10 Great Songs That Never Made A Studio Album
The best of the odds and ends.
The studio album has been the quintessential medium for musicians. The art of putting 10-20 tracks together that make a sonic statement is something only true artists can do. There are some tunes that tend to fall through the cracks though.
Many original songs can be relegated to B-sides, EPs, stand-alone singles, or live cuts. These kind of tracks tend to be "stop-gap" songs: nothing more than a song to tide fans over until the next record comes around.
But true musicians never sell their audience short. In capable hands, many musicians take these "filler" tracks as an opportunity to show the hardcore fans another side of their artistic selves. Whether it be through standout lyrics or a change in musical style, fans can expect a few left turns from these songs when compared to a band's usual songwriting. These artistic risks can sometimes end up being better than the tunes that end up on proper studio albums. Either way, fans are glad these artists took the time to give just a little bit more quality music between album releases.
10. Heathens - Twenty One Pilots
Twenty One Pilots had already been riding high thanks to 2015's Blurryface by the time the producers of Suicide Squad came knocking on their door. Twenty One Pilots had the daunting task of writing the unofficial theme song to this super-villain counterpart to Marvel's Avengers. But while the film was... contentious... to say the least, this song brought the force in a big way.
While the verses have the gentle beauty that has come to be expected from a TOP song, the chorus taps into something much grittier. The melody of "All my friends are heathens" is wonderfully disturbed coming from Tyler Joseph's synthetic voice. It gives the listener the feeling that everything is just on the edge of sanity.
And just as the tension reaches its height halfway through, the bass guitar riff blows everything wide open. While the duo had been known for more pop-rock before this, the song's bass breakdown toes the line between pop and metal. This went over so well that the duo expanded upon this hard-edged sound on their next single "Jumpsuit." All things considered, this song was awesome enough to make Jared Leto's Joker seem fairly compelling, which is no small feat.