A-side and B-side - Humorous Implementations

Humorous Implementations

The concept of the B-side has become so well known that many performers have released parody versions, including:

• The 1988 "Stutter Rap (No Sleep 'Til Bedtime)" by parody band Morris Minor and the Majors featured a B-side titled "Another Boring 'B'-side".
• Parody band Bad News recorded a video B-side to the VHS version of their single "Bohemian Rhapsody" titled "Every Mistake Imaginable" in which the band discusses that they have to record an extra three minutes of footage for the single to be chart eligible.
• Tracey Ullman's hit "They Don't Know" was backed by a song entitled "The B Side" and featured Ullman in a variety of comic monologues, many of which bemoaned the uselessness of B-sides.
• Paul and Linda McCartney's B-side to Linda McCartney's "Seaside Woman" (released under the alias "Suzy and the Red Stripes") was a song called "B-Side to Seaside."
• The single "O.K.?" based on the TV series Rock Follies of '77 contained a song called "B-Side?" which featured Charlotte Cornwell tunelessly singing about the fact that she is not considered good enough to sing an A-Side.
• The B-side of the single "They're Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!" by Napoleon XIV was called "!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT" and the singer billed as "NOELOPAN VIX". It was the A-side played in reverse; in fact, most of the label affixed to that B-side was a mirror image of the front label (as opposed to being spelled backwards), including the letters in the "WB" shield logo.
• Blotto's 1981 single "When the Second Feature Starts" features "The B-Side," a song about how bad B-sides are compared to A-sides.
• Love and Rockets' novelty side project The Bubblemen released only one single in 1988, "The Bubblemen Are Coming" coupled with "The B-Side," which is a field recording of bees.
• The Wall of Voodoo 1982 12" EP Two Songs by Wall of Voodoo has the 10-minute joke track "There's Nothing On This Side" on the B-side.
• Metric released in 2008 single "Help, I'm Alive" with a B-side "Help, I'm a B-Side."
• Three Dog Night's 1972 single "Shambala" featured "Our 'B' Side," about the group wishing it could be trusted to write their own songs for single release. It is most notable as the only TDN single written and produced by the whole group, and features family members on background vocals.
• Dickie Goodman's 1974 release "Energy Crisis '74" featured "The Mistake" as the B-side. "The Mistake" is simply a false start of the A-side, with Goodman saying, "Hello, we're...", followed by two minutes of silence.
• The Pearl Harbor and the Explosions song "You Got It" was backed by "Busy Little B Side," also found on the Warner Bros. 2-LP sampler, Troublemakers.
• The B-side of B.A. Robertson's 1979 single "Goosebumps" is entitled "The B-Side" and contains lyrics from the song's point of view. The lyrics describe the song as being "the back of a hit" and "real popular after the war" which can be said to relate to the domaninance of the 45 RPM single after this time and the change of significance of the A-side and the B-side after this time. This track also opens side two of Robertson's album Initial Success.

Additionally, Shonen Knife released an album called The Birds & the B-Sides in 1996. Later, Relient K released The Bird and the Bee Sides in 2008. Neither are related to one another, but both albums' names are a play on an idiom, "the birds and the bees," and the term B-Side. In fact, both recordings also include many B-sides, as their respective name would suggest.