10 Great Singles That Weren't Originally Released On A Studio Album
This is A- really great song.
As the music industry moves from pumping out plentiful physical album sales to a digital space full of carefully curated playlists, the need for a successful song to be packed in with a collection of others is minimal.
Services like Spotify and Amazon Music have allowed audiences to pluck their favourite tunes from an album without giving the full release a chance.
Singles are the flavour of the future, yet their prominence has been a long time in the making, as there have been a plethora of fantastic tunes that were released outside the parameters of a full length studio album.
Known in the industry simply as 'non-album singles', songs that aren't featured on an artist's newest CD are often reduced to an obscure relic of history, unless they're something truly special. Being included in a studio record ensures a song's preservation, whereas if a tune is released as a stand-alone song there's more pressure for it to succeed both critically and commercially.
Some are featured in a film soundtrack and others were a victim of happenstance, but every so often a non-album single sinks its claws into audiences everywhere, ensuring their place in our hearts --and heads-- is preserved for years to come.
10. Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
Though it's often believed that Love Will Tear Us Apart was featured on Joy Division's debut record Unknown Pleasures, the iconic tune was actually released as a non-album single. Let loose on the British public just one month after Ian Curtis' suicide, it teased an interesting new direction that the band were, unfortunately, unable to take.
Love Will Tear Us Apart is one of the defining tunes of the post-punk era, and provided the band with their first UK hit single. It's catchy chorus shouldn't work as well as it does with Curtis' baritone pipes, but the frontman's voice adds a layer of sadness to a melody that seems too upbeat for the song's sombre themes.
Between choruses, the 1980 song is short in length but heavy in substance. exploring Curtis' struggles with daily life and his battle with psychological woes, the heavy topics explored make dancing to the tune decidedly impossible, despite what The Wombats would have you believe.
Though Love Will Tear Us Apart was surely poised to appear on the band's second album, Closer it was, curiously, absent from the track listing. It mattered little, as it has continued to build its legacy as one of Britain's best songs.