oh wow i didn't know that
but can it be said that 'double a side' is almost a promotional gimick? i mean it's just a letter written on the record label - - kind of a "our singles go to eleven"
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also, can't the success of the pl/sff single be measured by the fact that it 'set the stage' for the sgt pepper album and may have contributed to pepper's good reception??
Good points. I don't know how it worked. Did radio stations play both songs next to each other (I doubt it) or divide airplay equally between them? If a station thought, for instance, that SFF wasn't suitable for their audience would they ignore it completely in favour of Penny Lane? Either way I can only see it as a burden to sales, and as a gimmick (which in a way I thiink you're right) I can only see it as a bad one. Seems a silly pretence to me.
None of The Beatle double A sides formed particulally well (in the Beatles context.) Except WCWIO/Day Tripper. But most folk seem to regard WCWIO as a defacto A side?
This from Wiki:
A "double A-side" is a single which has two featured songs. This practice was introduced by The Beatles in 1965 for their single "Day Tripper" which appeared on the same single with "We Can Work It Out," as the band and their label, Parlophone Records, found both songs to be equally marketable, and decided not to relegate one to B-side status.[citation needed] Following "We Can Work It Out" b/w "Day Tripper," the Beatles released a number of other double A-sided singles, namely "Yellow Submarine" b/w "Eleanor Rigby", "Strawberry Fields Forever" b/w "Penny Lane", and "Come Together" b/w "Something."
Some singles have also been designated double A-sides in retrospect, such as Elvis Presley's 1956 "Don't Be Cruel" which appeared on the same single with "Hound Dog"; this was done in retrospect because both sides became chart hits independently of one another. In fact[citation needed], "Hound Dog" was the B-side of the single as originally released.
Queen released We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions as a double A-side in 1977 in the US (not in the UK) and then Fat Bottomed Girls/Bicycle Race in 1978. Their earlier double A-side, Killer Queen/Flick Of The Wrist, in 1974, saw Flick Of The Wrist fail to chart despite Killer Queen reaching #2 on the UK charts.
Oasis' song "Half The World Away" was originally a B-side to "Whatever", but later featured on their Greatest Hits collection Stop The Clocks .