‘The Pedestrian’ – Green Day
Any band needs that little bit of time to blow off steam. It’s impossible to be in the same mindset in one genre, and anyone would need to have some time to recharge their batteries in between the relentless cycle of album and tour for the rest of their lives. Some bands form side projects, others try their hand at something like acting or performance art, but Green Day? They simply make a whole different band around themselves.
Despite every single member of Green Day being a part of Foxboro Hot Tubs, their stab at 2000s garage rock would have felt a bit out of place coming right after American Idiot. While 21st Century Breakdown did ultimately result in a better album experience following their punk rock opera, ‘The Pedestrian’ was too much of an earworm to throw into a side project, especially with one of the greatest guitar solos of their later career and Armstrong not even trying to change his voice to sound different.
While it’s fair to say that this wouldn’t fit inside the confines of 21st Century Breakdown, it would make a lot more sense for this to be a teaser for what they would do in their trilogy of records. The post-opera years get incredibly spotty for the band, but if they had more songs in their arsenal that sounded like this, they could have ridden this Cars-style power-pop train for a few more years.
‘Inside of Me’ – Linkin Park
Linkin Park really came of age at the worst time to be a nu-metal band. There were a lot of great acts that had come and gone by that point, but since the titans of the genre like Korn and Limp Bizkit were embarrassing themselves by the time Hybrid Theory came out, the California rap-rock juggernauts were the only ones carrying the torch for the genre’s credibility. Pulling off two albums full of classics was no small feat, but after taking a break, Chester Bennington got to flex his muscles as a heavy metal frontman.
Since he had to share the role with Mike Shinoda half the time, Dead By Sunrise was the perfect middle ground between Linkin Park’s heaviness and the hard rock/grunge music Bennington had loved as a kid. And while there was a nice amount of grit put into the entire album, ‘Inside of Me’ feels like a demo from the Meteora era that happened to sneak onto this record, with the pre-chorus sounding like the perfect launch pad for a Shinoda verse.
Then again, most Linkin Park fans should have enjoyed it while it lasted. The band were far from collapsing or anything, but listening back to what A Thousand Suns had to offer later down the line, the guitars would be toned down quite a bit, and it would take years before Bennington got back to something that was this straight-ahead.
‘Pushin’ Forward Back’ – Soundgarden
Music has always been one of the greatest forms of medicine when it comes to grief. Even if someone can’t process the fact that they lost one of their best friends, it’s sometimes easier to sing about them to get out all of the things that you wish you had said to them. And when Chris Cornell found out the tragic news of Andy Wood’s passing, it was a no-brainer to share his grief with the other members of Mother Love Bone.
Although Temple of the Dog represents a strange middle ground between the formation of Pearl Jam and the end of Mother Love Bone, Cornell isn’t half bad as a potential replacement for Wood. But a lot of what the album has to offer is slow dirges meant as tributes to their friend, so ‘Pushin’ Forward Back’ ends up sticking out like a sore thumb, almost like they took some obscure song off of Badmotorfinger and happened to have Mike McCready play a couple of lead licks over it.
The rest of the record does give off the feeling of a strange grunge rock Irish wake, so having this on here is the right energy at the wrong time. It’s understandable that most people would be upset that their friend is gone, but even if the song revolves around pushing back against mortality, it has the same strange time signature and operatic vocals that Temple of the Dog were never really designed for.
‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ – Carole King
In the golden age of pop music, the line between singer and songwriter was much more pronounced. Although Holland/Dozier/Holland were among the finest writers that Motown ever had, it was much easier for them to give their songs away to people like The Supremes than try to make their stab at the big time. There were exceptions, of course, and while Carole King was a bit of a late bloomer considering her massive track record with Gerry Goffin, she did know when to keep some of her best songs for herself.
She already knew what the makings of a hit sounded like, and throughout every single second of Tapestry, King practically wrote her personal greatest hits record without even needing to do much research on her old material. If there’s one song that should have never been sung by anyone else on this album, it would have to be ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’.
We all love the version by The Shirelles, and countless singers like Linda Ronstadt and Taylor Swift have taken their stabs at the tune, but King inhabits every line with perfectly, knowing exactly how to nail the desperation of a lover that has been hurt one too many times and is praying that her new flame doesn’t leave her dejected. ‘It’s Too Late’ and ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ were far bigger hits, but there’s a piece of King’s soul that got trapped somewhere in this tune.
‘I’ve Done Everything for You’ – Sammy Hagar
Of all the greatest names in hard rock, Sammy Hagar is the best example of someone who plays well with others. He was never afraid to play music with anyone who would have him, and when looking at his track record, he always knew how to find someone who excelled at their craft, whether joining Van Halen or hooking up with Journey guitarist Neal Schon for the group HSAS. They may have been strictly hard rock, but ‘The Red Rocker’ also had damn fine taste in power-pop when he wanted to.
Despite making tunes like ‘I Can’t Drive 55’ and ‘There’s Only One Way To Rock’, Hagar’s ‘I’ve Done Everything For You’ would have been a smash hit for him had he not given it to Rick Springfield. There’s a certain nervous energy about the way Springfield sings it, but hearing Hagar’s version is far more tuneful, especially when he played it live and added a few more ad-libs in between the lines of the chorus.
Hagar has always used the common joke that Springfield got the hit because he was better-looking, but that’s hardly the best defence. After all, Hagar could turn nearly anything into gold when working with Van Halen, and if he had kept this one in his back pocket for a bit longer, we may have been treated to the kind of song with Cheap Trick hooks and Van Halen-style dexterity.
‘Come and Get It’ – Paul McCartney
Of all The Beatles, Paul McCartney was tuneful to the point of annoyance half the time. John Lennon may have played down his melodic side a bit too much when talking about his craft, but when sitting next to someone like Macca, you knew that he would write something that would be burrowed into your mind for the rest of the day. During the band’s time working on The White Album, maybe McCartney felt he was beyond writing the traditional, silly love songs he gave to Badfinger.
After all, running a label is no walk in the park, and sometimes bands need the right song to get their foot in the door. Badfinger blossomed into some of the finest pop-rockers of their day, but McCartney’s decision for them to record this tune exactly how it was is both a blessing and a curse in some ways. They got a hit out of the deal, but if they had made a first impression with ‘Day After Day’, they may have had a better shot at breaking through with their original material.
And by the time that the Fabs had broken up, McCartney pretty much needed tunes like this in his arsenal. A lot of what turned up on McCartney was fantastically dishevelled, but if he had replaced some of the atmospheric pieces with this, maybe the critics wouldn’t have considered him the first Beatle who had officially lost his marbles.
‘Setting Sun’ – Noel Gallagher
By the late 1990s, Noel Gallagher was practically living and breathing all things Oasis. He had spent years trying to get the band to the top of the rock and roll world, and now that they had finally conquered their home country and beyond, it was time for them to celebrate. But whereas most of the band’s fans were interested in bringing things back to the loud guitars and doing away with any synthesised stuff, ‘Setting Sun’ was the best kind of middle ground that Noel could have asked for.
While the song admittedly does work great as a Chemical Brothers tune, the melody is almost too Britpop to scan properly as a dance track in some places. There’s a certain moodiness to the way he’s singing that lends itself to something more driving, but Noel sounds like he needed to grow into this kind of sound a bit more before he fully committed to the bit on Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.
The Noel of the future could have easily turned this into its own psychedelic creation in the era of ‘AKA What A Life’, but if he had taken this short snippet and given it to Liam to sing, it would fit right in. It might not have been the first thing people imagined, but it would have been a better move than whatever the hell started to happen on the more forgettable moments of Be Here Now.
‘Manic Monday’ – Prince
Prince’s energy always seemed too much to be confined to one man. One can only hold so much talent at once, and since ‘The Purple One’ wasn’t exactly known to be the tallest person in the world, the blazing speed of his output was a big part of why he started making up other bands around him like Morris Day and the Time and Camille. Many of them tended to fall under the Prince banner, but hearing him go from Purple Rain to one of the greatest psych-pop tunes of the 1980s is almost disorienting.
Most people had become used to him flirting with any genre under the sun, but it would have been impossible to guess that ‘Manic Monday’ by the Bangles was penned by him. This feels like some lost relic from the days of The Byrds, but since he had been working on Around the World in a Day and started embracing the sound of tracks like ‘Raspberry Beret’ and ‘Paisley Park’, it’s a wonder why he never officially kept it for himself.
Because listening to the version that saw the light of day on The Originals, everything’s there except for a few production touches, but that was never how Prince operated. He wanted to make sure that his music was something had a little more depth, but considering how ‘Manic Monday’ remains one of the classics from the 1980s, he should have given it some time in the midst of the Parade era.
‘Heading for the Light’ – George Harrison
The entire story of The Traveling Wilburys reads as one of the greatest happy accidents in history. The concept of the greatest songwriters of all time coming together to create an album together feels too good to be true, and yet hearing George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Lynne all trading lines back and forth feels like the dream scenario everyone waits for but never gets. A lot of them were saving their best material for themselves, but since this was one of the last things Harrison ever made, ‘Heading for the Light’ just isn’t fair for the rest of his bandmates.
From the opening chords of the tune, this is the rare pop tune for Harrison that never stops churning out hooks for its brief runtime. With all of the trademark Harrison quirks like the strange chord changes in the verses and a touch of spirituality, there are enough catchy moments in this tune to be a McCartney-style rocker, with Jeff Lynne serving as a John Lennon stand-in and annihilating those high harmonies on the chorus.
And to think, this wasn’t even the strongest material they were cooking with at this time. Because if Petty hadn’t been working with Lynne around this era trying to put out Full Moon Fever, there’s a good chance that a song like ‘Free Fallin’ could have appeared on this album purely by happenstance.
‘Boys of Summer’ – Tom Petty
It’s never easy to spot a hit out in the wild. Even though someone can think that they’ve written the answer to The Beatles’ greatest hits whenever they sit down with a piece of paper and a pen, some tunes can get lost in the shuffle when trying to cycle through hours upon hours of material. So when Tom Petty got a riff tape from Mike Campbell in the middle of Southern Accents, he didn’t realise one of the best heartland rock singles of all time was looking him right in the face.
Granted, it’s easy to see why Petty was a bit distracted. All of the Heartbreakers were at the end of their rope and strung out on drugs throughout this album, and when Campbell reworked the tune a little bit and gave it to Don Henley, ‘The Boys of Summer’ became the kind of anthem that the band needed at that point. While Petty could steer them out of nearly any problem, this is the one case where even Petty may have felt slightly guilty.
If you listen to a song like ‘Runaway Trains’ that Petty released one album later, it sounds like it’s trying to be ‘Boys of Summer Part 2’, complete with the sweeping synthesiser preset and sharing the same key but with nowhere near as good of a hook. The songs are almost similar enough to warrant lawyers getting involved, but this may have been a case of Petty realising that he shouldn’t have let go of that piece of musical gold.
