Aallll right, my dudes and dudettes and nonbinaries, here we are at the Night Thread! And I know some of you were listening to me babble over at the Day Thread and saying, “But hey, Lynn, you didn’t finish the tale! What about the other side of those vinyl singles? What about that other song that wasn’t a hit?”
Well yes, you are right, I did hold part of the story back for tonight. What it was was the B-side was the song that record companies slapped on the back of the A-side, the hit, the platter that mattered, the golden groove. And at first, it was like an evil stepchild. They put the worst songs you could imagine on those B-sides. Why? Because nobody loved them. They were only there for their main squeeze, gorgeous Ms. A-side. B-sides were the plain girl left at home on prom night.
But this didn’t last forever, because four guys from across the pond who had a particular talent for writing songs which were smashes were too good to pen nothing songs for their B-sides.1 So they took their not-quite-as-good numbers which were still pretty rocking and gave their fans an extra gift with their vinyl singles. And thus were B-sides elevated, and told they were loved, and became even more famous in music legend in name than their flipside siblings.
Some of my favorite tunes are B-sides.2 So put on a 45 and get down with me to B-side heaven.