5. Queens of the Stone Age – ‘Mosquito Song’ (Songs for the Deaf)
There’s actually three semi-hidden tracks on Queens of the Stone Age’s 2002 masterpiece Songs for the Deaf, an album so damned good it both conquered and legitimized the “Stoner Rock” movement as far more than a niche sub-genre. But “Mosquito Song,” which is actually listed as “secret song” on the album’s track listing, is the one truly worth mentioning, flexing accordion, piano, flamenco guitar and horns for a haunting orchestral jam. A line in the song was later used for the title to the band’s 2005 record Lullabies to Paralyze.
4. Nirvana – ‘Endless, Nameless’ (Nevermind)
Seven minutes of blistering distortion and wailing spazmatics follows ten minutes of silence after Nevermind‘s final track, “Something in the Way,” ends. A chugging blast of punk-fury abandon with free-falling melody passages, “Endless, Nameless” is a glorious snapshot into the seething, spastic polarities of the doomed grunge icon who left the world with a shotgun blast before reaching his full artistic potential.
3. Tool – ‘Disgustipated’ (Undertow)
After the thundering conclusion to “Flood” on Undertow, the CD skips forward to track 69 on American copies, where a strange sort of sermonizing takes hold under steady percussion and the bleating of sheep that’s a whole world of dark-comedy oddness. The menacing “This is necessary” mantra gives way to the repeated “Life feeds on life feeds on life….,” a bad-trip crash course in Darwinistic survivalism. Several minutes of crickets and nighttime nature sounds later, an unsettling monotonous phone message voice sets in: “It was daylight when you woke up in your ditch. You looked up at your sky. That made blue be your color. You had your knife there with you too.” This goes on for a while, with shifting colors and assorted oddities that cement this as the single strangest hidden track on the list.
Useless trivia: The term “Disgustipated” was first coined in a Popeye comic book in the 1930’s, used to express a combined feeling of disgust and exasperation with a situation.
2. Wilco – ‘Candy Floss’ (Summerteeth)
Summerteeth sported not one but two hidden tracks, the other being an alternate version of “A Shot In The Arm”. Elvis Costello, Squeeze and the Beach Boys’ influence is immediately apparent, with a synth chorus and further confirmation that Wilco has all the pop sensibilities they need to be chart darlings – but they choose to stick to their creative guns, carving their own paths instead.
1. Nine Inch Nails – ‘Physical’ (Broken)
When Broken was first released, this and another extra track, “Suck,” were included on a Mini CD packaged along with the blistering industrial EP. Upon learning that music stores were removing the mini CD and selling it separately, the two tracks were added onto the EP as tracks 98 and 99, respectively. At the 29 second mark, NIN nucleus Trent Reznor can be heard saying, “Eat your heart out, Steve.” It’s been speculated that this was directed towards Steve Gottlieb of TVT Records with whom Reznor had been feuding, as Gottlieb would not let him out of his contract. Broken was created entirely without the knowledge of TVT.
