HiddenSongs.com
 Since the dawn of recorded music—or at least since the rise of impish rock stars—musicians have tucked secret songs into corners of their albums. There these buried beauties lurk, waiting to startle unsuspecting listeners. Anyone familiar with the work of They Might Be Giants knows what we're talking about.
For a long time, this hidden-track trickery slipped by without any documentation. But then, HiddenSongs.com hove into view. This inventory of melodic deception not only catalogs the secret sounds, but tells you exactly how to find them on the album. We reviewed HiddenSongs back in 2004. Now, we check in with Erik, the man behind the site, to see what inspired him to build the encyclopedia of concealed tunes... Do you remember the first time you heard an unexpected tune on an album? Is that what inspired you to start the site? It was probably "Endless, Nameless" by Nirvana, off "Nevermind." That was right around the time that CDs were taking over tapes, and not all CD pressings of "Nevermind" had the track. Between that and Nirvana's hidden track from the "No Alternative" compilation, I sort of developed a weird fascination with the idea that there was a... bonus for people who listened all the way through an album. I started making compilations for myself so that I could listen to the songs easily, and figured it only made sense to catalog what I found about each song. Do you have a favorite hidden song? "Diamond Bollocks" by Beck (from "Mutations"), "Subway Ride" by Sheryl Crow (from "The Globe Sessions"), and "Seattle Grunge Rock Blues" by Todd Snider (from "Songs for the Daily Planet") are all great. It's cool to find a catchy song instead a bunch of looped feedback. On some albums, like AC/DC's "Bonfire," the hidden track isn't a song but a series of brief interviews. What's the oddest non-musical "Easter egg" you've encountered? It has to be from the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"—it's basically a bunch of tape cut up and taped together randomly. On the original LP it could only be heard on record players without an automatic arm return. The noise was in the groove out and looped endlessly. It's a very strange noise with a very strange background behind it. Has an artist ever complained about the existence of a ghost track being revealed? Not that I'm aware of. Obviously there's a little bit of a wink and a nod to them and it seems most would rather each listener find the tracks themselves, but some artists release the hidden tracks as singles, and some become big hits. Who's the most hidden-song-happy, do you think? We're guessing They Might Be Giants, although it could be Blink 182. Blink-182 went a little crazy with their album "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket." There are three editions and each has two different hidden songs—a serious song and a joke-type song. I don't think I've seen that much effort put into it by anyone else! Tell us about the submissions process. Do you still get a lot of them? Have they changed over the years? We still receive lots of submissions. Not much has changed; most of them come with minimal information and before posting new songs we always go out and get as much information about the song as we possibly can, which means many hours spent researching forums and fan sites. Once in a while we get submissions by people who know a lot about the song, but most of the time it seems people are browsing the site and something jars their memory, and they'll give an artist and album name. We do the rest of the legwork. HiddenSongs.com has been around since at least 2004. How do you keep it going? As long as artists are hiding their music, we'll be around to catalog it. It's fun to do and it's cool to have a unique and informative site. People email us all the time thanking us for helping them with projects and reports, so that definitely makes it worth our while. You used to be The Hidden Song Archive. Why the name change? When we obtained the HiddenSongs.com domain we figured it made sense to name the site that since it was shorter and more memorable, a la Amazon.com. When the site is named after the domain name it makes it a lot easier to remember how to get to it! Tell us about SmackBomb.com, the parent site behind Hidden Songs. SmackBomb.com is a network of mostly unrelated sites pulled together under one name. From font downloads to sports profiles, comic books to funny and weird pictures and sports news... there really is something for just about everyone. Thanks, Erik! And happy song hunting!
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