The Death of the B-Side: What We Lost When We Lost the CD Single

The streaming era killed the thrill of the chase, the experimental throwaways, and the joy of the Saturday afternoon record shop pilgrimage.

I want you to close your eyes and go back. It’s 1997. You are wearing a fleece that is arguably a fire hazard. You are standing in the middle of Our Price, or maybe Woolworths if you’re in a smaller town, clutching a crumpled fiver. You aren’t there for an album. You are there for a single.

Specifically, you are there for CD1 of a two-part set. It comes in a slimline jewel case, or perhaps a cardboard digipak that will inevitably disintegrate within three weeks of living in your school bag. You hand over your money, you get your change, and you rush home not just to hear the song you’ve heard on the radio forty times that week, but to hear the other stuff. The weird stuff. The B-sides.

We didn’t know it then, but we were living through a golden age of format fetishism that the digital age has completely obliterated. The death of the physical single didn’t just save us space on our shelves; it killed a specific, vital artery of musical creativity.

The Economics of the “Part 1” Sticker

Let’s address the cynical elephant in the room first. The multi-format single was, at its heart, a chart-rigging scam. Record labels knew that if they released “Beetlebum” or “Paranoid Android” across two CDs and a cassette, obsessive fans (us) would buy all three to get the exclusive tracks. It was a tax on loyalty. It was manipulation. And god, I miss it.

Because that cynical cash-grab created a vacuum that needed filling. If a band had to release two CDs for a single, they needed extra tracks. A lot of them. A prolific band in the mid-90s might need to generate twelve to fifteen extra songs a year just to fill out their singles. They couldn’t all be polished radio hits. They had to be sketches, remixes, acoustic demos, or drug-fuelled jams recorded at 4 AM.

And that is where the magic happened. The A-side was the business suit; the B-side was the band in their pants, drunk, and telling the truth.

Oasis, Suede, and the Alternate History of Britpop

You cannot talk about this era without mentioning Oasis. Say what you want about the Gallaghers now—and I have plenty to say about 50-year-old men still wearing parkas—but between 1994 and 1996, they were incapable of writing a bad song. *The Masterplan*, a compilation of their B-sides, is arguably a better album than *Be Here Now* and certainly better than anything they released in the 2000s.

Tracks like “Acquiesce” or “The Masterplan” were relegated to the back of singles. Imagine having that much arrogance, that much overflowing talent, that you’d hide your best choruses on the back of a “Some Might Say” CD single. It was a power move.

Then there was Suede. Brett Anderson treated the B-side as a sacred space. If you only bought the albums, you missed half the story. The B-sides were darker, weirder, more sexually ambiguous. They were for the true believers. It created a secret language between the band and the fan. Buying the single felt like joining a club. Streaming doesn’t have clubs; it has playlists, which isn’t the same thing at all.

The “Skilful” Filler

Of course, it wasn’t all hidden gems. For every “Talk Tonight,” there were a dozen terrible remixes. The 90s CD single was often a minefield of “The 12-inch Donk Remix” that went on for nine minutes and sounded like a washing machine falling down some stairs.

But even the rubbish had charm. I remember buying Blur singles where the B-sides were essentially Damon Albarn messing around with a synthesizer preset for three minutes. It was indulgent, yes. But it humanised them. It showed you the seams of the recording process. In an era where modern pop is polished to a terrifying, frictionless sheen, I miss hearing a band clearly run out of ideas and just hit ‘record’ anyway.

The Tactile Ritual

We also need to talk about the object itself. The CD single was a design object. The artwork often formed a triptych when you lined up CD1, CD2, and the cassette. The liner notes were microscopic. The smell of the glossy paper. The way the little plastic teeth in the centre of the case would inevitably snap, leaving your disc rattling around like a loose hubcap.

There was a ritual to it. You’d get the bus into town. You’d browse. You’d make the purchase. You’d read the sleeve notes on the bus home. You’d put it in the stereo. You were committed. You had paid £3.99 for this. You were going to listen to it, even if the third track was a dub remix by a guy named “Mad Professor.”

Today, if a song doesn’t grab you in the first four seconds, you skip it. You have the entire history of recorded music in your pocket, and as a result, nothing feels valuable. When you paid for music, you gave it time. You let it grow on you. You forgave the B-side its indulgences because you owned it.

The End of the Deep Cut

The B-side is dead. It’s been replaced by the “Bonus Track” or the “Deluxe Edition,” which usually just means a live version recorded on an iPhone. Bands don’t need to fill space anymore. They release a steady drip-feed of content designed for the algorithm.

We’ve gained convenience. I can listen to any song, anywhere, instantly. I don’t miss scratching a CD because I looked at it funny. I don’t miss the Argos catalogue shelving units needed to store them.

But I do miss the discovery. I miss the feeling that I had found something secret on the back of a pop song. I miss the imperfections. The CD single was a snapshot of a band in a specific week, warts and all. It was a format that encouraged excess, experimentation, and failure.

So, here’s to the B-side. To the acoustic demos, the ill-advised covers, and the four-track recordings that sounded like they were taped in a bathroom. You were rubbish, mostly. But you were ours.