“There are no mistakes, only happy accidents,” Bob Ross assured us. In the case of over a dozen popular songs, mistakes didn’t just turn out to be happy accidents, but ultimately became iconic moments in music.
Musician and teacher David Hartley compiled 15 examples of mistakes in well-known songs that you can’t unhear once you know about them. Most will be familiar to pop music fans, who may or may not know that they were actually unintentional.
Hartley’s video goes into the details of these 15 song elements that weren’t supposed to be there:
1. The alarm clock ringing in The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’
Hartley shares that The Beatles had an alarm clock placed on the piano to keep track of time in the studio. It just happened to go off while they were recording the bars that separate the two sections of the song, and the ringing couldn’t be removed afterward. It fit perfectly with the “Woke up, fell out of bed” lyrics, however, so it seemed intentional.
2. Elvis Presley laughing while singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight”
While performing his hit “Are You Lonesome Tonight” live in Las Vegas in 1969, Elvis saw a bald man in the audience lose his toupee. The singer spontaneously changed the line “Do you gaze at your doorstep and wish I was there?” to “Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair?” He laughed at his own hilarity and kept chuckling through the rest of the song. The recording made it onto one of his live albums.
3. The ‘I know, I know, I know, I know…’ section of ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’
“In 1971, Bill Withers was recording his debut album, which included the song ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’” says Hartley. “When he got to the bridge section in the middle, he realized that he hadn’t written any lyrics, so he just repeated ‘I know’ 26 times.” Other musicians encouraged him to keep it, and the song became a huge hit.
4. The phone ringing at the end of David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’
“Unfortunately, right by the side of the piano, there was a toilet, and in that toilet was a public phone,” explained sound engineer Ken Scott. “Someone got a wrong number and called in halfway through that great take, and we had to stop it, and Ronaldo was cursing and swearing about it.” They didn’t realize until they put the whole song together that the ring and Ronaldo’s voice had made it in.
5. That one-off piano chord that kicks off Elton John’s ‘Bennie and the Jets’
When Elton sat down to record the song, he played the opening chord on its own on a whim. Producer Gus Dudgeon thought it sounded like something a pianist would do warming up for a live performance, so they decided to make the song sound like a live performance, even though it wasn’t, adding in crowd sound recordings.
6. Two unintentional sounds in the segue into Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’
Pink Floyd did something unusual in between songs on the album Wish You Were Here. In the segue into the title track, they inserted radio sounds that were actually recorded while the band was scrolling through stations in lead guitarist David Gilmour’s car.
“We can hear a brief section from Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony and an extract from a radio play that to this day nobody knows what it is,” says Hartley. A cough from Gilmour also slipped in, which resulted in an urban legend that the recording prompted him to quit smoking. (He has said he was never a smoker.)
7. Steely Dan’s drummer’s uncharacteristic mistake with the sticks that fit the song perfectly
Steely Dan is apparently known for being meticulous about their recordings, so the fact that an unintentional click of drummer Steve Gadd’s drumsticks made it into the studio recording of “Aja” is quite remarkable. The timing of the click made it sound seamless, though, so why redo it?
8. A bad piano chord in the intro to ‘Roxanne’ and the laughter that followed
“The timing and the way it resolves to the G minor chord that they’re playing makes it sound like it was intentional,” says Hartley. “But as Sting explains, it happened by pure accident.” There was an open piano next to him and he leaned on it to rest and accidentally played that chord, which made him laugh.
9. The gated reverb drum sound that was accidentally created on Peter Gabriel’s song, ‘Intruder’
Hartley says the iconic ’80s drum sound, where the drumbeat sounds big and echoey and then cuts off abruptly, was created accidentally by Steve Lillywhite, Hugh Padgham, and Phil Collins when recording “Intruder.” Phil Collins ended up showcasing the gated reverb drum in “In the Air Tonight” the following year.
10. Two different lyrics sung at the same time in The Who’s ‘Eminence’
“For the first line of the first chorus, Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry sing something slightly different,” Hartley shares. “One of them sings ‘behind an eminence front’ and the other sings ‘it’s an eminence front,’ meaning they are one syllable out from each other.” The mistake was initially left in the recording, but was corrected years later.
11. Billy Joel fumbling a lyric and laughing in ‘You’re Only Human’
People familiar with the song may remember when Joel seems to stutter, “S-s-sometimes that’s all it takes” and then laughs. That was a genuine stumbling mistake, but it fit so well with the song’s theme and other lines (like “it’s alright, you’re supposed to make mistakes”) he was convinced to leave it in.
12. Perfectionist Prince allowing a track recording oopsie to remain
During the recording of the song “Forever in My Life,” the tape was misaligned by one bar while recording the final track, which made the backing vocal preempt the lead vocal. Prince ultimately liked the effect, so he left it that way.
13. The ‘Where do we go now’ lyrics at the end of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’
“It was suggested that at the end of the song, after the guitar solo, they add a breakdown to finish the song,” Hartley explains. “But when it came to recording, lead singer Axel Rose didn’t have any lyrics, and he didn’t know where the song would end up. So the line, ‘Where do we go now?’ is a genuine question to his bandmates.”
14. Christina Aguilera’s ‘Don’t look at me’ line in ‘Beautiful’
Hartley shares that the recording of “Beautiful” was actually just supposed to be a demo vocal, and you can hear various imperfections in it if you listen closely with headphones. And the spoken line, “Don’t look at me,” was a real instruction to her friend just before she started singing.
Blunt simply came in too early with the opening lyric, so he ended up repeating the line. They could have easily taken it out, but decided to leave it.
Mistakes or happy accidents, it’s fun to see how unintentional oopsies can turn into iconic moments when you decide to roll with it.
You can follow David Hartley on YouTube for more interesting music content.
