One of the consequences of the always-on, round-the-clock media culture we live in is that there are virtually no secrets anymore. The music industry is the perfect example. Supposedly secret shows by big artists are leaked to the press and fans days ahead of time; unfinished tracks are posted on MP3 blogs before the artist has even left the studio. And now you don't even have to go to the trouble of listening to an entire CD to find Easter eggs, those delicious bits of music that bands sometimes hide on their discs as a bonus.
Erik Millsap, the creator of Hiddensongs .com, has spent years compiling a database of tracks that don't appear on liner notes and sometimes are among the better songs on the album. He started the site a couple of years ago as a way to share his collection of hidden songs and elicit contributions from other music fans who had spent hours skipping around on CDs and records looking for bonus tracks.
Some of the entries on the site are fairly well known, like the inclusion of the "James Bond" theme on the American version of the Beatles' "Help!" (below) and the Dave Matthews Band's "Goodbye/The Last Stop Reprise" on "Before These Crowded Streets." But there are hundreds of more obscure Easter eggs as well: "The
Millsap has about 350 tracks in his archive, but not all of them actually qualify as songs. Some are just studio outtakes or random noise. But they still sound better than anything on Britney Spears's "Blackout." "The songs that surprise me most are the ones that are more than just people banging around on instruments or looping sounds," Millsap says. "Artists like Beck, Nine Inch Nails, and Sheryl Crow have done a great job at making songs that you could actually hear on the radio."
