The Wonder Stuff - Something For Sammy
Some songs, no matter how good, are just destined for hidden track status. Brilliant though they are, catchy though they may be, something about them means they don’t quite work as album tracks, but leave a pause after the last song on the official tracklist has faded out and hey presto - you’ve just created a space for the magical otherworld of the hidden track.
Some hidden tracks are rubbish, pointless, or just plain annoying (hello Stone Roses, yes I’m looking at you). Others are sweet and quirky, but only make sense in the crack between the closing bars of the album proper and the click of the tape end, or the whirr of the CD spinning down to a halt.
Something for Sammy falls firmly into the last of these categories. A shade under three minutes long, it consists almost entirely of its introduction - two minutes of swirling strings that hover and crest, occasionally teasing a vocal only to soar away again. When the lyric finally breaks in, it consists of just two almost indentical cryptic lines:
Well there’s better necks to break and better cars to crash
Yeah there’s better necks to break and better cars to crash
It closes with a brief reprise of the intro melody: quirky and esoteric, it’s perfect hidden track material.