A long, long time ago, people in their millions bought CDs, strange reflective discs with art on one side and laser music on the other. Back then, in that golden age before MP3s were even a glimmer in Steve Jobs’ eye, bands would often include songs on their albums that were unlisted. Whether you called them secret tracks or hidden tracks or something else entirely, they were always fun – in that pre-internet age – to discover. Most often they could be found at the end of a long period a silence that followed the last listed track, but sometimes you’d have to rewind the first song and listen to it in the CD’s pre-track gap.
Nowadays, of course, no-one buys CDs and you can pretty much find everything on YouTube, so it’s not as much fun. Still, there have been some genuinely great secret album tracks over the years, so we decided to round up the best ones. And by ‘best ones’, we mean actual songs, not just hilarious skits or slices of ambient noise (we’re looking at you, Pearl Jam!).
Here are the 11 best secret tracks in rock history…