Great albums spoiled by poor sequencing

ICBM

Spin-off from the previous thread about skipping the first track.

Inspired by ABBA's Arrival - where the title track is bizarrely the closer when it should be the opener, and the opener is (at best) Side 2 filler - albums where all the songs are good, and the album would be great, but is incomprehensibly spoiled by a terrible running order. It really can make a huge difference.

An even better example - The Beatles' Let It Be. I honestly think the album would have been far better received if it had been sequenced correctly - at the very least, Get Back should be the first track and The Long And Winding Road the last... you can probably argue over the placement of most of the ones in the middle.

The third disc of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass is another one - notoriously only listened to once by most owners, because it's a disjointed mess. But not if you put it in the correct originally-intended order, which is on the remastered version. (Johnny's Birthday, Plug Me In, Jeep, Pepperoni, Out Of The Blue.)

Or any number of albums where the best tracks are all on Side 1 and no-one bothers listening to the other side.

Over to you .

theatreanchor

IMO an album can’t be great if there’s tracks that get skipped on it, or if it’s poorly ordered. Great albums are great because everything about them works : the songs, the sequence, the packaging, the mastering etc…

But that’s just my 2p.  

ICBM

theatreanchor said:

IMO an album can’t be great if there’s tracks that get skipped on it, or if it’s poorly ordered. Great albums are great because everything about them works : the songs, the sequence, the packaging, the mastering etc…

But that’s just my 2p.  

OK, I think what I meant was "albums that would be great, but aren't purely because the sequencing is wrong" .

Let It Be is still the best example I can think of - even the 'Naked' version, which does start with Get Back, isn't right since it doesn't end with TLAWR.

Whereas Abbey Road is truly great, not only because it has great songs - although not *that* much better, in my opinion (and many were written at the same time as Let It Be, as becomes obvious from the restored Get Back film) but because the running order is perfect.

BillDL

There are few albums that I absolutely love every song, but the closest is Bryan Adams Waking Up The Neighbours.  The thing that annoys me about that album is the placement of the slow 4th track "Thought I'd Died And Gone To Heaven".  The album kicks in with three hard driving gutsy songs:

1. Is Your Mama Gonna Miss Ya?
2. Hey Honey – I'm Packin' You In!
3. Can't Stop This Thing We Started

The 4th track "Thought I'd Died And Gone To Heaven" suddently slows down the momentum, only to come straight back with a fast one:

5. Not Guilty - hard and fast
6. Vanishing - slow and soft
7. House Arrest - hard and fast
8. Do I Have to Say the Words? - slow and soft
9. There Will Never Be Another Tonight - hard and fast
10. All I Want Is You - slow and soft
11. Depend on Me - slowish and soft
12. (Everything I Do) I Do It for You - slow and soft
13. If You Wanna Leave Me (Can I Come Too?) - hard and fast
14. Touch the Hand - hard and fast
15. Don't Drop That Bomb on Me - hard and fast

I tend to put that CD on in the car on the way to work when I want to hear rock, so I would far rather have had all the "hard and fast" ones shown above all grouped at the start of the album, with maybe 14 and 15 left at the end to go out loud.  The way it suddenly slows after 3 rock songs and then alternates between hard and soft bugs me a bit.

springhead

Sometimes it’s due to the album being originally released on vinyl and they couldn’t master it in the intended sequence, notably too much bass content on tracks near the centre being uncuttable.  I seem to recall Sgt Pepper being a case in point and the correct sequence was restored for the cd release. 

I once spent a day with a mastering engineer and he had exactly this issue when trying to cut a live album on the lathe. He rejected the mix and sent it back to be redone or resequenced. 

Whistler

theatreanchor said:

IMO an album can’t be great if there’s tracks that get skipped on it, or if it’s poorly ordered. Great albums are great because everything about them works : the songs, the sequence, the packaging, the mastering etc…

But that’s just my 2p.  

For me the exception that proves the rule is James Taylor's Greatest Hits, an album brimming with his classic soft-sung blues songs, and then someone added one track on the end where he plays electric guitar and swears. It ruined an otherwise superb album, so much so that I used to make copies (cassette, CD) without the last track and nowadays the offensive track has long been deleted from my computer so the album sits perfectly complete without it.

ICBM

Whistler said:

For me the exception that proves the rule is James Taylor's Greatest Hits, an album brimming with his classic soft-sung blues songs, and then someone added one track on the end where he plays electric guitar and swears. It ruined an otherwise superb album, so much so that I used to make copies (cassette, CD) without the last track and nowadays the offensive track has long been deleted from my computer so the album sits perfectly complete without it.

I've deleted the last track - Mother's Lament - on Disraeli Gears from my iTunes library too. It might have seemed funny in 1967, but now it's just crap and ruins the end of the album.

blobb

Here's one for you. Steve Hillage: For to next / And not or. Which is in fact 2x albums. The trick is to play side 1 of For to next, then all of And not or before finishing off with side 2 of For to next. Then it works.

It has actually seen a reissue which combines both albums - running one after the other.

BillDL

ICBM said:

I've deleted the last track - Mother's Lament - on Disraeli Gears from my iTunes library too. It might have seemed funny in 1967, but now it's just crap and ruins the end of the album.

I haven't heard "Your baby has gorn dahn the plug'ole" for ages, but I agree.  It was a novelty in its time but too silly to belong on that album.  Fine on a Chas & Dave record, but not Cream.

There's a track on one of my Walter Trout albums (possibly the last one) that ends with a baby crying in quite a distressed way.  I would have to check if it's an actual track or part of the song, but it always catches me out and it's really disturbing.  I don't know why it was shoved in there.

DuploLicks

Whistler 

 It ruined an otherwise superb album, so much so that I used to make copies (cassette, CD) without the last track and nowadays the offensive track has long been deleted from my computer so the album sits perfectly complete without it.

I’ve done the same with Jimi Hendrix - The Ultimate Experience compilation. 18 tracks of gold then two unlistenable end of show screech fests. With all of Jimi’s live recordings they could have found something in keeping with the rest of the album and left those to the Jimi connoisseurs 

ICBM

A lot of CD re-releases with bonus tracks fall into this category too - a great album with everything sequenced correctly then ends in a jumbled mess of random demo versions and alternative takes that rarely add anything interesting and always spoil the flow. Even if there’s the odd great song that was somehow left off the original album, it’s usually then in the wrong place.

Just because there’s space to fit 74 minutes of music on a CD doesn’t mean you should... thankfully I rarely listen to the CD directly these days, I almost always use iTunes so I can delete the junk and change the order if I want to.

sticker

I’d throw Beatles for Sale in to the mix too , but with the caveat that Mr Moonlight should have been replaced with “Leave my kitten alone” which was recorded in the same Sessions. 

Philly_Q

ICBM said:

A lot of CD re-releases with bonus tracks fall into this category too - a great album with everything sequenced correctly then ends in a jumbled mess of random demo versions and alternative takes that rarely add anything interesting and always spoil the flow. 

Amen to that.  I've bought many remasters and deluxe editions but I usually stop before the bonus tracks and hardly ever listen to the second discs of alternate takes and demos.

Philly_Q

I'm not sure about "great" albums spoiled by poor sequencing, but only a couple sprang to mind for me:

Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet.  All the good tracks, including the band's three best-known songs and live staples, are on side one.  Side two is dross.  I always used to say I liked Bon Jovi for their first two and a half albums (now I don't really like them at all).

Black Sabbath - 13.  Every time I listened to this album I'd enjoy the first few tracks then lose interest (or fall asleep) long before the end.  I found the only way around it was to play the album on shuffle, to add an element of surprise.**

(** This approach also helps with most of the recent Metallica albums.  Although it doesn't help enough.)

Lodious

ICBM said:

A lot of CD re-releases with bonus tracks fall into this category too - a great album with everything sequenced correctly then ends in a jumbled mess of random demo versions and alternative takes that rarely add anything interesting and always spoil the flow. Even if there’s the odd great song that was somehow left off the original album, it’s usually then in the wrong place.

Just because there’s space to fit 74 minutes of music on a CD doesn’t mean you should... thankfully I rarely listen to the CD directly these days, I almost always use iTunes so I can delete the junk and change the order if I want to.

Singles going Steady by Buzzcocks springs to mind....perfect on vinyl, add the extra bonus CD tracks in the 2001 reissue and it ruins the impact.  

RocknRollDave

There have been a few albums over the years with a bonus disc where I’d definitely have binned off one or two songs from the album proper to make way for one or two of the ‘bonus’ tracks.

Revolution Come, Revolution Go by Govt Mule is the first that comes to mind . Not a bad album in its single-disc form, but the first two bonus songs definitely deserve a place on the main disc.

EricTheWeary

Philly_Q said:

I'm not sure about "great" albums spoiled by poor sequencing, but only a couple sprang to mind for me:

Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet.  All the good tracks, including the band's three best-known songs and live staples, are on side one.  Side two is dross.  I always used to say I liked Bon Jovi for their first two and a half albums (now I don't really like them at all).

Black Sabbath - 13.  Every time I listened to this album I'd enjoy the first few tracks then lose interest (or fall asleep) long before the end.  I found the only way around it was to play the album on shuffle, to add an element of surprise.**

(** This approach also helps with most of the recent Metallica albums.  Although it doesn't help enough.)

I think 13 was the last heavy rock/ metal album I bought. Maybe I should dig it out but my memory of it is that every song was like the one before. The original Ozzy era had quite a bit of variety such as acoustic numbers, instrumentals, using orchestration but everything on 13 was interchangeable. 

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

I think 13 was the last heavy rock/ metal album I bought. Maybe I should dig it out but my memory of it is that every song was like the one before. The original Ozzy era had quite a bit of variety such as acoustic numbers, instrumentals, using orchestration but everything on 13 was interchangeable. 

I think you're right, it's not really that the first few tracks are better, more that the whole thing is samey so it doesn't hold your attention.  Hence my attempts to liven it up.

fretmeister

theatreanchor said:

IMO an album can’t be great if there’s tracks that get skipped on it, or if it’s poorly ordered. Great albums are great because everything about them works : the songs, the sequence, the packaging, the mastering etc…

But that’s just my 2p.  

I don't agree with that.

There is a lot more pressure to produce that now, but 40 years ago most albums were 2 or 3 hits and the rest was filler and if it reached the mighty heights of 4 hit singles, then the album was a classic.

NickL

RocknRollDave said:

There have been a few albums over the years with a bonus disc where I’d definitely have binned off one or two songs from the album proper to make way for one or two of the ‘bonus’ tracks.

Revolution Come, Revolution Go by Govt Mule is the first that comes to mind . Not a bad album in its single-disc form, but the first two bonus songs definitely deserve a place on the main disc.

In the '60s, record companies used to do daft things like releasing separate UK/international and North American versions of an album with different track listings, and leaving out songs that had been released as singles. So the UK version of Are You Experienced didn't include Purple Haze, Hey Joe or The Wind Cries Mary, and those and their respective B sides were all 'bonus' tracks on the CD reissue. Not sure what to cut to make space though if it needs to fit on two sides of vinyl.

Philly_Q

NickL said:

In the '60s, record companies used to do daft things like releasing separate UK/international and North American versions of an album with different track listings, and leaving out songs that had been released as singles. So the UK version of Are You Experienced didn't include Purple Haze, Hey Joe or The Wind Cries Mary, and those and their respective B sides were all 'bonus' tracks on the CD reissue. Not sure what to cut to make space though if it needs to fit on two sides of vinyl.

But then those three tracks, plus their B sides, were all on the UK version of Smash Hits - which was released later in the US, with a very different track listing.  So it evens out.  In fact I think there may be some tracks on the UK Smash Hits which never ended up on US albums (except later compilations)?  All very confusing.