm went off (it can be heard at the "the in-crowd says it's cool..." part), resulting in the sudden prescence of a beepy, lo-fi sample of "Dixie". It was kept in, mainly because somebody felt it kept up with the section's tempo. |
| 204 | ** Near the end of "Armagideon Time", there's an exchange between the engineer and Joe Strummer. Trying to keep the song from veering into "raga territory," they told the engineer to tell them when four minutes had gone up. Then Strummer changed his mind ("Okay, okay. Don't push us when we're hot!"). |
| 205 | ** During the instrumental break of "Should I Stay or Should I Go", guitarist Mick Jones suddenly snarls out the word "Split!" That's because during recording, Joe Strummer snuck up behind him in the studio and jumped out to scare him. Mick didn't like the joke and was telling him to get lost. |
| 206 | * Music/ElvisCostello messes up the intro to "Running Out of Angels" before saying "Sorry, I blew it" and starting over. |
| 207 | * Music/JoeJackson was at a photo shoot for the cover of ''Look Sharp!'', when the photographer, admiring Jackson's white shoes, took a black and white photo of just his feet and lower legs as an afterthought. This ended up becoming the album cover instead of the more conventional FaceOnTheCover piece they were presumably originally going for. |
| 208 | * Music/NewOrder: |
| 209 | ** That unusual beat/cymbal break about a minute into "Blue Monday" was a result of selecting the wrong drum beat track. Not only did it stay, but made its way into remixes and covers of the song. |
| 210 | ** Bernard Sumner starts laughing in "Every Little Counts" and can't quite stop until the next line. Given the verse ("I think you are a pig / You should be in a zoo"), it's made even more humorous. |
| 211 | ** On the original 12 inch version of "Temptation", Bernard can be heard letting out a yelp a couple of bars after the intro vocalizations. He explained that came from his bandmates thrusting a snowball down his shirt while recording. |
| 212 | * Near the beginning of Music/ThePolice's "Roxanne" from ''Music/OutlandosDAmour'', there is the sound of a piano and Sting chuckling. The dissonant piano chord was a result of Sting accidentally sitting on the instrument during recording. Thus as [[CreditsGag an in-joke]], the liner notes credit Sting with performing vocals, bass, harmonica, and "butt piano". |
| 213 | ** The very first portion of the Police song "Does Everyone Stare" is the original demo vocal Stewart Copeland did for the band; while he was recording the demo, his mike picked up a freak radio signal, one which was carrying an opera broadcast. The snippet of the opera was the same key as the song, so they kept the whole section in. |
| 214 | * As the Music/SimpleMinds recorded "Don't You (Forget About Me)", they thought it needed a BigRockEnding. So singer Jim Kerr asked the band to play as he improvised an [[{{Scatting}} "I say "La, la, la, la, la..."]]. |
| 215 | * When he was writing the lyrics for Music/SpandauBallet's "True", Gary Kemp was so stuck at one point that he wrote in "Why do I find it so hard to write the next line?" at one point. Doing that actually helped him move on, and the band decided to keep it in the song. |
| 216 | [[/folder]] |
| 217 | |
| 218 | [[folder:Pop]] |
| 219 | * Howie D. farted while the Music/BackstreetBoys were recording "The Call", and Max Martin was able to [[EverythingIsAnInstrument turn it into a bassline]]. |
| 220 | * In his song "You're Beautiful", James Blunt sings the opening line too early, pauses, and restarts once the music comes around again. |
| 221 | ** Of course Music/WeirdAlYankovic exaggerated & lampshaded this in "You're Pitiful". Blunt was amused. Creator/AtlanticRecords was not, so they don't get copyright royalties for the free track. |
| 222 | * Music/ColbieCaillat's "Will you count me in?" from "Bubbly" is arguably one of these. |
| 223 | * The heavy use of AutoTune on Music/{{Cher}}'s "Believe", the first mainstream pop song to use it, was simply the result of producer Mark Taylor [[ItAmusedMe messing with Cher's voice out of boredom]]. |
| 224 | * When Music/TheMamasAndThePapas were making "I Saw Her Again" there is a part of the song where one of them begins the line "I saw her, again last night" but stops at the comma when one of the others starts up. So the line ends up becoming "I saw her. I saw her again, last night." Reportedly, Music/PaulMcCartney said to one of the members of the group, "That was an accident, wasn't it." When asked how he knew that it was, it's told he said, "Nobody is that good." |
| 225 | ** What had actually happened was, Bones Howe, the engineer, punched in the vocals a bar too early, but then Lou Adler, the producer, loved it, and asked that Bones leave it in. |
| 226 | * Like "Don't Go Away" above, Music/MichaelJackson's tears and sniffles on "She's Out of My Life" were real, a result of him getting emotionally carried away while singing. |
| 227 | * During the coda for the song "Just Like Noah's Ark", from Music/EltonJohn's 2006 album, ''The Captain and the Kid'', a pet dog of one of the band members, sensitive to the volume of a electronic cowbell sound played on the click track, begins to bark at the sound as the band is recording the track live. As the barking fit in well rhythmically with the track, the engineers left it in, and the dog is credited in the liner notes of the album with "woof-bells". |
| 228 | * Music/{{NSYNC}}: |
| 229 | ** While filming the video for "Bye Bye Bye", Joey Fatone slipped and slammed into the wall of the rotating room they were filming in, and the director left the bit in. |
| 230 | ** He also missed his mark in "It's Gonna Be Me", where he, Justin Timberlake, and Chris Kirkpatrick were supposed to rappel down a shelf to the one below. He ended up missing it by a few inches, hitting it butt-first. The bit was funny enough for them to leave it in, including a bit of the others pulling him up. |
| 231 | * In "Raise Your Glass", Music/{{Pink}} comes out of the bridge and starts to sing the chorus a few beats early, the result being that the last chorus begins with the line, "So raise your... aw, fuck." It was left in as it fitted the song's theme of embracing your imperfections. |
| 232 | * The beginning of "Shadows in the Rain", on Music/{{Sting}}'s ''Dream of Blue Turtles'' album starts with the drummer giving the beat, then a guitarist asking, "What key is it in? WAIT, WAIT; what key is it in?" Apparently they were so strapped for time in the studio they didn't have time for another take, so it was left in. |
| 233 | ** A similar moment comes at the end of the album's title track; as the song ends, you hear the entire band suddenly start cracking up. |
| 234 | * In the video for Russian singer Elvira T's song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbiC8qM6QiA "Goodbye"]], there is a scene where her car's trunk door falls on her head. This was not scripted, and her yelp of pain is genuine. Luckily, she was not seriously injured. |
| 235 | * When Nino Tempo and April Stevens recorded "Deep Purple" for Atlantic Records in 1963, Nino actually forgot the words during the second half of the song, and April spoke them out loud to remind him. Nino actually wanted the spoken lines removed because, according to April, "He didn't want anyone talking while he was singing!" However, the song's producer, Ahmet Ertegun, who was also Atlantic's co-founder and president, felt that April's spoken words were "cute" and that they actually enhanced the song, thus he insisted that they be included in the finished product. |
| 236 | [[/folder]] |
| 237 | |
| 238 | [[folder:Progressive Rock]] |
| 239 | * Music/ElectricLightOrchestra's self-titled debut album was released in the US under the title ''No Answer'' because no one picked up the phone when someone from the label called the UK to ask what the title was, so the person who made the call left a note simply reading "no answer". |
| 240 | ** The opening operatic blast which falters and fails in the track "Rockaria", before the song picks up as it should, was a fault by the diva they'd brought in; they left it in because the false-start-and-retake sounded right. |
| 241 | * During the drum solo which opens Music/EmersonLakeAndPalmer's "The Sheriff" (on the ''Trilogy'' album), Palmer messes up at first and mumbles "shit". It's probably most audible over headphones. |
| 242 | ** The now world-famous Moog solo at the end of "Lucky Man" wasn't planned either. Keith Emerson decided to play that solo spontaneously over the song and didn't even know the tape machine was running. They kept the first take. |
| 243 | * Music/JethroTull: |
| 244 | ** At the beginning of "Baker Street Muse", Ian Anderson messes up, says, "Shit, shit, shit. Take two," and continues playing the song. |
| 245 | ** During the solo for the song ''[[Music/AqualungJethroTullAlbum Aqualung]]'' Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin walked into the recording studio and waved to Jethro Tull's guitarist Martin Barre. There are a few differing accounts of this story but one version says that Barre waved back, sustaining a note with his left hand and waving with his right. Ian Anderson claims that if you turn up the volume you can even hear him wave. There IS a short sustain in the solo, so this may be true, and if it is, then it's definitely an example. Another version is that Barre started improvising when Page walked in to try and impress him. If that was the case then it's still an example of this trope. |
| 246 | * Music/{{Kansas}}'s "Dust in the Wind" started as an exercise Kerry Livgren came up with to improve his fingerpicking skills. |
| 247 | * Music/KingCrimson's "Indoor Games" ends with singer Gordon Haskell breaking down into uncontrollable laughter after an unenthusiastic "Hey ho," which he later explained was his reaction to what he considered very silly lyrics. |
| 248 | ** During "Cat Food", singer Greg Lake bursts into laughter because Robert Fripp mooned him through the window to the recording booth. |
| 249 | ** The second verse of "Thela Hun Ginjeet" (an anagram of "heat in the jungle") exists because of this trope. Adrien Belew stumbled into the studio, obviously distressed. Robert Fripp asked him what had happened, and Belew replied that he had just gotten accosted and threatened by muggers. Fripp signaled for the sound engineer to start recording and asked Belew to tell him the details. The recording of Belew's story became the vocal track, replacing the original, intended second verse. |
| 250 | * Manfred Mann's Earth Band's cover of the Music/BruceSpringsteen song "Blinded By The Light" has the line "Wrapped up like a deuce", which is frequently misheard as "Wrapped up like a douche". According to WordOfGod from Manfred Mann himself, the {{mondegreen}} was the result of technical problems with the tape heads of the recording equipment, and they ended up not fixing the issue because the "corrected" version they prepared wasn't that good in comparison to the final version. |
| 251 | * Vivian Stanshall's appearance as the "Master of Ceremonies" on ''Music/TubularBells'' (and, by connection, the title of the album itself). Mike Oldfield and assistant Tom Newman basically camped out at Richard Branson’s new Manor Studio, recording their way through his multi-instrumental magnum opus while the studio would otherwise have been unused, and knocking off down the pub in the evenings. When Viv Stanshall came to record his solo album, he unsurprisingly accompanied them to the pub that evening, and they all got rather merry together. They came up with the idea of having Viv "introduce" the various instruments in the final section of side 1, and recorded it that night while still drunk. They also recorded a version of "The Sailor’s Hornpipe" for the finish of side 2, where they miked up most of the ground floor and performed the melody on guitars, while Viv improvised a humorous monologue on the historical features of the house. In the cold light of the following morning, the embellishments to side 1 were thrown in, including the "Plus… (''Tubular Bells'')!" that gave the album its title. The pissup version of "The Sailor’s Hornpipe", however, was thrown out as being just a little too avant garde for a solo artist on his first album, but later appeared in the ''Boxed'' compilation. |
| 252 | * On Music/PinkFloyd's "Let There Be More Light" from ''Music/ASaucerfulOfSecrets'' Roger Waters flubs one of the whispered vocals on the third verse ("''something'' there for me" rather than "''waiting'' there for me"). |
| 253 | ** According to Nick Mason, the seagull cries from "Echoes" was the result of David Gilmour accidentally plugging in his wah-wah pedal backwards. |
| 254 | ** Gilmour also can be heard coughing in the background during the acoustic intro to "Wish You Were Here"[[note]]This has led to an urban legend (not true, actually) that hearing it on the playback so mortified him that he decided right then and there to quit smoking[[/note]] |
| 255 | * The synth lick that follows the chorus in Music/{{Rush|Band}}'s "Tom Sawyer", then becomes the bass line behind the guitar solo and that solo's concluding lick, began as just something Geddy Lee would play during sound checks. |
| 256 | * Music/{{Yes}}: |
| 257 | ** The acoustic guitar passage at the start of "And You and I" is this. They were gearing up to start recording it, and Steve Howe was doodling and checking the tuning on his guitar. Jon Anderson thought it sounded "beautiful" and signalled to Eddie Offord to start recording. You can hear Eddie reply "OK" to Jon's signal after he starts the tape. |
| 258 | ** During the recording of "Gates of Delirium", Alan White knocked over a rack of car parts that they were banging on to simulate the sounds of a battle, and they decided to leave in the resulting noise. |
| 259 | ** "Siberian Khatru" started when Steve Howe developed a guitar lick based on a random drum fill Bill Bruford would play when noodling around. |
| 260 | ** A somewhat literal example occurred when they were consulting with Creator/{{Hipgnosis}} on the album cover for their album ''Yes Tor''. Someone (often said to be either Music/RickWakeman or a member of Hipgnosis, accounts vary) was so displeased with the photos taken that they threw a tomato at one of them. They ended up incorporating the tomato into the cover for the album, which was subsequently renamed ''Music/{{Tormato}}.'' |
| 261 | [[/folder]] |
| 262 | |
| 263 | [[folder:Punk]] |
| 264 | * Music/{{The Fall|Band}}'s "Paintwork" goes through a couple of odd, abrupt sound collage breaks where the music suddenly becomes distant-sounding and gets drowned out by a program about astronomy and later, a brief snippet of classical music. This was because Mark E. Smith accidentally taped over parts of the song. |
| 265 | * In Music/FallOutBoy's "Dance, Dance", bassist Pete Wentz can be heard whispering "We're going into D minor" just before the first chorus. |
| 266 | * Music/{{Fugazi}}'s SignatureSong "Waiting Room" features a two-bar-long silence that interrupts the intro. It was originally a mistake in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLjSzKX4Rig demo version]], but the band thought it was hilarious, so they decided to replicate it in their debut EP. |
| 267 | * Music/GreenDay's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" begins with Billie Joe Armstrong playing the opening notes wrong twice, then whispering [[PrecisionFStrike "Fuck"]] after the second. This is kept in the album version but edited out of the radio single. |
| 268 | ** "Stuck With Me" ended up with its NonAppearingTitle this way - the band were working on one song they hadn't given a name yet and another one called "Stuck With Me", and someone at the studio accidentally swapped the labels for the master recordings. The band decided "Stuck With Me" fit the theme of the untitled song, and it became the new title. The original "Stuck With Me" (which incidentally ''did'' include a TitleDrop) became "Do Da Da" when it was released as a BSide (which later appeared on the BSide album ''Shenanigans''). |
| 269 | * Hot Water Music's cover of Alkaline Trio's "Bleeder" on their split EP ends with singer Chuck Ragan saying, "Verdict? Oh, f- did I just fuck up by talking right then?" |
| 270 | * Swedish punk band KSMB's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_NmEoFWC_g En slemmig torsk]]" came about when both of the band's regular vocalists thought the song was just too fast to sing. The guitarist overdubbed some WordSaladLyrics to suggest how they could do it, and the result was one of their biggest hits. |
| 271 | * In the anthology film ''Urgh! A Music War'', the band Magazine shows their awareness of a common {{mondegreen}} of their song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYCpqffkmqY "Model Worker"]]. While the original studio version had the line "I know the cadre will look after me," they changed it to its mishearing "I know that [[UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter Carter]] will look after me," and confirmed it by rhyming an original lyric, "I have been indulging in ostentatious display" with "Playing in the Rose Garden, rolling in the hay". |
| 272 | * "You Don't Know" by ska punk band Music/ReelBigFish begins with a recording of lead singer Aaron Barrett, apparently unaware that they were recording, saying, "Horns standing by... Holy shit we're rolling!" |
| 273 | * At the end of Music/RelientK's "Mood Rings," lead singer Matt Thiessen quietly adds, "That was terrible." |
| 274 | * Music/SayAnything's original plans for their record ''...Is A Real Boy'' were to have spoken word introductions preceding each song. The only introduction to survive the final cut was that belonging to the first song, and the introduction itself is preceded by another recording of lead singer Max Bemis discussing his anxiety over the concept of a spoken-word introduction with another band member. It makes sense if you listen to it. |
| 275 | * Music/{{Slint}}'s song "Ron" starts off with Brian [=McMahan=] muttering under his breath, then complaining about broken headphones to engineer Steve Albini. |
| 276 | * Towards the end of Steriogram's song "Walkie Talkie Man", lead guitarist Brad Carter sneezes. This was left in the final mix of the sing. |
| 277 | * In Music/Sum41's video for "Pieces", the second "f" in the "The Perfect Life" sign falling off was unintentional, but was kept since it related to the song's theme. |
| 278 | * Post-punk band Them Airs’ song “Tunxis Valley” ends with guitarist Cade Williams shrieking “YES!” at the top of his lungs. The band later stated that this was due to the numerous takes they had to record, as the song was virtually written on the spot. “Winch” from the same album also has a short silent portion in the middle of the song in which one of the members sneezes. |
| 279 | [[/folder]] |
| 280 | |
| 281 | [[folder:R&B/Soul]] |
| 282 | * At the end of the song “April Fool” by the 70s all-woman brass-rock band Isis, you can hear trombonist Lolly Bienenfeld saying, “Oh! I blew the last note!” |
| 283 | * In Music/JanetJackson's early hit "Nasty", she ad-libs the spoken line, "Oh, I like this part." |
| 284 | ** Towards the end of "Runaway", as she repeats the line "I just know we'll have a good time," Jackson flubs a note and says, "Mm, didn't quite hit that note; that wasn't such a good time." |
| 285 | ** "Miss You Much" ends with Janet asking "that's the end?" - the song ends immediately after the last repetition of the chorus, and this evidently caught her off guard. |
| 286 | * Legend has it that the Monotones were recording their doo-wop song "Book of Love" in a studio nearby a park where some kids were playing baseball. The percussion in the chorus — "I wonder, wonder, who, woo-ooo-ooo" * WHOMP* "Who wrote the book of love..." was inspired by a very well-timed baseball hitting the outside wall during rehearsal. |
| 287 | * The Ohio Players had inspired an urban legend with a ThrowItIn on the song "Love Rollercoaster". Per [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Rollercoaster#Urban_legend Wikipedia]]: "between 1:24 and 1:28 on the single version, or between 2:32 and 2:36 on the album version", Billy Beck lets out a high-pitched scream that sounds like a woman screaming in peril. The band was then teased by a DJ regarding the scream, asking if they had killed someone during the recording. The band chose to remain quiet on the issue, knowing full and well that the urban legend regarding the scream would prove to be more profitable. It wasn't until many years later that they finally revealed that it was nothing more than Billy Beck ad-libbing a high-pitched shriek in the manner of Music/MinnieRiperton or Music/MariahCarey. A few urban legends regarding the origin of the scream popped up over the years. One prominent one being that Ester Cordet, the model who appeared on the cover of the album ''Honey'' became badly burned in the process of shooting [[note]]The cover art depicts her nude from the waist up eating from a jar of brightly glowing honey - the myth had it that the honey was heated up to dangerous temperatures to achieve the effect[[/note]], and had broken in to the studio threatening legal action. The band's manager then supposedly stabbed her to death during the recording, in which she let out the scream. To note that as of 2015, Ester Cordet is still alive. |
| 288 | * The version of 'Valerie' sung by Music/AmyWinehouse (said to have been done in one take) and featured on her album ''Music/BackToBlack'' starts with producer Mark Ronson saying, "All right, it's rolling." and Amy murmuring, "I'm sorry Charlie Murphy; I was having too much fun." The latter was a spontaneous ShoutOut to a ''Series/ChappellesShow'' skit. |
| 289 | [[/folder]] |
| 290 | |
| 291 | [[folder:Rock]] |
| 292 | * There are many theories as to where the use of distorted guitar in rock got its start. Two of the most prominent of them both involve damaging a guitar amplifier in some capacity. |
| 293 | ** "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats was widely cited as one of the first RockAndRoll songs and it prominently features a distorted guitar riff played by band member Willie Kizart. The story goes that Kizart's amp fell out of the car on Highway 61 while the band was driving from Mississippi to Memphis. In an effort to hold the cone in place, he stuffed the amp with wadded newspapers, which inadvertently created the distorted sound. Producer Sam Phillips liked the sound and kept it in the recording. |
| 294 | ** Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio's 1956 version of "Train Kept A-'Rollin'". How was this trope: Guitarist Paul Burlison [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Kept_A-Rollin%27#Johnny_Burnette_rendition accidentally dropped his amp on the way into the studio for the session, and the impact loosened one of the tubes]]. He liked the sound, used it on the record, and later began to play on other songs with the same tube deliberately loosened. |
| 295 | * If you listen carefully to the guitar intro of {{Music/Aerosmith}}'s "Nobody's Fault", you can hear a squeaky door swing open moments before the rest of the band kicks in: According to Steven Tyler, an engineer had walked in while they were recording, and the timing of it amused them enough that they left it in. |
| 296 | * The stutter in Bachman Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" was thrown in by lead singer Randy Bachman to tease his brother Gary, who stuttered. Bachman made up the lyrics as he went, using the song as a "work track" to record guitar sounds. A record label executive, Charlie Fach, convinced them that it was a hit single, but Bachman wanted to rerecord the song without the stutter. However, after realizing that the stutter-less version didn't sound good, Randy agreed to release the version with the stutter. |
| 297 | * Music/TheBeachBoys have several examples: |
| 298 | ** During the drum intro for [[Music/TwentyTwenty "Do It Again"]], some studio chatter can be heard in the background. |
| 299 | ** Brian frequently incorporated mistakes and suggestions made by his backing musicians. The most notable is the staccato piano break in "God Only Knows" by Wrecking Crew pianist Don Randi, which became one of the song's hooks. |
| 300 | ** The original mono mix of ''Music/PetSounds'' features a few engineering errors. "Here Today" is probably the main offender — a quiet instrumental break features the faint sounds of conversation in the background, after which Music/BrianWilson can be heard saying, "Top please!" (i.e. asking for the tape to be rolled back so they can try another take of backing vocals). |
| 301 | ** An earlier Beach Boys song, "Wendy", has audible studio laughter during an instrumental break. |
| 302 | ** During a 'pickup' take for the 'B' Section backing track of [[Music/SmileySmile "Wind Chimes"]], one of the keyboard players accidentally played a 5-semitone scale, instead of the central 3-semitone riff. Brian immediately stopped the take, enthusiastically declared "That was a good mistake!", then told the musicians to incorporate this accidental change into the next take. |
| 303 | * Music/TheBeatles examples: |
| 304 | ** "A Day in the Life": Mal Evans set off an alarm clock to signal when the first orchestral interlude would end, but it fit so well with the beginning of the second theme "Woke up, got out of bed, ran a comb across my head..." that they left it in. One can also faintly hear him counting the 24 measures leading up to the end of the section. |
| 305 | *** Toward the end of the song's protracted fade-out of the last chord, an air conditioner can be heard. A folding chair can be heard squeaking in the studio as well. |
| 306 | ** John's line "I'd like to say 'thank you' on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition" at the end of "Get Back" from ''Music/LetItBe'' was an ad-lib at the end of the famous rooftop concert, and was added to the studio version. Since they're the last words ever spoken at a public Beatles performance, and would have been the kind of thing that the band would say at auditions back when they were teenage nobodies, they also qualify as a MeaningfulEcho. |
| 307 | ** "Her Majesty" was originally going to go between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" during the ''Music/AbbeyRoad'' Medley, but Paul had it removed as he didn't like how it sounded. The tape operator (John Kurlander) had strict orders though to never throw away anything the Beatles recorded, and attached it to the end of the tape where it ended up staying. The medley also has a very noticeable skip where it was supposed to be as a result. |
| 308 | ** The song "Hey Bulldog" from ''Music/YellowSubmarine'' was originally "Hey Bullfrog"; the band changed the words after Paul improvised a dog's bark. |
| 309 | ** About three minutes into "Hey Jude," somebody (it's disputed who said it, but it was either Paul or John) mumbles "[[PrecisionFStrike Fucking]] hell!", apparently because Paul hit the wrong note on his piano. |
| 310 | ** While recording "I Am the Walrus," from ''Music/MagicalMysteryTour'', Music/JohnLennon randomly flipped through radio stations and came across a BBC production of ''Theatre/KingLear''. He added snippets of dialogue from the scene being broadcast at that moment to the mix, most of which appear in the song's coda. |
| 311 | ** One of the most famous examples is at the very top of their first album, ''Music/PleasePleaseMe'': Paul's count-off "One, two, three, ''four''!" at the beginning of "I Saw Her Standing There". This would normally have been cut from the final track, but the band liked the way he did it on one take so much that they ended up editing it into the beginning of the take that they actually used. When Greil Marcus first heard it, he was astonished because he thought Paul had said "One, two, three, fuck!" |
| 312 | ** John screams "YEEEEEEEEEAHHHHH!" at one point in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", which is followed by some indistinct chatter. |
| 313 | ** In "I'm Looking Through You", after the line "but not today", there's a tambourine shake on an off-beat. That was one of the Beatles actually dropping the tambourine. |
| 314 | *** The U.S. stereo mix of the song includes a false start during the intro. |
| 315 | ** On their song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", Paul can be heard laughing at the start of the line "...writing fifty times I must not be so..." around 1:21. This is rumored to be because John mooned him from the control room during the recording (the line preceding it was "so he waits behind"). |
| 316 | ** George had written "Only a Northern Song" as a protest against his smaller cut of the songwriting royalties compared to John and Paul. He never intended for it to be recorded, but when they needed another song for the ''Yellow Submarine'' soundtrack, it was all they had available. |
| 317 | ** In the stereo version of the song "Please Please Me" from the album of the same name, John flubs a line in the last verse at 1:53: instead of "I know you never even try, girl" he says "I know I never even try, girl" and then giggles. (Remember, the whole album ''Please Please Me'', except for four songs previously recorded for singles, was recorded in a single 10-hour studio session with virtually no edits or overdubs; it was largely the Beatles' live act, warts and all.) |
| 318 | ** In the B-side medley on ''Music/AbbeyRoad'', at the end of "Polythene Pam" and the start of "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window", John Lennon can be heard saying "We'll listen to that now, hehe" as a reference to the track changing. He then says "Oh, look out!" (presumably telling the others to get ready for the new song), and then another (barely audible) voice says "You should-" before "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" starts. |
| 319 | ** On the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" just as the song is about to fade out, John Lennon can be faintly heard saying "Cranberry sauce", but anunciated as "Cran-berry sauce". Due to its nearly inaudible nature, people believed him to be saying "I buried Paul". This of course, helped to fuel the "Paul is Dead" urban legend that was going around at the time. |
| 320 | ** "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" from ''Music/{{Help}}'' contains a line that is sung as "If she's gone, I can't go on, feeling two foot small". John flubbed the line, which was originally "two foot tall", but he felt that the new line worked better and kept it. |
| 321 | ** The TroubledProduction and more [[ThreeChordsAndTheTruth direct]] sound of ''Music/TheWhiteAlbum'' resulted in many instances of this, to the point that it seems like most of the entries [[http://wgo.signal11.org.uk/wgo.htm on the Beatles anomaly list]] come from here: |
| 322 | *** Jack Fallon's fiddle solo in "Don't Pass Me By" includes some ugly, scraped harmonics and bum notes as the song fades out. Fallon himself said "I was very surprised they kept it in, it was pretty dreadful." Similarly, in the last chorus Ringo added more percussion and drum fills to try and cover for the fact that he accidentally switched the chords on the piano a bar early. |
| 323 | *** At the end of "Helter Skelter" (not in the rare mono version) you can hear Music/RingoStarr throw his drumsticks across the room and famously scream: "I got blisters on my fingers!" Your hands would be sore too, if you had played a 27-minute-long version of Helter Skelter earlier in the day. The version captured for the White Album was the band's 18th take of the night. |
| 324 | *** "I'm So Tired" ends with John mumbling "Monsieur, monsieur, monsieur, how about another one?", and a "pleh" that supposedly comes from his son Julian. This was one of the things that fueled the "Paul Is Dead" myth, since when [[SubliminalSeduction reversed]], it supposedly sounded like him saying "Paul is dead man, miss him, miss him!". |
| 325 | *** That spine-tingling howl at the end of "Long, Long, Long" was caused by an empty wine bottle placed on the organ's amp that started to rattle when Paul hit a certain note, the microphone picking it up and causing feedback, and George immediately answered it with a howl of his own. |
| 326 | *** While recording "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", when Paul first gets to the line "Desmond lets the children lend a hand", George and John can be heard chiming in with "Arm!" and "Leg!". Paul managed to keep going, but as a result, got Molly and Desmond's roles backwards in the final verse. |
| 327 | *** Appended to the very beginning of "Revolution 9" is a barely-audible control room conversation between producer George Martin and Apple office manager Alistair Taylor. |
| 328 | --->'''Taylor:''' ... bottle of claret for you if I'd realised. I'd forgotten all about it, George, I'm sorry. |
| 329 | --->'''Martin:''' Well, do next time. |
| 330 | --->'''Taylor:''' Will you forgive me? |
| 331 | --->'''Martin:''' Mmmm... yes. |
| 332 | --->'''Taylor:''' Cheeky bitch. |
| 333 | *** "Wild Honey Pie" was, by Paul's account, an entire Throw It In ''song'': he made it up in an experimental mood and they were going to leave it off the album, but George's then-wife Pattie Boyd liked it. This convinced them to keep it on the album. |
| 334 | *** "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" contains [[http://wgo.signal11.org.uk/html/content/w.htm#wmggw a surprising amount of missed notes and flubs]], perhaps the most obvious being the ending where the band go out of sync with each other, as Paul ends up being the only one playing the chord progression correctly, while the rest of the band switch chords way too early. |
| 335 | ** The drums in "Hey Jude" don't start until almost a minute into the song because, unbeknownst to the rest of the band, Ringo had quietly left the drum booth to use the bathroom and they'd started without him; Ringo heard the others recording and seamlessly joined in with a drum fill once he got back to his kit. |
| 336 | * Music/DavidBowie had a few notable instances of this trope in his career: |
| 337 | ** During the production of ''Music/DiamondDogs'', the tape recorder started malfunctioning just over two minutes into "Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family", causing it to repeatedly play back the first syllable of "brother" from one of the choruses of "Big Brother" (it and "Chant" were SiameseTwinSongs) and record it over some of the remaining tape. Bowie liked the jarring nature of the glitch, however, and kept it in for effect; live performances of "Big Brother" and "Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family" even go out of their way to replicate the error. |
| 338 | ** The duet of "Little Drummer Boy" by Music/DavidBowie and Bing Crosby [[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121901260.html had the entire second verse changed around by Bowie]]. The end result is nothing short of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXjbI3kRus distilled holiday magic.]] |
| 339 | ** The vocals for [[Music/{{Tonight}} "Dancing with the Big Boys"]] was recorded via Bowie and collaborator Music/IggyPop simply getting as hammered as possible and then shouting random phrases at each other in front of a running mic. |
| 340 | * At the end of Bride's "Heroes", there is a long pause followed by a sort of wailing, screaming sound and some eerie tones. While many fans took this to be "demonic" noises, it was really just their producer, John Petri, "playing the inside of a piano while howling like Music/YokoOno". (He made a point to wake the band up every day in such a manner.) |
| 341 | * When Music/TheByrds covered Music/BobDylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", they inadvertently changed the line "Pick up your money, pack up your tent" from Dylan's demo to "Pack up your money, pick up your tent". When Dylan recorded the song later on, he sang "Pack up your money, put up your tent, [=McGuinn=]…" in reference to Byrds bassist Roger [=McGuinn=]. Then in 1989, [=McGuinn=] covered the song along with Chris Hillman on a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, where he replied to Dylan with "Pack up your money, pick up your tent, Dylan…" |
| 342 | * Music/{{Chicago}} has several of these scattered amongst their albums, but the 2004 Rhino remaster of Chicago VII removed the breakdown from the beginning of "Happy Man". The fans were not pleased. |
| 343 | * The legendary drum sound Music/PhilCollins used in Music/PeterGabriel's "Intruder", popularized in the breakdown of Collins' "In the Air Tonight", started life as an accident involving the talk-back circuit on the mixing board. The single-headed drum kit as miked in the stone room they were placed in lent the right kind of heavy reverb, which was heavily compressed and gated. |
| 344 | ** ''Face Value'', Phil's solo debut, was partially assembled from his original 8-track home recordings he had made around 1979–80 as his first marriage was collapsing, as Phil didn't feel he could recapture the feel or intimacy of the original recordings in a professional studio. Phil has [[WordOfGod mentioned]] that if you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the air conditioner and the refrigerator running in the background on many of the tracks. |
| 345 | *** At the end of the album, after his version of "Tomorrow Never Knows" has ended, Collins sings a verse of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" ''a capella''. |
| 346 | * Music/{{Cream}}'s song "Badge" features this in the title. The song was co-written by Music/EricClapton and George Harrison and when Harrison was writing the lyrics, he scribbled the word 'Bridge' to signify the arpeggiated guitar bit halfway through the song. Clapton peered at Harrison's lyric sheet and said "What's that - ''badge''?" Which ended up being the title of the song. |
| 347 | * It's pretty obvious that Ian Gillan of Music/DeepPurple screwed up when he refers to the "Rolling truck Stones thing" in the third verse of "Smoke on the Water". Justified because as the hastily written song admits, the band had very little time to get their recording done to begin with before the fire that inspired the song, and had only that one take. |
| 348 | * The [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign pseudo-German]] "Gunter glieben glauchen globen" at the beginning of Music/DefLeppard's "Rock of Ages" was producer Creator/RobertJohnMuttLange doing a variation of the standard "One, two, three, four" cue out of boredom. The band thought it was hilarious. |
| 349 | ** Later on in the band's career, the main guitar riff for their comeback hit "Pour Some Sugar on Me" began as just something Joe Elliott would absentmindedly play on his guitar during breaks in the sessions. One day, as he and Mutt Lange were waiting for a mix to cue up, he began playing it again and Lange, showing the instincts that made him such a successful producer, immediately told him he had a song there and encouraged him to write it. |
| 350 | * The piano melody in the second half of the Music/DerekAndTheDominos hit "Layla" from ''Music/LaylaAndOtherAssortedLoveSongs'' was originally something drummer Jim Gordon was working on for a separate project. Music/EricClapton came upon Gordon playing it in the studio late one night and begged for it to be included in the song. |
| 351 | ** "Key to the Highway", an old blues standard, was a thrown-in ''track''. They heard Sam The Sham recording it, and started jamming during some studio downtime. Producer Tom Dowd supposedly told the engineer to "hit the goddamn machine!" (or "turn on the [[PrecisionFStrike fucking]] tape", depending on the source) when he heard them, which is why the song begins with a fade-in. |
| 352 | ** The name of the band itself is a ThrowItIn of a {{mondegreen}}. Someone mispronounced the band's real name, "Eric and the Dynamos", and it just stuck. |
| 353 | * The synth riff for "Walk of Life" from ''Music/{{Brothers in Arms|Album}}'' by Music/DireStraits was a warm-up tune used by the keyboardist. A producer asked him to see if he could build a song around it. |
| 354 | * Fanny's song "Changing Horses", a raucous boogie about dumping your useless boyfriend, opens with a quiet, soulful piano intro. One of the other bandmembers doesn't seem to have noticed that they're recording, because she starts casually telling a story about meeting a dog that "had this really cute owner who decided to join us" before one of the other women in the band shushes her. |
| 355 | * At the start of Music/FleetwoodMac's [[Music/{{Rumours}} "The Chain"]], you can faintly hear someone whisper "Fuck!" |
| 356 | * Music/GaelicStorm singer Patrick Murphy started laughing when singing the last line of the song "Kelly's Wellies". He can be heard apologizing for messing up the take, but in fact the laughter just makes the ending that much better, and was left in. |
| 357 | * Music/GunsNRoses: |
| 358 | ** The famous riff of "Sweet Child o' Mine" originated from Slash screwing around. He never intended the riff to be recorded, let alone immortalized. In addition, they also weren't sure what to do for a breakdown, so Axl started saying to himself "Where do we go now?" and the producer recording the demos [[SureLetsGoWithThat told him to sing just that]]. |
| 359 | ** "You're Not the First" is an obvious rehearsal take with timing countdowns audible among other chatter, ending with "to the bar!...that's a take!" They liked the laid back feel of this so much they just kept it as the final. |
| 360 | * The Hombres' "Let It All Hang Out" starts with a somewhat distant voice announcing "A preach, my dear friends, you're about to receive, on John Barleycorn, nicotine, and the temptations of Eve..." followed by a [[BlowingARaspberry Bronx cheer]]. This is sometimes mistaken for an early use of SpokenWordInMusic, but isn't quite: though the words themselves were apparently taken from another record, what you're hearing is drummer Johnny Hunter suddenly deciding to recite that line at the start of the take, followed by vocalist BB Cunningham responding with a raspberry. Because Hunter's drums were being recorded with a single overhead microphone, his impromptu spoken word bit doesn't sound as clear as the rest of the song. |
| 361 | * When Music/BuddyHolly's group The Crickets recorded one of their songs, a cricket chirp was also recorded. It was later [[http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/crickets.asp twisted into them taking their name from this.]] |
| 362 | * One famous example is Australian band Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl", which begins with Nic Cester clearing his throat while the bass riff plays. |
| 363 | * The Kingsmen's lead singer Jack Ely begins the third verse of "Louie Louie" a measure early, which the drummer tries to cover up. The track was really meant to be a demo; hence the roughness of the recording. They had no idea that that version of it would be the one commercially released. |
| 364 | * During the ''Destroyer'' sessions, producer Bob Ezrin heard Music/{{Kiss}}' drummer Peter Criss playing a ballad on a piano between takes. The song was "Beck", which Criss and a former bandmate had written to mock another former bandmate's [[WetBlanketWife neurotic girlfriend who would call the studio every 15 minutes and ask when her boyfriend was coming home]]. Ezrin, ever the adroit producer, heard a single and rewrote the song as "Beth", toning down the nastiness. The result was Kiss's biggest[[note]]albeit [[BlackSheepHit atypical]][[/note]] hit. |
| 365 | * Music/LedZeppelin has a number of examples, despite being a band known for attention to details: |
| 366 | ** "Black Country Woman" from ''Music/PhysicalGraffiti'' begins with the sound of a plane passing overhead (they were recording outside) and Robert Plant chuckling. Engineer Eddie Kramer can be heard saying "Should we roll it, Jimmy?" in the background, then "Oh, lemme get this airplane off!", and then Plant audibly replies, "Nah, leave it." before launching into the song. |
| 367 | ** "Black Dog" from ''Music/LedZeppelinIV'' starts with the sound of Jimmy warming up his guitar, and if the volume is turned up enough, you can hear John Bonham tapping his sticks together before each riff. |
| 368 | *** The song got its working title from a literal black dog that was wandering around Headley Grange at the time. They were unable to think of a better one after they'd finished the song, so they left it as is. |
| 369 | ** Due to the tracks "bleeding through" the original recording tapes, Plant seems to sing some of the lyrics to "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" from ''Music/LedZeppelin1969'' twice. |
| 370 | *** There's also the bleed-through in the breakdown on "Whole Lotta Love" from ''Music/LedZeppelinII'', with backwards echo. |
| 371 | ** "Friends" from ''Music/LedZeppelinIII'', like "Black Dog" above, starts with a few seconds of studio noise. Turn it up loud enough and you can hear one of the band members [[PrecisionFStrike drop the F-bomb]]. |
| 372 | ** The hum that leads from "Friends" into "Celebration Day" was required due to a production screw-up - a mixer accidentally erased the drums from the beginning of "Celebration Day". Jimmy managed to salvage it by taking said hum and FadingIntoTheNextSong. |
| 373 | ** Also in ''Music/LedZeppelinIII'', toward the final verse of "Immigrant Song", Robert Plant misses the time to enter with his vocals, but corrects himself soon after, resulting in "S... So now you'd better stop...". The flub was kept in the recording. |
| 374 | ** As Plant "ends" "In My Time of Dying" John Bonham gets a cough fit, causing Plant to sing "cough" into the mic. Bonham then says "That's got to be the one, isn't it?" and the studio engineer says: "Come and have a listen, then." with Bonham saying "oh yes, thank you." |
| 375 | ** "In the Evening" from ''In Through the Out Door'' has a guitar multi-string bend tracked in at the beginning and in the middle of the guitar solo. This was the result of an earlier take where Jimmy Page's guitar strap broke, causing Page to hold on to the neck to keep the guitar from hitting the floor. |
| 376 | ** The entire band gets completely out of sync with each other on the harmonies partway through "Misty Mountain Hop" from ''Music/LedZeppelinIV''. They kept it in because the rest of the take was too good to lose. |
| 377 | ** One can hear a telephone ringing in the background of "The Ocean" from ''Music/HousesOfTheHoly''. The song itself starts with Bonham chanting, "''We've done four already, and now we're steady, and then they went, one, two, three, four...''" The "four already" part refers to the fact that the band screwed up the previous takes due to the song's complicated rhythm and structure, and Bonham was trying to encourage them. |
| 378 | *** For a while, John Paul Jones performed with a telephone on top of his organ. His explanation as to its purpose was something along the lines of "No one bothered to take it away." |
| 379 | ** John Bonham's bass drum pedal squeaks in a number of songs, most noticeably "Since I've Been Loving You" from ''Music/LedZeppelinIII''. |
| 380 | ** "Tangerine" from ''Music/LedZeppelinIII'' starts with Page strumming a few random chords, then counting off. |
| 381 | * Music/JohnLennon's first three solo albums take this literally. ''Music/UnfinishedMusicNo1TwoVirgins'', ''Music/UnfinishedMusicNo2LifeWithTheLions'' and ''Music/WeddingAlbum'' is basically him and Music/YokoOno just [[LeaveTheCameraRunning pushing the ''record'' button and taping whatever happens]]. They're not even making music half the time! |
| 382 | * Music/LynyrdSkynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" has Ronnie Van Zant saying "Turn it up!", because he wanted the producer to turn up the volume in his headphones. |
| 383 | * Music/{{Kirsty MacColl}} was only supposed to record the ''guide vocal'' for the female part on "Fairytale of New York" - a favour to her husband, who was producing the track. But Music/ThePogues, who were between female vocalists at the time, fell in love with her performance. |
| 384 | * Similar to the "Key to the Highway" example above, the "Million Dollar Quartet" featuring Elvis, Music/JohnnyCash, Carl Perkins, and Music/JerryLeeLewis was a throw it in '''''album'''''. Lewis was playing session piano on a Carl Perkins recording session at Sun Records, when Elvis made an unnanounced visit to the studio. After listening to the playback, he joined in and started an impromptu jam session with the two musicians, later joined by a visiting Cash. Sound engineer Jack Clement said to himself "I think I'd be remiss not to record this," and started the tape. The tapes would be produced into several album releases in the 1980s and 1990s, eventually culminating in the JukeboxMusical of the same name. |
| 385 | * Music/TheMonkees, being comic actors as well as a band, did lots of these: some by accident, some by improv, and even some by design. |
| 386 | * Legend has it that Mick Mars' guitar solo on Music/MotleyCrue's "Girls, Girls, Girls" ends as abruptly as it does because he was drunk and fell off the stool he was sitting on. |
| 387 | * Kelly Keagy of Night Ranger wrote the song "Sister Christian" about his younger sister Christy, but while they were working on the song, bassist Jack Blades misheard "sister Christy" as "sister Christian": The idea stuck, and the lyrics and title were changed accordingly. |
| 388 | * That odd piano chord at the beginning of "Roxanne" by Music/ThePolice was {{Music/Sting}} accidentally leaning against a live keyboard. You also hear him chuckle. But that was the take that they liked, so that is the one on the album. |
| 389 | * Music/IggyPop and [[{{Music/Blondie}} Debbie Harry]] did a CoverVersion of "Well Did You Evah!" for the Music/ColePorter [[CoverAlbum tribute album]] and charity compilation ''Red Hot + Blue'' - from the sound of things, during an ad-lib section near the end, Debbie meant to sing "what an elegant party", but Iggy joined in with "what an elegant, swellegant, party", then tried to change course partway through to match her, ending up singing "smarty" - they then start joking about the flub ("smarty party? You ''are'' a smarty for coming to this party!"), which was left in because the song had improv banter sections deliberately built in to start with. |
| 390 | * There is a live version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight" by Music/ElvisPresley where he changes the lyric "Do you gaze at your doorstep and wish I was there?" to "Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair?" - he had made that substitution before (apparently) but this time, the King supposedly noticed a bald man in the audience (who was nodding and laughing) right then and [[{{Corpsing}} started laughing and never really recovered]] - even saying "That's it man - fourteen years, right down the drain". This version became an official release. |
| 391 | * Music/ProcolHarum's greatest hit, "A Whiter Shade of Pale", started from a botched attempt to play Music/JohannSebastianBach's ''Air on a G string''. |
| 392 | * "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Music/{{Queen}} has an odd note in the break after the first chorus that could have been deliberate, but sounds very much as if Music/BrianMay forgot that his guitar was in drop-D tuning. |
| 393 | ** In "One Vision", the final line is supposed to end with "one vision". During recording, Music/FreddieMercury jokingly yelled "fried chicken" instead, at his boyfriend Jim Hutton's (joke) suggestion. They ended up keeping it in, despite the echo of the final line still saying "one vision". |
| 394 | * Not only was the killer sax break on Music/GerryRafferty's greatest hit "Baker Street" {{improv}}ised in its entirety by session saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft, Ravenscroft ended up recording his sax part ''in the wrong key'', but it got the thumbs-up regardless. (For the thumbs up part, it probably helped that the off-keyness tied nicely into the song's themes of alienation and dissatisfaction.) |
| 395 | * Music/TheRollingStonesBand: |
| 396 | ** If you listen very closely to the bridge of [[Music/LetItBleed "Gimme Shelter"]], just after Merry Clayton's voice cracks for the second time[[note]] once during the second refrain on the word "shot", then on the word "murder" during the third refrain[[/note]], Mick Jagger can be heard whooping and clapping. |
| 397 | ** Sometime during the sessions for ''Music/TheirSatanicMajestiesRequest'', Bill Wyman had fallen asleep in the studio. As a prank, the rest of the band recorded his snoring and stuck it on at the end of his DreamWithinADream song, "In Another Land". |
| 398 | ** "Sittin' on a Fence" recorded at the time of ''Music/{{Aftermath|Album}}'' but released on ''Music/{{Flowers|Album}}'', ends with an acoustic guitar figure (by either Keith or Brian) that includes a rather obvious missed note. |
| 399 | * Music/{{Roxette}} - The introductory lyrics to their first big hit, "The Look", were guide lyrics - words just scribbled down just to have something to sing to the tune while working on it - Per couldn't come up with anything better and decided to roll with it, saying later after the song became a smash hit "Everyone gets lucky sometimes." |
| 400 | * The "false start" on the piano at the beginning of "Old Time Rock and Roll" was a recording error, but Music/BobSeger liked it. |
| 401 | * On Creator/WilliamShatner's album ''Has Been'', the track "I Can't Get the Behind That" ends with Music/HenryRollins and Shatner talking about recording another take. "Always can do one more." "Alright, let's hit it!" |
| 402 | * The front cover of the {{Music/Sparks}} album ''A Woofer In Tweeter's Clothing'' was meant to be an ordinary FaceOnTheCover style portrait of the whole band. Ron Mael was seated behind drummer Harley Feinstein for the shoot - As a prank, Harley tipped Ron's chair back as soon as the camera went off, resulting in a photo where Harley and Ron were blurry, Ron had his arms up in fear of falling over, and everyone else was still posed as normal (presumably not realizing what happened yet). This shot actually ended up as the front cover, with a more straight version of the photo used on the back. |
| 403 | * Various Music/StatusQuo recordings have count-in's, false starts or pre-song chatter left in. |
| 404 | * Music/{{Traffic|Band}}'s "Paper Sun" ends with a faint voice saying "That's the one!" This seems to be an accidental recording of the producer, declaring the current take to be the best one. It's probably a happy coincidence that it rhymes with the title and seems to fit in with the lyrics. |
| 405 | * Music/{{U2}}: |
| 406 | ** In "I Will Follow", drummer Larry Mullen Jr. kicked over a beer bottle mid-take, and it was picked up by the kick-drum mic - and kept because it bounced perfectly in time with the music. |
| 407 | ** A couple of years later, "New Year's Day", the band's breakout single in the US, got its start from The Edge's attempts to figure out the chords for Music/{{Visage}}'s "Shades of Grey". |
| 408 | ** During the recording of the track "The Unforgettable Fire", Mullen started playing the drums early, and can be heard saying "oh, shit" in the background after he stops. |
| 409 | ** Elsewhere on that album, "Fourth of July", one of the band's few released instrumentals, was just Edge and Adam Clayton jamming in another studio, unaware that Music/BrianEno had turned on the mic. |
| 410 | ** Eno actually invoked this trope for a third song on the album. He invited Bono to come in and improvise over a slowed-down alternate arrangement of "A Sort of Homecoming". After he was done, Bono asked when they'd get around to finishing the song only for Eno to tell him that that ''was'' the finished track; the idea was to leave it deliberately unfinished as a gift for the fans. Thus we got "Music/ElvisPresley and America". |
| 411 | * Music/VanHalen: |
| 412 | ** Music/DavidLeeRoth improvised many funny bits in the band's songs. The best known is "Unchained", where Roth comments on the producer Ted Templeman's suit, Templeman telling him "Come on Dave, gimme a break!", and Roth responds "One break, coming up!" |
| 413 | ** One story has it that the "knocking" sound that comes out of nowhere right before Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo in Music/MichaelJackson's "Beat It" from ''Music/{{Thriller}}'' is the result of someone accidentally knocking on the studio door during a recording session. However, it was actually Jackson himself knocking on a drum case. |
| 414 | ** Later on in the band's career, the scene in the "Right Now" video with the title "Right now maybe we should pay attention to the lyrics" over a scowling, silent image of Sammy Hagar standing far from the microphone actually is him refusing to sing because he thought the video's concept trivialized the song's lyrics, which he'd put a lot of effort into. The scene of him walking away and slamming a door is likewise his very real reaction to later efforts to cajole him into singing. |
| 415 | * The Music/VelvetUnderground song "Temptation Inside Your Heart" is almost completely strange ad-libs between Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, kicked off by the line "you can talk during this" and then proceeding to mention how "in New York buildings are very high- and not at all offensive" and something about the "Pope in the silver castle." |
| 416 | ** Apparently, they were just going to overdub some "Dooo-dooo-dooo" during the chorus, and were unaware that they were actually recording to the same track as the lead vocals, so they just goofed off and let their mouths run between choruses. |
| 417 | ** The cover art to Music/LouReed's ''{{Music/Transformer}}'' is an overexposed photo of the artist, giving him an unearthly pallor and [[LooksLikeCesare making him look somewhat like Cesare]]. The photographer, Mick Rock, had overexposed one of the photos he was submitting for potential cover art by accident, but decided to include it in his submission because it looked interesting. Lou ultimately picked this shot for the cover, and Mick had to try 12 times to get the same effect on purpose in order to reproduce it in record cover size. |
| 418 | * Music/TheWho's "Happy Jack" ends with Pete Townshend shouting "I saw ya!" This was apparently his response to Keith Moon making faces outside the vocal booth while the rest of the band were recording backing vocals. |
| 419 | ** Legend has it that the rest of the group kicked Moon out of the vocal sessions for the song because his singing was exceptionally loud and terrible. |
| 420 | *** That, or he usually ruined their takes by doing something to crack them up. |
| 421 | ** An urban legend has it that the stutter in "Music/MyGeneration" was originally the result of a freezing cold recording studio. (Another common explanation that Roger Daltrey gives is that he hadn't rehearsed the song before recording and couldn't hear his own singing through the monitors and thus struggled to try to fit the lines in as best he could.) Supposedly, they decided they liked the way it sounded and decided to run with it. |
| 422 | ** On the bonus track "Pure and Easy" from ''Music/WhosNext'', you can hear Townshend scream "Put away your girly magazine!" and Moon reply with "Sorry!" |
| 423 | ** Those [[PrecisionFStrike Precision F-Strikes]] in "Who Are You" were supposedly ad-libbed by Roger Daltrey and left in anyway. |
| 424 | * The ends of several Wildhearts songs have people commenting before the tape cuts off - "YES!!", "Haha, I even got the words wrong", "Sexy! I'm sexy!" |
| 425 | * The intro to "C Moon" by Music/{{Wings}} goes on, and on, and on ... until Music/PaulMcCartney sheepishly asks "Was that the intro I should have been in?" before leaping into a spontanteous sung intro of his own. |
| 426 | * Music/SteveWinwood: |
| 427 | ** The opening drumbeat of "Higher Love" was an impromptu fill from session drummer John "JR" Robinson, who'd already completed overdubbing for said song at that point. Engineer Tom Lord-Alge successfully suggested opening the song with that drum fill, timed so the song would come in on the beat. |
| 428 | ** The well-known beginning of "While You See a Chance" was originally supposed to have a drum track with it; however, Winwood accidentally erased it when he was recording his voice. |
| 429 | * In the intro to Music/FrankZappa's "Muffin Man" from ''Music/BongoFury'', he flubs a line, breaks down laughing, and mutters "Let's try that again," before repeating the sentence. |
| 430 | [[/folder]] |
| 431 | |
| 432 | [[folder:Singer/Songwriter]] |
| 433 | * At the end of the Music/ToriAmos song "She's Your Cocaine" you hear Tori say "cut it again", probably asking for another take. Whether she did or not, this was the version used. |
| 434 | * The guitar intro to Music/SydBarrett's "Baby Lemonade" (from ''Music/{{Barrett}}'') was apparently Syd noodling about between takes as a warm-up. When producer David Gilmour found out that the lick had been recorded, he decided to tack it on at the beginning of the song. |
| 435 | * Music/{{Beck|Musician}}'s "Outcome" has someone coughing into the microphone in the middle of the song. ''One Foot In The Grave'' is one of his more ThreeChordsAndTheTruth-style albums, so it was probably left in to add to the unrehearsed feel. |
| 436 | * "Music/BobDylan's 115th Dream", from the album ''Music/BringingItAllBackHome'', opens with a take that quickly breaks down as Dylan (or his producer) bursts out laughing and says, "Start again, start again." |
| 437 | ** "To Be Alone with You", from Dylan's ''Music/NashvilleSkyline'', opens with him saying, "Is it rolling, Bob?" This is not a self-reference but rather Dylan asking his producer, Bob Johnston, whether the tape was rolling. For a short time, the line became a fan catchphrase. |
| 438 | ** More generally, a lot of Dylan songs have minor-but-noticeable vocal or instrumental flubs, as Dylan was/is a believer in making recordings "on the fly", with little prior rehearsal and in as few takes as possible. |
| 439 | * Music/BenFolds has done this much of his career. Studio chatter and random unplanned noises can be heard all through Music/BenFoldsFive's ''Whatever And Ever Amen'', as one example. One song from his ''Speed Graphic'' EP has an entire phone call from his sister, who called in the middle of it being recorded. |
| 440 | ** In the Ben Folds Five song "Steven's Last Night in Town", a barely audible phone ring is heard just before the last line of the chorus is sung. The placement is absolutely perfect and they kept it in. |
| 441 | * Richie Havens was asked to take the stage and open the Woodstock Festival because the scheduled opening act hadn't arrived yet. He improvised "Freedom" on the spot; it became one of his signature songs. |
| 442 | * At the end of Michelle Shocked's version of "The Arkansas Traveler"(?) the old man playing the farmer in the dialogue parts ends up flubbing the classic ending, "Shave and a haircut: two bits!" by saying "six bits" instead. This is followed by his and Michelle's raucous laughter, and the old man muttering the quip, "Six bits?...I'll saw you in half for six bits...." |
| 443 | * The whole second side of the second record of Music/ToddRundgren's ''Music/SomethingAnything'' was done live in studio, so breakdowns and banter are included before and after nearly every song (though the single version of "Hello It's Me" cuts out its false start). And because the liner notes make a tongue-in-cheek claim that the whole side is an operetta about a musician, all the banter is transcribed and presented as dialogue next to the lyrics. |
| 444 | ** "Couldn’t I Just Tell You" from the first disc leaves in Todd's false start on the drums. |
| 445 | * While recording his anti-suicide song "You're Only Human (Second Wind)", Music/BillyJoel briefly forgot the words for a second, then added them and laughed. Since it fit in with the song's theme of [[FridgeBrilliance accepting your mistakes]], it was left in. Joel even mimed the laugh in the music video for the song. |
| 446 | ** When recording his breakthrough album ''Music/{{The Stranger|Album}}'', Joel couldn't decide which wind instrument should play the melancholy opening melody of the title track "The Stranger", although he was leaning towards a clarinet. He approached his producer Phil Ramone for an opinion, and Ramone asked Joel to whistle the melody for him so that he could help. After Joel had finished whistling it for him, Ramone told him that he should just whistle it. |
| 447 | [[/folder]] |
| 448 | |
| 449 | [[folder:World]] |
| 450 | * Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's now-iconic cover of "[[Film/TheWizardOfOz Over the Rainbow]]" (featured prominently in ''Film/FiftyFirstDates'', and heard ''incessantly'' at tourist hotels all over Hawaii) was recorded as a spur-of-the-moment demo session. In the last verse, he clearly mixes the verses up, singing a line from a different verse that doesn't much make sense, but he leaves it that way. |
| 451 | -->''Somewhere over the rainbow / Bluebirds fly / And the dreams that you dare to... / Why, oh, why can't I?'' |
| 452 | * In the English version of Music/RickyMartin's "Livin' La Vida Loca", you can hear either one of the recording engineers or one of the musicians say "A little more volume on the set, please!" before Ricky starts singing. |
| 453 | [[/folder]] |
| 454 |
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