I have a theory that if you wanted to quickly put together a reliably excellent group of pop, rock, and rap tracks (say, on your iPod), your best bet is to make a playlist that consists solely of track twos. This theory derives from a couple of rules of thumb I always use to make a quick evaluation of an album if I'm thinking about buying it:
1. Track 2 nearly always provides a strong sense of the sound and style of the rest of the album.
2. If I like tracks 2 and 8, I'll like the whole album.
What about track 1, you may ask? Well, of course some of the greatest songs ever recorded are track ones -"Smells Like Teen Spirit", "London Calling", "A Hard Day's Night", "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Like a Rolling Stone", "Thunder Road", "Where the Streets Have No Name". But the first slot is a spottier proposition than you might think. First of all, in the parade of great track ones, there are few surprises. All the songs I mentioned are iconic, which is another way of saying that you've heard them all a million times. They're the songs that come to mind right away when you think of the bands that recorded them; that's not a bad thing, but it doesn't yield a lot of hidden gems either. Second, a lot of bands in recent years have begun using the first track to essentially clear their throats before they launch into the proper album. This is especially true of rappers, and increasingly true in the indie and alternative rock world in the era of the 50- or 60-minute CD. Third, because over the years the big labels have insisted on putting the obviously-radio-ready single in the first slot, you tend to get a lot of track ones that are more middle-of-the-road and less daring than the rest of the album.
Meanwhile, consider the songs that follow the track ones listed above: "In Bloom", "Brand New Cadillac", "I Should Have Known Better", "El Condor Pasa", "Tombstone Blues", "Tenth Avenue Freezeout", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". All of these are great songs in their own right, but you haven't heard most of them a million times (maybe only half a million). Here are 25 other staggeringly great track twos, some of which are familiar, some of which you may have never heard but you ought to:
"Paranoid Android", Radiohead
"Sweetest Decline", Beth Orton
"Misguided Angel", Cowboy Junkies
"Thrasher", Neil Young
"Neighborhood #2 (Laika)", Arcade Fire
"Graceland", Paul Simon
"Sledgehammer", Peter Gabriel
"Crosseyed and Painless", Talking Heads
"Joga", Bjork
"Stop Dat", Dizzee Rascal
"Fifty Years After the Fair", Aimee Mann
"Helicopter", Bloc Party
"Karen", The National
"Killing in the Name", Rage Against the Machine
"Modern World", Wolf Parade
"I Don't Believe in the Sun", The Magnetic Fields
"Angels of the Silences", Counting Crows
"She Bangs the Drums", The Stone Roses
"Glamorous Glue", Morrissey
"Last Word", Archers of Loaf
"Deep Red Bells", Neko Case
"Think About It", The Jayhawks
"Comedy", Shack
"Danny Boy", Rufus Wainwright
"I'm Waiting For the Man", The Velvet Underground
This is just off the top of my head and does not even scratch the surface.
The Beatles, of course, have a list of track twos that put everyone else to shame: "Something", "Norwegian Wood", "Eleanor Rigby", "Dear Prudence", "The Fool on the Hill", "With a Little Help From My Friends", the great Smokey Robinson tribute "All I've Got To Do", "I'm a Loser", and on the US versions of the early albums, "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Eight Days a Week". (The one-two punch on Meet the Beatles of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" is to pop music what the double-whammy of the Iliad and the Odyssey is to world literature, the ur-standard that can never be equaled.) But setting The Beatles aside (allowing them to compete is just unfair), the all-time track two champions are R.E.M.: "Try Not to Breathe", "I Believe", "Pilgrimage", "Get Up", "7 ChineSe Bros.", "Crush With Eyeliner", "Maps and Legends", "Welcome to the Occupation", and of course, the best song they ever wrote, "Losing My Religion".
In short, the second track rules, and bands who want to make an album successful had better make sure track two is a keeper.