10 Famous Songs That Were Somehow Recorded In A Single Take

1. The Velvet Underground - Sister Ray

What's more impressive than recording a wildly successful single in a single four or five minute take? Recording a wildly celebrated song about drug use, violence and homosexuality in a single seventeen-and-a-half minute take.

That's exactly what American rock band The Velvet Underground did for their 1968 album White Light/White Heat. It's pretty incredible €“ across seventeen minutes the band details an entire narrative that contains eight characters and features transvestites, an orgy and an encounter with the police.

Before recording the massively long song, the band decided on using a single take, accepting whatever faults might occur during recording. Apparently the recording engineer was so overwhelmed by what he perceived to be absurd that he walked out of the booth, refusing to listen to the material, and asking the band to come get him when they were finished.