21 Underrated Prince Songs You Need to Hear Now!

Over the coming weeks we will surely be hearing so much Prince you’ll think it’s 1984 again. The reason is an undeniably sad one, but Prince’s music is almost scientifically designed to make people happy, so there has never been a better time to spin the hits. And there’s no doubt the hits will get the most spinning. Prince had enough that it shouldn’t get too repetitious, but he was an artist through and through, and his album tracks and B-sides were very often as spectacular as the stuff that got lots of radio play.

So now would be a good time to roll out 21 underrated Prince songs for those who’ve never gone deeper than The Hits. In fact, my sole criterion for determining what might be underrated was to simply eliminate anything that wasn’t on volumes one and two of that compilation series (the bonus disc of B-sides, however, was fair game). My one other exception was “Batdance”, a number one hit that somehow got left off of The Hits, possibly because it’s enduring reputation is not quite as respected as that of, say, “1999” or “When Doves Cry”. Nevertheless, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Batdance” is the most bizarre and experimental song to ever take Billboard’s top spot, and in it’s own way, it is completely underrated. Yet I’m pretty sure you’ve heard it… at least you did if you were alive in 1989, and if you weren’t, why are you reading Psychobabble? Unless you’ve served as a foot soldier in the Purple Legion, there’s a fair chance you have not heard all 21 of the following underrated Prince songs. 

1. “Sister” (from the album Dirty Mind) 1980

Ever since those primordial days when Jackie Brenston warned you ladies he was gonna introduce you to his “Rocket 88,” Rock & Roll has had a very dirty mind. In the sixties, guys like Mick Jagger and Lou Reed upped Rock’s pornography quotient, but none of those cats had the sheer audacity to do what Prince did on his third album and first true mission statement. Dirty Mind pirouetted over a series of sexual taboos, culminating in “Sister”, an ode to incest screeched in gospel rapture that not only memorializes losing one’s virginity to a sibling but also tosses in references to S&M, blow jobs, blue balls, and getting one’s underwear caught in one’s pubes. It was as if Prince wanted to separate the fair-weather “I Wanna Be Your Lover” fans from the real freaks who would follow him down any dark alley he chose. Those who did were rewarded a-hundred fold.

2. “Private Joy” (from the album Controversy) 1981

21 Underrated Monster of the Week Episodes of 'The X Files' You Need to Watch Now!

When The X-Files returns to FOX on January 24, 2016, what can we expect? A six-episode mythology arc or a half-dozen all-new monsters to make us hide under our FBI-issued trench coats? I’d wager that Chris Carter is going to give us the former, and I will definitely watch it even though my favorite episodes of his investigative sci-fi/horror series were the ones that freaked us out with one-off parasite men, robotic cockroaches, and inbred families. Personally, I’m a Monster of the Week guy.

Classic X-Files MOW’s such as “The Host”, “War of the Coprophages”, and “Home” need no introduction to casual X-Files fans. They are regularly praised in “Best Episodes Ever!” features in print and online publications such as Empire, Entertainment Weekly, the AV Club, Vanity Fair, and Hollywood Reporter. But what about the less known, less celebrated monsters of the week? Monsters need love to. Didn’t we learn anything from Frankenstein, or more on-topic, the monstrously overrated “Postmodern Prometheus” episode of The X-Files that James Whale’s movie inspired? Well, that’s what this post is all about, Spooky!

After eliminating all the shows covered in the aforementioned publications, I came to a few sobering realizations. There aren’t quite 21 “great” underrated Monster-of-the-Week episodes, and there isn’t a single underrated episode written by Darin Morgan. That wasn’t too much of a surprise since Morgan gets my vote for the series’ greatest writer (sorry, Vince!), but I was still hoping to give the man a little love in this piece. So—for the record—I love you, Darin Morgan.

But enough about the love between a lowly blog writer and a wonderfully talented TV writer. Let’s shift our love focus to the “ship” between “I’ll believe anything!” FBI wackadoo Fox Mulder and “It isn’t scientifically plausible!” FBI scientist Dana Scully. We’re also going to focus on getting you, dear reader, to fall in love with these 21 Underrated Episodes of The X-Files You Need to Watch Now!

21 Underrated Songs by The Monkees You Need to Hear Now!

I’ve done quite a few of these “21 Underrated Songs You Need to Hear Now” lists, but this is the one that matters most, because none of the other groups I’ve covered are as misunderstood as The Monkees. Ridiculed during their time for being phonies because they formed on a TV studio back lot and not in a garage, The Monkees were painted as a quartet of no-talent, bubblegum salesmen. Anyone with ears who heard their best hits could detect this wasn’t true, even if the guys rarely contributed more than their considerable vocal talents to those charting singles. But as far as I’m concerned, you have to dig a bit deeper to uncover the songs that really made The Monkees extraordinary. Some of these non-hits—such as “Randy Scouse Git” (which actually was a hit in the UK), “Shades of Gray”, “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round?”, “Saturday’s Child”, “Mary Mary”, “Goin’ Down”, and “For Pete’s Sake”—have been well represented enough on hits compilations that they can’t really be called underrated anymore. A lot of other Monkees recordings have gotten a lot less exposure than they deserve. So for anyone who still holds to that increasingly outdated opinion that Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz (celebrating his 70^th birthday today), Peter Tork, and Davy Jones weren’t truly talented, truly original singers, musicians, writers, and producers really does need to hear the following 21 underrated songs.

1. “Papa Gene’s Blues” (from the album The Monkees) 1966

The Monkees were rarely taken seriously during their own time, but fortunately a lot of the stupid prejudices to which they were subjected have faded over time. Today it’s hard to feature anyone not succumbing to the exhilaration of Mike’s Tex-Mex jambalaya “Papa Gene’s Blues”. With its rising and falling chord progression and simplistically joyful chorus, it remains one of Nes’s freshest compositions. With its intricate web of percussion and twangy guitars, it is one of his most magnetic productions. Mike deserves extra credit for demanding Peter Tork be allowed to pick his acoustic in the backline, thus taking the first tentative step toward making The Monkees a real group.

2. “Sweet Young Thing” (from the album The Monkees) 1966

Despite composing some high quality material on his own, Mike Nesmith still couldn’t catch any respect from music supervisor Don Kirschner, who insisted he work with the more seasoned duo of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The experience wasn’t pleasant for anyone involved, and Mike apparently said something that reduced Carole to tears at one point. Fortunately, something great came out of the forced collaboration, the stomping, careening Cajun funk “Sweet Young Thing”. Like “Papa Gene’s Blues”, it was a real pop anomaly in ’66, and I certainly haven’t heard anything that sounds like it since. I don’t care if Mike wasn’t the guy whacking out those fuzz chords or sawing away at the fiddle (session man Jimmy Bryant deserves credit for that dizzying touch), he produced this thing, and it’s the production that makes the fairly simplistic composition come alive.

3. “All of Your Toys” (unreleased until 1987’s Missing Links compilation) recorded 1967

21 Underrated Episodes of “The Twilight Zone” You Need to Watch Now!

“Time Enough at Last”… “The Eye of the Beholder” … “To Serve Man” … “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” … “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”…

You don’t have to be a “Twilight Zone” freak to be familiar with every twist and turn these episodes take. They are among the 35 or 40 shows that have found a place in Rod Serling’s canon of classics. But what of the other 120-something episodes? Surely there are a few should-have-been-classics in that bunch.

There are, and the following episodes may be good next steps to take after watching “The Howling Man,” “The After Hours,” “Walking Distance,” and the others that have found permanent places in annual “Twilight Zone” marathons or have been parodied on “The Simpsons.” So I now submit for your approval 21 Underrated Episodes of “The Twilight Zone” You Need to Watch Now! 

(Read cautiously... here there be spoilers)

21 Underrated Songs by Siouxsie and the Banshees You Need to Hear Now!

I know, I know. As far as most people are concerned, they’re all underrated. Siouxsie and the Banshees have always had a cultier audience than their stadium-filling peers in The Cure. They slink in several slots behind The Sex Pistols and The Clash during discussions of British punk’s genesis, even though they were there from the start. Siouxsie Sioux was conspicuously, fabulously present when Steve Jones dropped the live-T.V. profanity bombs that ignited the filthy, furious war between the Pistols and proper (i.e.: tedious) society.

Of course, Siouxsie and the Banshees are hardly obscurities in the new wave collective consciousness. Siouxsie, who turns 55 today, is still as iconic for her terrifying trill as she is for her exotic, immensely influential sense of style. The band’s equally otherworldly music has been profiled on three greatest hits compilations. None of the tracks contained therein are included here. Instead, Psychobabble digs a little deeper into the dark wells of the band’s catalogue, reemerges a little dazed, a little roughed up, but clutching 21 underrated songs by Siouxsie and the Banshees you need to hear now.

1. “Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)” (from the album The Scream) 1978

In classic punk fashion, Siouxsie and the Banshees began their career doing everything in their power to be as off-putting as possible: interminably massacring “The Lord’s Prayer” at their debut show, adopting disturbing Third Reich imagery, allowing Sid Vicious to drum. Those who know the group from pleasantly poppy crossovers like “Cities in Dust” and “Kiss Them for Me” might be shocked to hear their early work. Disjointed, strident, far scarier than anything in Johnny Rotten’s imagination. “Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)” from their debut embodies this as well as any other track, instantly placing Siouxsie’s swastikas in ironic quotes with a dedication to anti-Nazi artist John Heartfeld, then lamenting/celebrating an increasing mechanized society to a shudder-inducing mechanical rhythm. Siouxsie’s conflicting messages clash just as hard as the vertiginous beat.


2. “Jigsaw Feeling” (from the album The Scream) 1978

Like “Metal Postcard”, “Jigsaw Feeling” draws its immense power from intense Sturm and Drang, but there’s also some fiery guitar work from John McKay to melt the ice around Siouxsie’s shout. Still, that does little to sooth the savagely paranoid lyric.


3. “Nictotine Stain” (from the album The Scream) 1978

21 Underrated Songs by The Kinks You Need to Hear Now!

The Kinks are an uncommon group. A plethora of bands seem to sit under that name: the pioneering heavy garage rockers who forged “You Really Got Me”, the distinctly British craftsmen who fashioned “Waterloo Sunset”, the olde tyme big band that made Muswell Hillbillies, the theatre group that staged Preservation Acts 1 and 2, the arena rockers who bludgeoned their way through Give the People What They Want, the ‘80s poppers who made a splash on MTV with “Come Dancing”. The Kinks’ reputation is equally schizophrenic (acutely so; not to mention paranoiac). They scored a wealth of hits in their U.K. homeland and enough in the U.S. to make them more than a cult band on both sides of the pond. Yet The Kinks are a cult band because the mass of their discography—and the mass of their greatest recordings—are barely known outside their fanatical following. And most Kinks die-hards do not worship the band for “You Really Got Me”, “Lola”, or “Come Dancing”. It is their peculiar, unashamedly sentimental, quiet masterpieces that moved Rolling Stone’s Paul Williams to scrawl that Kinks fandom is not just an enthusiasm for “some rock group. It’s more like a taste for fine wines from a certain valley, a devotion to a particular breed of cocker spaniel.” Williams wrote this astute observation in his review of The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society. If ever there was proof of The Kinks’ cultiness, it is the fact that their greatest album was a complete flop in both England and America. But the record has built a following over the years that now allows it to be spoken in the same breath as Pet Sounds, Revolver, Beggars Banquet, and Blonde on Blonde. As Ray Davies himself noted, “It’s the most successful failure of all time.”

So many of The Kinks’ commercial failures were artistic triumphs that they are poorly represented by the usual crop of “Greatest Hits” compilations. That means there are numerous treasures for the budding Kinks kultist to discover. The following is a starter list of twenty-one wonderful creations that never slipped onto singles or major hits compilations. For anyone interesting in traveling to the marvelously realized nation Ray Davies, Dave Davies, Mick Avory, and Peter Quaife founded, here are twenty-one splendid tickets.

1. “Wait ‘Til the Summer Comes Along” (from the E.P. The Kwyet Kinks) 1965

We begin in a suitably untraveled, leaf-strewn nook of the Kinkdom. A spot where younger brother Dave huddles with his acoustic guitar, fending off winter winds and dreaming of summer. Dave’s first solo composition (he’d co-written the pleasant pop piffle “Got My Feet on the Ground” with Ray for the Kinda Kinks L.P.) is strong and mature, highly reminiscent of John Lennon’s recent dark country/folk numbers on Beatles for Sale. In his autobiography, Kink, Dave explains that he wrote “Wait ‘Til the Summer Comes Along” “during a moment of depression and reflection” and that the song is “about loss and regret.” He was possibly reflecting on a girl named Sue, whom he’d gotten pregnant while still a teenager. His mother prevented him from seeing Sue again and kept him from knowing about his daughter for years. Dave's pain over the Sue situation inspired much of his work, and the first song in this sad series is likely “Wait ‘Til the Summer Comes Along” (“Can it be that she never wanted to break some poor mother’s heart”). If so, it is an ambiguous but suitably fine forerunner.


2. “The World Keeps Going Round” (from the album The Kink Kontroversy) 1965

After delivering the usual Mersey Beat sentiments of love and lust on big hits such as “You Really Got Me” and “Set Me Free”, Ray Davies started expressing a more

June 28, 2010: 21 Underrated Beach Boys Songs You Need to Hear Now!

Summer’s here again, which means it’s time to listen to copious amounts of The Beach Boys. But where to start; where to start? That raggedy old copy of Endless Summer perhaps? Or a stack of tracks covering the usual sandy paths: “Good Vibrations” and “I Get Around” and “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Surfin’ USA”? Perhaps you’d like to branch out a bit, and a discography as rich with buried treasure as that of The Beach Boys is certainly worth a deeper dive.

When I composed similar “21 Underrated Songs” lists for The Rolling Stones and The Who, I had little trouble deciding what constituted an underrated song. I basically just stuck with anything that hadn’t appeared on a major Greatest Hits type album. The Stones released very few of these, so a wide portion of their catalogue was ripe for inclusion. The Who released a ton of them, but nearly every one of their “Best of” collections consists of picks pulled from the same pool of 20 or so songs. The Beach Boys have also put out a lot of compilations, but there is wider variation among them. So, I basically stuck to songs that were not released as single A-sides or on the first two Beach Boys comps I bought: Endless Summer and Good Vibrations: Best of the Beach Boys.

This means some exceptional tracks that are relatively underplayed did not make this list: “The Warmth of the Sun”, “Girl Don’t Tell Me”, “Let Him Run Wild”, “Friends”, “Surf’s Up”, “Sail On Sailor”, etc. Those all deserve to be heard more often than they are, but I set some parameters for myself and stuck to them, damn it. That being said, maybe you’ll discover something that will wow your soul among these 21 Underrated Beach Boys Songs You Need to Hear Now!

1. “Lonely Sea” (from the album Surfin’ USA!) 1963

The common misconceptions of those skeptical of the artistic value of The Beach Boys’ music and the cult it inspired is that the group didn’t show signs of progress until Pet Sounds and, in the words of Rolling Stones magazine’s Dave Marsh, “Brian Wilson became a Major Artist by making music no one outside his own coterie ever heard” (Marsh is talking about SMiLE, which I’ll discuss more further down this list). This is wholly untrue, and evidence of Wilson’s “Major Artistry” (those are Marsh’s smugly mocking caps, by the way) is apparent as early as The Beach Boys’ second album, Surfin’ USA. For those who don’t think the ecstatically fresh title song is enough to qualify Wilson as an important artist (i.e.: people who neither care about nor understand Rock & Roll), there’s “Lonely Sea”. In this one largely forgotten ballad is all of the harmonic inventiveness and heart-wrenching pathos that would help make Pet Sounds the monster classic it has become. Unlike Pet Sounds, the arrangement is as sparse as could be. Some lightly brushed drums, barely-there bass, and a gently picked, heavily tremeloed guitar are the only backdrop to Brian’s chilling lead vocal and the guys’ gossamer harmonies.


2. “We’ll Run Away” (from the album All Summer Long) 1964

Another beautiful ballad, this one pulled from The Beach Boys’ first great album, All Summer Long. One of the few songs from that album that has not become an overly-familiar favorite, “We’ll Run Away” is like a precursor to

January 18, 2010: 21 Underrated Songs by The Who You Need to Hear Now!

A couple of months ago I tossed together a list of 21 Underrated Songs by The Rolling Stones in reaction to the limited number of their 400-or-so songs that have really worked their way into the popular conscious. Perhaps The Who are even more deserving of such a list. For a band that is widely acknowledged as one of Rock & Roll’s definitive acts, The Who have a “greatest hits” roster essentially represented by, maybe, ten songs, which isn’t too surprising considering that, at least in the U.S., they were never really a singles band. In their UK homeland, they were arguably the greatest singles band, yet non-hardcore fans on both sides of the Atlantic still only seem to know “My Generation”, “Pinball Wizard”, “Magic Bus”, “Who Are You”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, and a miniscule handful of other well-worn tracks. This is unfortunate considering the consistent excellence of Pete Townshend and John Entwistle’s songs… not to mention the band’s magnificent playing: was there ever a better guitarist than Townshend, a better drummer than Moon, a better bassist than Entwistle? Not to my ears.

So I’ve chosen 21 of my favorite Who songs that never ended up on one of their half-a-zillion greatest hits compilations that boringly trot out the same dozen or so warhorses over and over and over again (in fact, Geffen just released yet another of these albums called, unimaginatively enough, Greatest Hits, when an almost identical collection titled Then and Now: 1964-2004 was released only five years ago and remains readily available). As was the case with my list of underrated Rolling Stones songs, I’ve opted out of including covers, which is less of an issue since The Who got their start after original compositions came into vogue. Still, their renditions of Bo Diddley’s “Here ‘Tis”, Otis Blackwell’s “Daddy Rolling Stone”, The Everly Brothers’ “Man with the Money”, Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues”, Mose Alison’s “Young Man Blues”, and even The Stones’ “Under My Thumb” are well-worth checking out. Instead we’ll be focusing on the mod blowouts, macabre massacres, heavy rockers, and introspective ballads that came directly from the pens of Messrs. Townshend and Entwistle.

1. “The Good’s Gone” (from the album My Generation) 1965

November 5, 2009: 21 Underrated Rolling Stones Songs You Need to Hear Now!

This past Monday, the AOL Radio Blog posted a list of the Top 10 Rolling Stones Songs, and not surprisingly, it was yet another assemblage of the painfully obvious. The thing is, the tracks were chosen by “AOL radio listeners” (whoever they may be), which got me thinking about how limited the Stones’ best known songs are. I don’t mean that they’re limited in quality: big hits like “Paint It Black”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, “Gimmie Shelter”, and “Sympathy for the Devil” are without a doubt among the band’s very best. I mean there just aren’t that many of them. This is curious since the Stones are often ranked right behind The Beatles as the most popular Rock & Roll group. But while you can switch on a radio at any time of the day and hear Beatles “obscurities” like “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” or “Martha My Dear”, the same could not be said about Stones deep cuts like “Jigsaw Puzzle” or “Citadel”. Consequently, the non-Stones fanatic is probably only familiar with the same twenty or thirty songs that keep getting churned out over the airwaves.

To do my part in remedying this tragic situation, I’ve put together a list of twenty-one stunning Stones tracks that need to be heard by every woman, man, child, squirrel, and paper cup on the planet and elsewhere. I only had three loose criteria for this list: none of the songs could have appeared on a major compilation like the Big Hits, Rolled Gold, Hot Rocks, or 40 Licks albums (although I did make one exception, which I’ll explain below); no covers (which was a little painful, because stuff like “She Said Yeah”, “Down the Road Apiece”, and “I Don’t Know Why” demand to be heard as much as any original on this list); and they all have to do their part in proving how eclectic, innovative, or ass-shakingly exhilarating the World Greatest Rock & Roll Band was and is.

1. “Ride On Baby” (from the album Flowers) 1966

“Ride On Baby” was recorded during sessions for an aborted album called Could You Walk on Water?, which was scrapped after Decca records refused to release anything with such a “sacrilegious” title. When the band decided to junk some of the Walk on Water tracks while reworking it as Aftermath, “Ride On Baby” was one of the casualties. That The Rolling Stones could ditch a track this infectious with an arrangement this sumptuous (harpsichord, marimbas, African drums, piano, Japanese koto, and electric guitars all mesh perfectly) is a testament to what an abundance of superior material they had worked up in the mid-sixties. In England, the song was handed off to blue-eyed soul singer Chris Farlowe, but the Stones version eventually surfaced in the U.S. on the Flowers compilation in the summer of ‘67.

2. “I Am Waiting” (from the album Aftermath) 1966