Liner Notes: Lists of Stuff You Didn’t Know About the Bands, Songs, and Albums You Do

By Brian Boone

From Brian Boone, author of the bestselling music trivia collection I Love Rock N' Roll (Except When I Hate It) and the stripped down follow-up Rock Lists for Obsessive Music Connoisseurs, Zealots, and Junkies, comes another hit-packed collection of fun, fascinating, and freaky facts about rock and pop music.

Liner Notes: Lists of Stuff You Didn't Know About the Bands, Songs, and Albums You Do is full of trivia, context, and stories about the most popular and dominant bands, singers, stars, hits, and misses of the past 50 years. But, like, wryly stated and with opinions from a music geek. For example:

• The most baffling leadoff singles from classic albums
• The worst lyrics and silliest album titles of all time
• The dirtiest innocent pop songs
• Singers who went solo and who were surprisingly unsuccessful
• Bands that formed out of spite
• Two-time one-hit wonders
• The secret life of Toto
• Plus the wildest, weirdest, and curious chart accomplishments and milestones, silly quizzes, egregious music awards show decisions, and much, much more

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Boone
• Release date: May 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798224285709

Book preview

Chapter 1: Songs in the Key of Lists

Brief and compelling information about the songs you love and/or hate.

Lead Singles from Great Albums That Were Totally Whack

Some albums are instant classics, chock full of perfect songs and whose success is a foregone conclusion. And yet, record labels picked like the one very bad track on those albums to be the leadoff single to promote the whole thing. It’s a wonder these albums sold any copies at all — these first singles are just that bad.

The Girl is Mine from Thriller by Michael Jackson

Thriller is a pristine album of a scant nine songs, all killer with very little filler — pretty much just the first single. The lamest thing that either Jackson or his duet partner Paul McCartney would ever record, The Girl is Mine tells the incredibly implausible tale of these two laid-back guys fighting over a woman, but also playfully, and asserting that the doggone girl is theirs. Thriller eventually got going when Beat It and Billie Jean came out and melted minds, but it didn’t look good there for a minute.

I Just Can’t Stop Loving You from Bad by Michael Jackson

In following up Thriller, a worldwide cultural phenomenon and the best-selling album of all time, Jackson unleashed Bad in 1987, a collection that includes bangers like the title track and The Way You Make Me Feel, and classic ballads like Man in the Mirror. But Jackson’s first single from Bad: the syrupy, forgettable trifle I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, sung with the extremely talented but also very unknown Siedah Garrett.

New Kid in Town from Hotel California by Eagles

On this sprawling, challenging, and weird album full of definitive ‘70s chilled-out country rock, those dorks in Eagles (no the, just Eagles) went with a generic, whiny song that sounds like a parody of Eagles. Why didn’t they come out swinging and go with the album’s monster of a title cut?

How Deep is Your Love from Saturday Night Fever soundtrack

So, for the most iconic and all-compassing album of disco music to soundtrack the definitive disco movie, for which the Bee Gees were fully in charge, they released... the ballad? It’s not a bad song by any means, just a bad choice.

You Give Good Love from Whitney Houston’s self-titled debut

Sure, a big ballad like this would prove the vocal theatrics of which Houston was more than capable while also securing airplay at pop, adult contemporary, and R&B, but this is also an album that contained one of the most delightful, joyous, and delirious dance-pop songs ever in How Will I Know.

Perfect Illusion from Joanne by Lady Gaga

Million Reasons is right there.

Coming Up from McCartney II by Paul McCartney

His first album after dissolving Wings, and a companion piece to his first album, McCartney, a decade earlier, there’s so much unexpected and unabashedly strange New Wave and synth pop awesomeness on this 1980 record, particularly Temporary Secretary. But the first single was the shrill, unlistenable Coming Up...which hit #1 anyway because it said Paul McCartney on the sleeve.

Amanda from Third State by Boston

Lawsuits and studio tinkering kept the third album from ‘70s arena rock masters Boston out of stores for virtually forever, eight years after its 1978 sophomore titan Don’t Look Back. To re-acquaint the world, Boston came out with not a timeless pop-rocker, but rather the generic power ballad Amanda, which still hit #1, so what do I know?

Double One-Hit Wonders

How can you be a one-hit wonder more than once? The number one means one! you screamed into your Kindle just now. I heard it. But look, it’s possible. If you’re in a band that has just the one hit single, and then you go solo, and once more enjoy just one successful smash, that’s how. So calm the hell