History Main / BSide

* An entire ''Radio/AmericanCountryCountdown'' program (a special that aired Oct. 4, 1975, in place of that weekend's regular countdown) was [[http://www.popsike.com/American-Country-Countdown-10475-B-Sides-Special/110311141408.html dedicated to B-sides of country music]]. The special featured classic gems by Music/JohnnyCash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams Sr., Lefty Frizzell, Music/ElvisPresley, Ray Price, Hank Snow, Kitty Wells, Eddy Arnold, Merle Haggard and many others. The top song: "The Tennessee Waltz," as recorded by Patti Page.
* Music/HankWilliamsSr had multiple B-sided hits, plus one that never charted but has gone on to be one of his all-time classic performances and most covered:

*** "Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)," backed "Lovesick Blues."
*** "Lost Highway," which backed "You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)."
*** "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," backed "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It." Initially -- according to at least one Time-Life Records compilation this song is included on -- "I'm So Lonesome ... " was virtually ignored when "Bucket" was first released, unlike many other Hank B-sides. But then, in 1966, a handsome young country and pop singer from Hugo, Oklahoma, named B.J. Thomas recorded the song about loneliness in a troubled relationship, and Williams' song finally got the recognition it deserved, with Thomas reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. All of a sudden, country disc jockeys began playing Williams' original version (and sometimes, Thomas' new version as well), and although it never charted, finally was heard and appreciated. In the years since, more than 300 performers have recorded "I'm So Lonesome ... ."

*** "My Son Calls Another Man Daddy," backed "Long Gone Lonesome Blues."

*** "Nobody's Lonesome for Me," backing "Moanin' the Blues."

*** "Dear John," the flip side to the all-time classic "Cold, Cold Heart."
*** "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)," backed "Howlin' at the Moon."
*** "Crazy Heart," the other side of a lonesome song called "(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle."

*** "You Win Again," backed "Settin' the Woods on Fire."

*** Perhaps his biggest two-sided hit ever -- "Your Cheatin' Heart," backing "Kaw-Liga." Both were multi-week No. 1 country hits, with "Kaw-Liga" becoming the biggest country hit of 1953.
* The B-side to 1970s pop singer Andy Kim's No. 1 hit "Rock Me Gently" was ... an instrumental of "Rock Me Gently." (It was simply the same music track, minus Kim's vocals.) This became ''very'' common in the years to come.
* The B-side to Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!" was called "!aaaH-aH yawA eM ekaT ot gnimoC er'yehT" and was a backwards version of the A-side. For added effect, most of the information on the 45 label is printed backwards.

* Music/{{Muse}}'s B Sides are popular amongst fans. The most popular is Fury, which the band have played live, and Matt wanted on Absolution but the band voted him out. The band have a compilation called Hullabaloo which collects several of their B Sides, and another one called Random 1-8 which covers similar ground but has a couple of exceptions. Other popular B Sides include Agitated (a funk-thrash song that was a live staple for years), Eternally Missed (A 6 minute long epic that was in the running for Absolution but left off due to length), Nishe (a moody instrumental which the band still do live), and the band's cover of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", (which even got radio airplay in the UK).

** Music/{{Blur}} recorded so often that they'd have brand new songs to release as B Sides, and not have to put out anything substandard (something Music/TheSmiths also did). This was particularly common during the ''Leisure'' and ''Modern Life is Rubbish'' periods. In the case of the former, the more mature "Inertia" and "Luminous" were released as B-Sides before ''Leisure'' came out, despite being recorded after it.
** Their Japan only release , ''The Special Collectors' Edition'', which collects B Sides up to the ''Music/{{Parklife}}'' singles. In terms of box sets, they have the more substantial 10th Anniversary Collection and the even more substantial Blur 21 set (of which all the albums were released as 2CD sets including most of the B-Sides).

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJRO0guayb0 Eye of The Lens]] by The Comsat Angels could have been their biggest hit in the early 80's, had it been included on an album.

* The original "Garage Days Revisited" by {{Music/Metallica}}. This was the B-side to the European release of "Creeping Death," and contained two covers, "Am I Evil?" (originally by Diamond Head) and "Blitzkrieg," by the group of the same name. Metallica would use the "Garage" name for a number of future cover-based releases, and would release many NWOBHM cover tunes as B-sides (later collected into the "Garage, Inc." album).

* The B-side of Yes's "Leave It" was the same song ''a capella.''

** To "The Legend Of Bonnie and Clyde," his fourth No. 1 hit from the spring of 1968, came the critically acclaimed "Today I Started Loving You Again."
** Briefly, when released in June 1969, "Silver Wings" was the A-side to the working man's anthem "Working Man's Blues." The two were flipped within two weeks of release, and while "Working Man's Blues" eventually went to No. 1, many radio stations still played "Silver Wings," a song that took Merle in a new direction: a pop-styled lament about loneliness on the road.
** The flip side his 1976 No. 1, the nostalgic "My Roots Of My Raising," was the equally nostalgic "The Way It Was In '51." "Roots ..." was a longing for home, while "... '51" was a yearning for the simpler, carefree days of just 25 years earlier. "... '51" went on to become a minor country hit in 1978, based on airplay.
** "If We Make It Through December," not explicitly a Christmas single despite many references to the holiday -- it was much more a lament about being laid off and enduring other majorly disappointing news just before the holidays -- did have a more blatant holiday tune for the B-side: "Bobby Wants a Puppy Dog For Christmas," a song about a young boy who, living in a community where there are no boys his age (it's unclear whether he was an only child or much younger than his siblings) yearns for a dog for companionship and friendship.
** Other flippers were listed along with many of Merle's songs, but are lesser known today. For instance, "Cherokee Maiden," a tribute to Bob Wills, had "What Have You Got Planned Tonight, Diana?" "Turning Off a Memory" was listed on the B-side of "Grandma Harp."

** "Anarchy in the UK," their debut single, was backed with "I Wanna Be Me," a throwaway early song from a demo session some months earlier whose inclusion on the single is probably the most notable thing about it.
** "God Save the Queen," taken from the sessions that produced Never Mind the Bollocks, was backed with "Did You No Wrong," another song from the sessions that didn't end up on the album. The song originated as "Scarface" from when Steve, Paul and Glen were performing with Wally Nightingale as the Swankers. Since the group was essentially a pub-rock group before John Lydon became the singer, it's instrumentally a pretty straightforward rock 'n' roll song with Lydon's punk vocal and rewritten lyrics laid on top.

** "Holidays in the Sun" features another cut from the Bollocks sessions that was left off the album, a recording of "Satellite," an older song about playing unpleasant gigs in small towns around London in the band's early days, trying to build a following. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's a fine song and a damned energetic performance that really benefits from the bigger-budget production and fuller sound available to the band at the time of recording.

* When the cast of the musical TV drama ''Rock Follies of '77'' had a hit single with the rock song "O.K.?", the flipside was a song titled "The B-Side", a solo ballad in which, very much LeaningOnTheFourthWall, one of the characters laments being the LesserStar of the band and therefore having her contribution relegated to the B-side.

* Crocheted Doughnut Ring was a 60s band that only released a few singles before folding. Their first single, ''Two Little Ladies (Azalea & Rhododendron)'' was fairly standard 60s psychedelic pop, nothing unusual for 1967. However, they also needed a B-Side for that. So they sat down, did some crazy tape manipulations and experimental playing simply invented the Ambient genre. For that the B-Side called ''Nice'' is much more known nowadays than the A-Side.

* By his own admission, Creator/JasperCarrott's "Funky Moped" only charted as a hit single because the B-side had a [[SubvertedKidsShow risqué]] ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicRoundabout'' sketch.

* Hank Williams Sr. had multiple B-sided hits, plus one that never charted but has gone on to be one of his all-time classic performances and most covered:

* The Series/SpittingImage single "The Chicken Song" b/w "[[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra I've Never Met a Nice South African]]" was jokingly promoted on the cover as a "double B-side", [[DontExplainTheJoke implying that both songs were of dubious quality]].

* Muse's B Sides are popular amongst fans. The most popular is Fury, which the band have played live, and Matt wanted on Absolution but the band voted him out. The band have a compilation called Hullabaloo which collects several of their B Sides, and another one called Random 1-8 which covers similar ground but has a couple of exceptions. Other popular B Sides include Agitated (a funk-thrash song that was a live staple for years), Eternally Missed (A 6 minute long epic that was in the running for Absolution but left off due to length), Nishe (a moody instrumental which the band still do live), and the band's cover of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", (which even got radio airplay in the UK).

** Music/{{Blur}} recorded so often that they'd have brand new songs to release as B Sides, and not have to put out anything substandard (something Music/TheSmiths also did). This was particularly common during the "Leisure" and "Modern Life Is Rubbish" periods. In the case of the former, the more mature "Inertia" and "Luminous" were released as B Sides before "Leisure" came out, despite being recorded after it.
** Their Japan only release The Special Collectors' Edition which collects B Sides up to the Parklife singles. In terms of box sets, they have the more substantial 10th Anniversary Collection and the even more substantial Blur 21 set (of which all the albums were released as 2CD sets including most of the B Sides).

* All of Music/LedZeppelin's songs from their original discography were released on all of their studio albums, with the notable exception of "Hey, Hey, What Can I Do", the b-side to "Immigrant Song". For years, the only way to get "Hey, Hey" on an LP was to buy a sampler from Creator/AtlanticRecords, ''The New Age of Atlantic''. The song was later put on the ''Led Zeppelin'' box set and was also a bonus track on the 2015 ''Music/{{Coda}}'' reissue.

See also BMovie, BSideComics.

[[OmnipresentTropes Ubiquitous throughout]] the music industry, so examples should be parodies, subversions or otherwise noteworthy.

Occasionally, both sides of the single are promoted equally; the single is then called a "double A-side". Famous examples are "[[Music/TheBeatles Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane]]" and "[[Music/{{Queen}} We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions]]". B-sides may be collected onto {{Greatest Hits album}}s, or be included on an extra disc for deluxe reissues and {{Box Set}}s. They might also turn up as bonus tracks on [[UpdatedRerelease later printings of the album]].

*** "Soul To Squeeze" was the B-Side to both "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge" in 1991. In 1993 it appeared on the ''Film/{{Coneheads}}'' soundtrack and was released as a single. Many people thought it was a new song, which was why the song was a hit, peaking at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching the top 10 in the UK and Australia.

*** Prior to recording the album, the band asked Daniel Lanois (of Music/{{U2}} fame) to produce their album, who initially said no, but allowed them to use his recording studio in L.A. to put down some rough versions of the tracks. A lot of tracks from the album as well as the B-Sides are featured in these sessions, as well as a ton of previously unreleased material. These sessions were leaked years after the album was released. Lanois later listened to these tracks months later and [[WhatCouldHaveBeen called the band up to offer to produce their next album]], but by then the band had moved forward with their longtime producer Music/RickRubin.)
** After the release of their 2002 album ''Music/ByTheWay'', the band began work on a new album in 2003 and produced at least 10 completed songs. However, the album was scrapped[[note]]probably since it was initially intended to be a [[ProtestSong Protest Album]] against UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and the [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush Bush]] administration[[/note]] and most of the songs have either been released as B-Sides or performed live. Notably, "Fortune Faded" and "Save the Population" were included on the band's ''Greatest Hits'' album, with the former released as a single. The drummer Chad Smith admitted during a Reddit AMA that there were still at least a few songs from those sessions that haven't been released, and that they were waiting for the right time to do so.

* The Music/RedHotChiliPeppers song "Soul To Squeeze" was recorded during the ''Music/BloodSugarSexMagik'' sessions, but was not included on the album and was initially featured as the B-Side to the lead singles "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge". In 1993 it appeared on the ''Film/{{Coneheads}}'' soundtrack and was released as a single. Many people thought it was a new song, which was why the song was a surprise hit, peaking at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching the top 10 in the UK and Australia.

* Music/{{Pearl Jam}} has ''Lost Dogs'', a two-disc compilation of B-sides and non-album singles like "Last Kiss".
* Music/{{Nirvana}}'s ''Music/{{Incesticide}}'' has many of their B-sides from the ''Music/{{Bleach}}'' and ''Music/{{Nevermind}}'' eras. Many fans consider it to be the album most representative of the band's style.
* Music/{{Green Day}}'s ''Shenanigans''.

* Disk 4 of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' box set "Playback" consists of B-sides.

** After the release of their 2002 album ''Music/ByTheWay'', the band began work on a new album in 2003 and produced at least 10 completed songs. However, the session was scrapped, and most of the songs have either been released as B-Sides or performed live. Notably, "Fortune Faded" and "Save the Population" were included on the band's ''Greatest Hits'' album, with the former released as a single. The drummer Chad Smith admitted during a Reddit AMA that there were still at least a few songs from those sessions that haven't been released, and that they were waiting for the right time to do so.

* Music/RedHotChiliPeppers are notorious for producing a ton of songs that don't quite make it onto their albums, though this is mainly because they release a new album every four years on average as of late.
** ''Music/BloodSugarSexMagik'' was notable given that the band recorded the entire album in less than a year, but produced over twenty original songs and a bunch of pretty good cover versions.
*** "Soul To Squeeze" was the B-Side to both "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge" in 1991. In 1993 it appeared on the ''Film/{{Coneheads}}'' soundtrack and was released as a single. Many people thought it was a new song, which was why the song was a hit, peaking at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching the top 10 in the UK and Australia.
*** "Sikamikanico" and "Search and Destroy" (an Music/IggyPop cover) were featured on ''Film/WaynesWorld'' and ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'', respectively.
** Same with ''Music/{{Californication}}''. The guitarist Music/JohnFrusciante has even said that he likes some of the B-Sides such as "Instrumental #1" and "Gong Li" better than a lot of the album tracks.
*** Prior to recording the album, the band asked Daniel Lanois (of Music/{{U2}} fame) to produce their album, who initially said no, but allowed them to use his recording studio in L.A. to put down some rough versions of the tracks. A lot of tracks from the album as well as the B-Sides are featured in these sessions, as well as a ton of previously unreleased material. These sessions were leaked years after the album was released. Lanois later listened to these tracks months later and [[WhatCouldHaveBeen called the band up to offer to produce their next album]], but by then the band had moved forward with their longtime producer Music/RickRubin.)
** After the release of their 2002 album ''Music/ByTheWay'', the band began work on a new album in 2003 and produced at least 10 completed songs. However, the session was scrapped, and most of the songs have either been released on compilations or performed live. Notably, "Fortune Faded" and "Save the Population" were included on the band's ''Greatest Hits'' album, with the former released as a single. The drummer Chad Smith admitted during a Reddit AMA that there were still at least a few songs from those sessions that haven't been released, and that they were waiting for the right time to do so.
** They took this UpToEleven with the release of the 2006 double-album ''Music/StadiumArcadium'', with a whopping 28 songs. While it earned them [[UsefulNotes/GrammyAward Grammy Awards]] for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Song (for lead single "Dani California"), many critics bashed its, well, bloatedness and filler. The band actually had plans to release a third album, but had to cut over ten songs at the insistence of management.
** To accompany their tenth album ''I'm With You'' (which contained 14 songs), the band released an unofficial series of tracks called ''I'm Beside You'', with no less than '''17''' songs that didn't make it onto the album.

*** "Soul To Squeeze" was the B-Side to both "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge" in 1991. In 1993 it appeared on the ''Film/{{Coneheads}}'' soundtrack and was [[BreakawayPopHit released as a single]]. Many people thought it was a new song, which was why the song was a hit, peaking at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching the top 10 in the UK and Australia.

* The Music/RedHotChiliPeppers song "Soul To Squeeze" was recorded during the ''Music/BloodSugarSexMagik'' sessions, but was not included on the album and was initially featured as the B-Side to the lead singles "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge". In 1993 it appeared on the ''Film/{{Coneheads}}'' soundtrack and was [[BreakawayPopHit released as a single]]. Many people thought it was a new song, which was why the song was a surprise hit, peaking at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching the top 10 in the UK and Australia.

* "Soul To Squeeze" was the B-Side to both "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge" in 1991. In 1993 it appeared on the ''Film/{{Coneheads}}'' soundtrack and was [[BreakawayPopHit released as a single]]. Many people thought it was a new song, which was why the song was a hit, peaking at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching the top 10 in the UK and Australia.

** Same with ''Music/{{Californication}}''.

*** "Soul To Squeeze" was the B-Side to both "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge" in 1991. In 1993 it appeared on the ''Coneheads'' soundtrack and was [[BreakawayPopHit released as a single]]. Many people thought it was a new song, which was why the song was a hit.

** Same with ''Music/{{Californication}}''
** They took this UpToEleven with the release of the 2006 double-album ''Stadium Arcadium'', with a whopping 28 songs. While it earned them [[UsefulNotes/GrammyAward Grammy Awards]] for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Song (for lead single "Dani California"), many critics bashed its, well, bloatedness and filler. The band actually had plans to release a third album, but had to cut over ten songs at the insistence of management.

* "We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions" by Music/{{Queen}}, both from their LP ''Music/NewsOfTheWorld'', are usually played one after the other on radio stations.

* {{Music/Chicago}}'s "Colour My World" was a B-side twice; it backed "Make Me Smile" in 1970 and "Beginnings" in '71.

** '''October 1975''': "Heat Wave"/"Love is a Rose." "Heat Wave" was a No. 5 hit, and Ronstadt's cover of the old Martha and the Vandellas smash from the early 1960s. "Love is a Rose," a cover of a Neil Young-penned album track, was the side of choice for country radio. Incidentally, ''both'' songs stopped at No. 5 on the Hot 100 and Hot Country Singles charts, respectively.

* Daniel Miller, as The Normal, only released one single, "TVOD" b/w "Warm Leatherette", both {{filk song}}s based on J.G. Ballard's ''Literature/{{Crash}}''. The B-side achieved international recognition, being covered by [[Music/GraceJones numerous]] [[Music/DuranDuran artists]], while the A-side is completely forgotten nowadays.

* The Winstons were a OneHitWonder in 1969 with the sentimental {{Soul}} ballad "Color Him Father". The B-side was clearly intended as a throwaway--an uptempo {{Instrumental}} version of the old GospelMusic standard "Amen", titled "Amen, Brother". However, early HipHop [=DJs=] unearthed the song and realized that a seven-second drum break in the middle of the song made a perfect beat bed. Thus was born the AmenBreak, the most overused sample in music history.

* The Winstons' "Amen Brother", the B-side to "Color Him Father", became the source of the AmenBreak, the most overused sample in music history.