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45 Singles You Just Had to Buy

In the bad old days before the internet & streaming😀, what pieces of music did you have to purchase on a 45rpm single because there was no other genuine way of getting them home? The trouble was that more often than not, an album cut of a rock-and-roll hit would be a different version/take/mix of the one you loved hearing on the radio. Which means you just had to get the 45.

Here's a random handful of mine --

Hanky Panky -- Tommy James & the Shondells

Save the Country -- Laura Nyro

She Don't Care about Time and Change is Now -- The Byrds

Baby Please Don't Go -- Them

Candy Girl -- Four Seasons

The Battle of New Orleans -- Johnny Horton

edcyn
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,393 posts
 

Didn't the Beatles and the Stones release singles on 7" and not include them on an album?

audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
1,991 posts
 

I buy 45’s now and then just to get the one song I like, rather than buying the whole album. Just bought the 45 of Player "baby come back".

tylermunns
586 posts
 

@lowrider57 technically, yes, but it kinda depended on which version of the albums one purchased.
For UK releases, singles and LPs were very often mutually exclusive.
The US LPs would often include those UK singles at the expense of album tracks, or the US LPs would function as something of a hodgepodge of contemporaneous songs.

Viewing the “true” release chronology, the “true” catalog as being solely the UK one, then, yes, singles/EP releases and LP releases were often mutually  exclusive, song-wise.

 

lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,393 posts
 

@tylermunns  Thanks, great answer. I forgot how screwy song selection was between the UK and US releases. 

It makes me wonder if the band and UK label decided the format for the release. Then the US label and distributor decided what the Yanks should get.

edcyn OP
1,876 posts
 

@tylermunns For me at least, the US and UK LP releases always had enough differences in them to warrant buying both. I got to say, too, that the UK releases were almost always the ones I kept when, in a fit of madness, I'd decide it just wasn't "proppah" to have two copies of a single LP. . Much, much better pressings. A more interesting collection of songs. The mixes in the UK releases may not have had quite the punch of the U.S. ones, but in every other respect they were the editions I listened to.

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