The relationship between albums and the songs that live on them is interesting. Back in the days before streaming services and shuffle buttons, that connection was tied tight. Unless a song was released as a single, they were heard one by one, in order. It meant that the cohesion of an album was more important, even if there were some clear hits on there. But sometimes, even back in the day, there’s a dichotomy where one track looms large over the whole LP.
With every album, there is usually a clear winner, and the artist knows that. There are usually one, two, maybe three obvious singles in the mix. They’re the songs that come out before as teasers to hook listeners in. They’re the ones that get music videos and marketing pushes as an artist’s label believes they’re destined to be winners that will storm the charts, rake in the money and hopefully boost attention around the whole album.
But sometimes it backfires. Perhaps there are moments where a single is so good that the full record could never keep up, or all the attention is exhausted over one song. In other instances, maybe a certain song on an album is too good for the scale an artist is at, being lost or wasted in a moment before their star has fully risen.
Most of the time, though, it is a complete mystery. While the music world hires so-called experts to try and understand these things, to predict the hits or to listen to albums and state with as much certainty as they possibly can if they will sell or not, no one can ever fully predict the way the public will react to art. Sometimes, it hits, sometimes it flops, or, in the case of these five songs, sometimes a track is a buoy that a sinking LP clings to.
The Beatles song more popular than the album they featured on:
The Beatles – ‘All You Need Is Love’
OK, this one is a little more complex. It asks the question, What is an album? Is a soundtrack an album? Sure, if that soundtrack is simply a compilation of songs by other artists gathered up, then maybe not. But if the artist themself is making a movie and writing all new songs for it, does that count?
While some of The Beatles’ other soundtracks feel like official albums, like Help!, their later ones, like Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine, never quite felt like proper Beatles records, making them often forgotten when the general public reflects on their work. Ask any punter on the street to name a Fab Four album, and they probably won’t say Yellow Submarine. But ask them to name a song, and ‘All You Need Is Love’ would likely be one of the top answers.
The album didn’t flop as it landed at number three in the UK chart, but what it fails to have is any real legacy between two tracks that loom far over the full LP; ‘All You Need Is Love’ and the cringeworthy title track itself, ‘Yellow Submarine’.