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mistakes left in!

firepoint525

firepoint525

This should be a fun topic. Songs that you are aware of, in which at least one mistake was made, but for whatever reason, they chose to leave it in.

Example: In "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" by Billy Joel, there is a line in there (near the end) in which he sings, "ssssssssssssometimes that's what it takes." He wanted to go back in there and correct that, but since it was a song about not being perfect, Columbia suggested that he leave it that way. And so it was.

I'm sure that there are others, but that is one of the few that I know of in which a mistake was left in.
 
Was that a mistake, or was that intentional?

You reminded me of another one. "Junk Food Junkie" by Larry Groce. He starts into the chorus, "in the daytime, I'm Mr. Natural," but then abandons that to go into a short solo. He then returns from that, and goes back into the chorus. Of course, it was recorded live, so there may have been nothing that he could do about that.

Seems like there were some gender mistakes near the end of the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," like "Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face," etc., which they later realized was a mistake, but left it that way, anyway.
 
"Hello, It's Me," Todd Rundgren. Todd stumbles through "I'll come around to see you once in a while" in the final verse.
 
Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan "Girl From The North Country" (Nashville Skyline). Someone blows the last stanza.
 
Louie Louie -- The Kingsmen: Lead singer comes in too early after the bridge.
Please Please Me -- The Beatles: John and Paul are out of sync, possibly singing different words, in the final verse.
Gimme Little Sign -- Brenton Wood: Wood sings "frown" as "frowned." "When you're feelin' down, wearin' a frowned."
 
How could I have forgotten this one?

"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by BTO. Randy Bachman wrote it for his brother, who had a stuttering problem. It was never even intended for release, but the record company heard it, suggested that it be put on the album, and from there, radio started playing it, and then it became a single, and went on to be a #1 hit. Bachman had tried to re-record it "straight" without all the stuttering, but wasn't able to pull it off. So you could say that the entire song was a "mistake."
 
In Mary Wells' "My Guy," she hits a bad note on the word 'my' in the line "my opinion is, he's the cream of the crop..."

Also, Chubby Checker's "Limbo Rock" has a clinker at the first mention of the word "rock" in the song.
 
The Searchers, "Needles and Pins." Supposedly, they were not even aware that that they were singing "needles and pins-uh" almost every time that the title lyric came up, until they heard it in playback. But they left it that way, anyway. Seems like they needed an extra syllable there! ;D
 
How about Bob Dylan's "uhp" in I Want You? And when the Four Seasons remade Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone, they switched two words and sang about the "pretty people" this way: "They're thinkin', drinkin' they got it made." Oopsie!
 
Beatles - "Day Tripper". A lot of Beatles songs have mistakes which they left in, but this one is particularly bad. In one verse, John sings "one-day driver" instead of "Sunday driver". The guitar and tambourine drop out for about a second at around 1:50 -- allegedly an intentional edit to mask a noise on the master tape. And then towards the end John also sang an extra "yeah", breaking the alteration between "day tripper" and "day tripper, yeah". They tried to fix it in editing by fading out the vocals during that part, but you can still hear it. The stereo mix also has some instruments switch between the left and right channels during the song.
 
Dion "Donna the Prima Donna". First chorus "... she's the girl next door...". Second chorus "... she's the Donna next door..." Works better the second way :)
 
firepoint525 said:
The Searchers, "Needles and Pins." Supposedly, they were not even aware that that they were singing "needles and pins-uh" almost every time that the title lyric came up, until they heard it in playback. But they left it that way, anyway. Seems like they needed an extra syllable there! ;D
Click to expand...

And if you listen closely (especially on the stereo mix) you can hear the bass drum pedal squeaking all the way through the song. ;D

The "cough" during the organ solo on Beach Boys "Wendy"

And from the 70's.. Billy Gibbons "Rumor's spreading round..." introduction on ZZ Top's "La Grange" was an spontaneous Ad Lib. The engineer was checking recording levels and luckily caught it on tape.
 
On the Beach Boys "Help Me Rhonda" towards the end of the song (last third), you can hear a guitar bang into a microphone. I never noticed this on the vinyl versions, but you can hear it on the CDs.
 
On the Beach Boys' "Custom Machine", you can hear someone either singing or saying (as if to remind someone else what the next line is) ahead of time with..."A stereophonic speaker set with vibrasonic sound".

Bongo Rock by Preston Epps has a fairly clunky splice in it that's hard to miss once you've heard it.

In some Beatles releases of "If I Fell" you can hear John's voice crack badly in the second verse
on the last word "....And I, would be sad if our new love, was in vain."
This was present in the original releases of the movie "Hard Day's Night", but it was later "corrected" by splicing
in another section of the recording where his voice didn't choke up.

The Surfaris never liked the original popular recording of "Wipeout", feeling that the lead guitar was out of tune (it was).
But none of the attempts to re-record the song ever had the same feel as the original release with the
"out of tune" guitar. Somehow it sounds wrong with the lead guitar properly tuned.
 
Speaking of cracking voices, did Felix Cavalieri make his voice crack so badly -- twice -- on "I've Been Lonely So Long" on purpose or was it a mistake that sounded good and was left in. I assume Joe Cocker knew he wasn't going to be able to hit that last high note on "You Are So Beautiful," so I don't think that was a mistake at all.

Out of timeframe, but Paula Cole's "I Don't Wanna Wait" also has several I-can't-sing-this-high moments. I'm assuming those were deliberate attempts to manufacture vulnerability.
 
Department of articles and agreement: In ABBA's "The Winner Takes it All," Agnetha sings "the gods may throw a dice." Whether she made the mistake or Bjorn made it in the writing, who knows.
 
satech said:
Beatles - "Day Tripper". A lot of Beatles songs have mistakes which they left in, but this one is particularly bad. In one verse, John sings "one-day driver" instead of "Sunday driver". The guitar and tambourine drop out for about a second at around 1:50 -- allegedly an intentional edit to mask a noise on the master tape. And then towards the end John also sang an extra "yeah", breaking the alteration between "day tripper" and "day tripper, yeah". They tried to fix it in editing by fading out the vocals during that part, but you can still hear it. The stereo mix also has some instruments switch between the left and right channels during the song.
Click to expand...

The Beatles left in a lot of mistakes. I think the most famous is arguably "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da", where McCartney messes up the last verse and switches the gender of Desmond and Molly.

Then there's "I Am The Walrus", where John mixed in a live sample direct off the radio (a BBC production of "King Lear"). Sounded great, but it was mixed into the mono track, so in order to keep it for the stereo version, the engineers had to mix that part in fake stereo (duophonic).
 
Tom Wells said:
Bongo Rock by Preston Epps has a fairly clunky splice in it that's hard to miss once you've heard it.
Click to expand...
The Beatles' "She Loves You" has several tape splices big enough to drive a truck through, including one where there's a very noticeable EQ change on the highs. The many remasterings and re-releases over the years have attempted to cover this up, with varying degrees of success.
 
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