In today’s streaming-dominated, everything on-demand world, the giddy thrill of discovering an absolutely belting B-side increasingly feels like an experience from a world long gone.
Originally a necessity borne out of the need to have something - anything - on the flip side of a 7 inch vinyl record single, the esoteric allure of the B-side begun to grow when self-writing bands like the Beatles (who had a surfeit of brilliant songs - too many for their studio albums) would add extra off-cuts to the flip side. Some of which were truly mind-blowing.
As times (and formats) changed, the industry, at the time of the CD generation, capitalised on the completist hunger of music fans.
They would put out multiple releases of the same single (aka, formatting) resulting in often quite a lot of B-sides to collect. Often 4 to 5 per-single.
