45 Singles You Just Had to Buy


In the bad old days before the internet & streaming😀, what pieces of music did you have to purchase on a 45rpm single because there was no other genuine way of getting them home? The trouble was that more often than not, an album cut of a rock-and-roll hit would be a different version/take/mix of the one you loved hearing on the radio. Which means you just had to get the 45.

Here's a random handful of mine --

Hanky Panky -- Tommy James & the Shondells

Save the Country -- Laura Nyro

She Don't Care about Time and Change is Now -- The Byrds

Baby Please Don't Go -- Them

Candy Girl -- Four Seasons

The Battle of New Orleans -- Johnny Horton

edcyn

@tylermunns For me at least, the US and UK LP releases always had enough differences in them to warrant buying both. I got to say, too, that the UK releases were almost always the ones I kept when, in a fit of madness, I'd decide it just wasn't "proppah" to have two copies of a single LP. . Much, much better pressings. A more interesting collection of songs. The mixes in the UK releases may not have had quite the punch of the U.S. ones, but in every other respect they were the editions I listened to.

@lowrider57 Yeah, I don’t know the degree to which those transcontinental track listings were decided by the artists, if at all.
“We’ll just decide for the US LP that track 3 is expendable and replace it with a single.”  
“This previously-released EP should be an album. We’ll just tag some other stuff onto it, call it a ‘new album.’” 

12" Purple Rain, by Prince.  I cranked it up the night he died.  Even my wife felt the loss.

@officerat I love my “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” 12”.  
Mainly because it has “Irresistible Bitch” as the B-side

'Offshore Banking Business'    The Members

Ghostbusters theme, on 12 inch.   Played loud.