

Stupid drunken outtakes

Or an alternate mix

Or the whole band switches instruments

And takes a crack at track number six

Odes to inanimate objects

Unfunny inside jokes

Ad libs and off-key warbling

Stuff that doesn't rhyme
The Bobs, "Hidden Bonus Track" (which isn't)

It's been a good five minutes since the last song on the CD ended. By now you've kind of relaxed yourself (and by relaxing we most likely mean planning on spending the next 3 hours looking for examples for all those YKTTWs), when, suddenly... is that... music?

Congratulations. You have just discovered a Hidden Track, the trope where the Easter Egg and the Bonus Material make love inside a music album.

At its most basic, the Hidden Track is just a song on the album that isn't on the playlist however musicians have sometimes played further tricks in order to play into the fact that they are rewards for faithful listeners who listen all the way through the album. Some have hidden it several minutes after the last listed song after some dead time and with Compact Discs and digital technology people have been able to play further tricks by hiding them in a Track 0 spot or making them only accesible by computer or only when playing all the way through continuously.

The name harks back to when each song was a track running along the vinyl disc. It's still a very widely used term for individual music pieces. If you knew this already you should just roll your eyes at the lame squares who needed a widely used word explained to them, if you didn't then don't worry those other people are jerks.

This practice is dying out with the rise of iTunes and Digital Distribution, partially because these services have lead to trends shunning albums, with material on the albums being more likely to be shuffled and thus no worth considering as much as a single continuous work and leading to more artists releasing more and more singles. Many songs that were previously hidden tracks are now being listed in album tracklists with many digital providers (even those listed under "Hidden in the Middle of the Album" below.) It's also very easy to spot a hidden song when the last track is 20 minutes long. The music provider service Bandcamp allows artists to add hidden tracks to their digital releases, keeping the format alive in some respects.

Examples of Hidden Track include:

Extra long final track

  • One of the first examples: The hidden track at the end of 1993's Very by the Pet Shop Boys. The tracklisting tries to fool the listener by giving the final track length as 5:01, when it's actually around 8 minutes and is one of only two tracks where keyboardist Chris Lowe sings. The track wasn't named until the band posted the lyrics on their website, when it was officially titled, appropriately enough, "Postscript".
  • Robbie Williams albums from Life Thru A Lens onwards do this ("Hello Sir" and Escapology's "I Tried Love" are among the highlights; I've Been Expecting You has two hidden tracks, although their existence is lampshaded in the inlay; it cites credits for "tracks 12 and 13" of an 11 track album).
    • In addition to this, the sheet music for the album includes the music for the hidden tracks, which are named "Stand Your Ground" and "Stalker's Day Off" respectively.
    • Nirvana did this with their album In Utero, sticking the disorganised improv "Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through The Strip" after a long period of silence and making "All Apologies" look very very long if you're using Winamp.
    • Incubus did this on S.C.I.E.N.C.E.
    • The Digimon the Movie soundtrack, of all CDs, did this too. There was a small clue in the CD booklet about these hidden tracks to give the kiddies a chance to figure it out.
  • Adam Sandler's "The Chanukkah Song 3" from the soundtrack CD for Eight Crazy Nights is the last track on the disc... and if you let it keep playing after it "finishes" you suddenly find that it starts up again with a radio-edit version (which replaces the lines "Jennifer Connelly is half-Jewish, too, and I'd like to put some more in her" with something a little safer for airplay).
  • Counting Crows is fond of putting hidden tracks on their albums, usually by placing a long period of silence after the last song followed by the hidden one. This means that the track won't show up as an option when viewing the tracks on the CD -- the only way to hear it is to wait through or fast forward through the silent portion of the last track.
    • One bonus track, a cover of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi", now garners a lot of airplay.
  • Armin Van Buuren's Shivers album has the hidden orchestral track "Hymne", about a minute after the end of "Serenity". This was later used as the intro for "Sail".
  • The OST album for Dreamfall contains a hidden track repeating the game's Arc Words some 5 minutes after the end of the final song.
  • Green Day's "Dookie" has "All By Myself" play after the last track "F.O.D.".
  • She Wants Revenge's self-titled album that was released in 2005 that does this whole thing in a pretty creative way. Instead of there being five minutes of silence at the end of the last track, there are about fifty 5-second tracks full of silence before the hidden track, which is arguably the best track on the album.
  • Sheila Nicholls' Wake ends with an extra track with four minutes twenty seconds of silence before it.
  • Paul McCartney's Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard has an instrumental one of these.
  • Amy MacDonald's A Curious Thing has a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark" for a bonus.
  • Mika's "Life in Cartoon Motion" features "Over My Shoulder," a hidden track after "Happy Ending." So if you weren't depressed enough after the Lyrical Dissonance and misleading title of Happy Ending, there was the hauntingly sad bonus track (about a man wandering the streets alone, cold and drunk) to back it up. The track was a bit of an Ensemble Darkhorse for reviewers, with many preferring it to the "main" songs.
  • Damien Rice's O had not one but two extra tracks attached to Eskimo: Prague and Silent Night.
  • There's one in the Homestar Runner CD Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits.
  • The bonus track on Dido's Life For Rent, "Closer", is generally reckoned to be better than anything else on the album and yet you have to wait through 2 minutes of silence on the final track to get to it.
  • Halo's soundtrack CD has the piano tune "Siege of Madrigal" from Bungie's earlier game Myth, hidden in the final track, "Halo Theme", after a minute of silence. The Anniversary OST hides it at the end of the second track, which is the remastered version of the series theme.
  • The debut CD by Gorillaz: Five minutes or so after "Left Handed Suzuki Method" is a bonus track, "Clint Eastwood (Ed Case/Sweetie Irie Re-Fix)".
  • All of Five Iron Frenzy's albums (except Electric Boogaloo) feature some kind of hidden track. Usually these were hidden in the final track after a long silence:
    • Our Newest Album Ever! had "Godzilla", which was an extremely rough demo that ends very abruptly.
    • Proof that the Youth Are Revolting featured Hilarious Outtakes from various concerts.
    • Cheeses... (Of Nazareth) had a recording of the band messing around in the studio.
    • The End is Near had another random studio recording, with one of the band members laughing uncontrollably at the suggestion that they "write some more songs!" When the album was rereleased as The End is Here, outtakes from their final live show were added to the hidden track.
  • Canadian band Hokus Pick had a hidden track on their album "Snappy," which was actually a 15 minute long Radio Drama spoofing Adventures in Odyssey, in which the band members were incapacitated one by one, and their show was performed by two chimpanzees, a poodle, and concessions vendor.
  • Relient K's album Two Lefts Don't Make a Right... but Three Do has an untitled rap song... thing at the end of "Jefferson Aero Plane" after several minutes of silence. It kicks off with someone screaming "Pepperoni!", guaranteed to jolt you out of your seat if you left the player on and thought it was finished.
    • Their first Christmas album, Deck the Halls, Bruise Your Hand, featured another hidden track at the end of "Auld Lang Syne." It was a clip from their version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," sped up to make it sound like Alvin and The Chipmunks, among other effects. Sadly, this wasn't included in the Updated Rerelease.
  • The W's had this on both their albums.
    • Fourth from the Last ended with a parody of "Rock and Roll McDonald's" plugging their friends Five Iron Frenzy.
    • Trouble With X ends with a recording of someone listening to an earlier track from the album ("Play the Game") and attempting to sing along. Attempting, and failing, hilariously.
  • The Barenaked Ladies song "Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel" has, after a much shorter pause, a short song known to fans as "Hidden Sun."
  • The Meat Puppets' Too High To Die has a re-recording of "Lake Of Fire" after a few minutes silence at the end of "Comin' Down". Some copies had stickers on the cover that ruined the surprise, presumably because the album was released the year after Nirvana covered the song for MTV Unplugged.
  • Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante has an untitled one that consists entirely of noisy jamming and studio chatter, tacked on at the end of "Merry Go Bye Bye". Fans have mistakenly called this "Nothing" because the liner notes credit Danny Heifetz and Theo Lengyel with "Nothing" underneath the rest of the songwriting credits - in fact this was a Credits Gag about the fact that neither of these band members wrote anything on the album.
  • Urge Overkill have a strange, sample-heavy hidden track after a long gap of silence on Saturation. It's been referred to as "Dumb Song" because Nash Kato can be heard saying "Dumb Song, take 9" at the start, but the official title is "Operation Kissinger".
  • Radiohead's Kid A has a short chunk of silence after "Motion Picture Soundtrack", followed by a short instrumental and two full minutes of silence. The silences and hidden track are apparently supposed to be a part of the song proper.
  • On the swedish group Nordman's first cd the next to last track is called locklåt (calling song) which consist of an One-Woman Wail. Then after the last song there is a pause for some minutes before the wailing comes again.It can also completlely freak you out if you sit in silence after the last song and then not being prepared for that the wailing will come again.
  • Most of Nox Arcana's CDs are like this, sometimes with two or even three hidden tracks. For example, on Carnival Of Lost Souls, after the end of Storm, there's a 2-minute silence before you hear a new reading by Madame Endora. Then, there's two more minutes before you hear an eerie music box tune. Then, there's about thirty seconds before you get to hear an epic rock remix of Spellbound. However, that last one is somewhat spoiled if you look in the booklet and see "Guitar on rock version of Spellbound by..."
  • On the Command and Conquer: Red Alert soundtrack CD, after a minute or so of silence there's a remix of "No Mercy" a.k.a. the Brotherhood of Nod theme from the original Command and Conquer. A "surf" remix.
  • Plumb's self-titled debut album had "Pluto" hidden at the end of the final track, "Send Angels". Some Christian rock radio programs actually played "Pluto".
  • All Star United's self-titled debut had the hidden track "Vitamins". Their second album, International Anthems for the Human Race, had a hidden track called "Hurricane", a sort of sequel to "Vitamins". Then, on the same track, was another hidden song, a completely different take of the album track "International Anthem" played back at high speed. All told, the final track on the album contained three songs and was over eleven minutes long.
  • White Zombie's Astro-Creep 2000 has an instrumental officially called "Where The Sidewalk Ends, The Bug Parade Begins" fade in several minutes after "Blood Milk And Sky" fades out.
  • Deftones' Around The Fur sort of has two: "MX" has a long period of silence, followed by "Bong Hit" (not a song so much as what sounds like someone chasing after some chickens), even more silence, and finally the actual song "Damone".
  • The end of Disturbed's Asylum has a hard rock cover of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" after "Innocence". The sad things, this was intended to be an extra final track but iTunes decided to split it, spoiling the cover long before the album came out. Salting the wound, the two are counted as separate tracks when the album is imported to iTunes, with "ISHWILF" having a minute-and-a-half silence before starting. Despite this, the cover is officially regarded as a hidden track, not listed anywhere on the album.
  • Julee Cruise's The Art Of Being A Girl has a hidden trip-hop remake of "Falling" (best known as the version of the Twin Peaks theme with Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics intact). There's not that much silence before it though - "The Fire In Me" ends, a few seconds later there's a brief skit involving Julee singing in the shower, and then "Falling" starts about 30 seconds later.
  • The Melvins' "trilogy" of The Maggot, The Bootlicker, and The Crybaby sort of used these as teasers for the next album in the series. The Maggot had a snippet hidden after silence that later turned out to be part of the opening track of The Bootlicker, The Bootlicker did the same with the first track from The Crybaby, and The Crybaby ended with... part of the first track from The Maggot, followed by someone yelling "Again!".
  • The soundtrack for Legally Blonde The Musical contains the theme for Kyle the UPS guy in the last 35 seconds of the last track after a long pause.
  • David Wilcox's first live album, East Asheville Hardware Live, features (after a pause at the end of the last track) the sound of walking into a bar to hear David and a friend performing a (hilarious) country version of Eye of the Hurricane, one of his most popular songs.
  • Jay-Z's Blueprint album ends with a 14-minute long track entitled "The Blueprint(Momma Loves Me)". About 3 minutes of that track is actually Exactly What It Says on the Tin, however, two secret tracks(a quite awesome nameless track and a remix of "Girls, Girls, Girls") are included in the rest of the runtime.
  • Quebecois absurdist singer duo Les Denis Drolet played with this on their first album: The last track ends with around five minutes of silence, before one of them declares angrily: "There's no hidden song!".
  • BT's ESCM has a short reprise of "Flaming June" at the end of the last track, "Content", after a minute and a half of silence.
  • On the Silent Hill OST, the track "Silent Hill (Otherside)" has six minutes of silence before the actual song starts.
  • Sheryl Crow's The Globe Sessions has "Subway Ride" as a hidden track following "Crash And Burn", the final track.
  • Mushroomhead's XIII ends on track 13, with two versions of the "extra long": the original release contained a cover version of Seal's "Crazy," while another release had that AND a second unnamed hidden track afterward. Some online releases show "Crazy" as the 14th track.
  • Slipknot's self-titled album also had two in its original release, "Porn & Weed" and "Eeyore." Updated re-releases and compilations contain "Eeyore" as its own track.
  • On The Dingees' first album, the final song is followed by a few minutes of silence, then a dub remix of a prior track ("Could Be Worse").
  • Probot's self-titled album had "I Am The Warlock", a song featuring Jack Black, hidden after silence. Presumably it was relegated to a hidden track because it was sort of in the vein of Tenacious D, and could therefor be considered out of place in what was otherwise meant as a serious metal album.
  • The last track on the Hybrid Theory EP is the twelve-minute long "Part of Me", three-and-a-half minutes of which is the eponymous song. There is a short instrumental at the ten-minute mark, which is usually referred to by fans as "Secret" or "Ambient". The only thing notable about this song, aside from the fact that is sounds vaguely like VGM, is that elements were used four years later in "Session".
  • Nobody Listened on Delta Goodrem's opus Mistaken Identity. Turning her 4 minute long You Are My Rock to a 8 minute long story.
  • On Sia's 2008 album Some People Have Real Problems, a hidden track called "Buttons" plays several minutes after the final track on the album, "Lullaby" (which are both in one track) finishes. Interestingly, an official music video was made for "Buttons", and (due to its surreal nature) the video and song are among some of Sia's most well-known tracks.
  • Tenacious D has two at the end of their self-titled album. A few seconds after the song ends, there's an outtake between JB and Kyle about belief in God. A couple of minutes after that, JB sings a song called "Malibu."
  • Jimmy Buffett's album Banana Wind ends with the impressively long (nearly 10 minutes) track "False Echos (Havana 1921)". Then there's a sound gag in which Buffett and his bass man Ramos look for the hidden track. And then the hidden track, "Treetop Flyer", begins. The whole thing lasts 15 minutes, 54 seconds.
  • Purple, the second album by Stone Temple Pilots, has one of these. Its closing song, "Kitchenware and Candybars," ends at 4:25 with 30 seconds of silence before the entrance of "My Second Album," a goof on the idea of hidden tracks that sound nothing like what a band would normally play. In fact, the song isn't actually performed by the band at all, but by Richard Peterson, an eccentric Seattle street musician; it first appeared on one of his own self-released albums, almost 10 years before it ended up being a hidden track on Purple. Despite the fact that it's an unlisted song, Peterson does apparently get royalties for his "contribution" to their album.
  • Primus' Anti-Pop has "The Heckler" hidden after a long gap of silence at the end of "Coattails Of A Dead Man". "The Heckler" actually dates back to their live debut Suck On This, and presumably they decided to revisit the song just because it was the only song on that album that didn't have a released studio recording at that point.
  • Beck seemed to be pretty fond of doing this for a while: Mellow Gold, Stereopathetic Soulmanure, Odelay, and Midnite Vultures all had what were basically odd noise loops hidden after a few minutes of silence at the end of their last tracks. Mutations is the only album where he's done this with an actual song so far though: "Diamond Bollocks" was hidden after the last track because Beck liked the song but felt it didn't fit in with the rest of the album. The UK version of Mutations averts this though: "Diamond Bollocks" is the last track on the album and is listed on the CD packaging. Also, the deluxe edition of Odelay has the hidden noise loop as it's own track, where it's labeled "Hidden Track (Computer Rock)".
  • Dave Matthews Band has done this no less than three times: on Remember Two Things, after "Christmas Song" is an outro to "Seek Up" and some nature noises; on Before These Crowded Streets, after "Spoon" is a quiet tune called "The Last Stop (Reprise)"; and on Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King, after "You & Me" is a brief repeating snippet of saxophone.
  • Belle And Sebastian's 3.. 6.. 9 Seconds of Light EP ends with the unlisted song "Songs For Children", which is on the same track as it's last listed song "Put The Book Back On The Shelf". While it still fits the "extra long final track" category, there's actually no more silence between the two songs than there normally would be if they were separate tracks. The compilation Push Barman To Open Old Wounds places it into the category of "hidden in the middle of the album" though, since the song still appears that way but isn't anywhere near the end of the track list.
  • Sander Van Doorn's latest album has a hidden piece buried in the 19-minute track "Eagles" after an 8-minute wait.
  • The title track on Catatonia's Way Beyond Blue is around 15 minutes, because it also contains 'Gyda Gwen', the final track of the For Tinkerbell EP, after a long delay and a minute or so of studio chatter.
  • Jack Off Jill have one on each of their albums: 'Angels Fuck' on Sexless Demons & Scars, and a cure of The Cure's 'Lovesong' on Clear Hearts Grey Flowers. 'Angels Fuck' is programmed as track 99, meaning you have to skip through 86 blank tracks to get to it, and 'Lovesong' as track 66, which makes putting their stuff on your media player a pain in the arse.
  • When Camper Van Beethoven reissued their album Telephone Free Landslide Victory with bonus tracks, they also added an extra track after a few minutes of silence - a dub-style experimental remix of the song "Heart".
  • Marilyn Manson hid an answering machine message from an outraged parent of a fan at the end of Portrait Of An American Family. It's not exactly hidden after silence though - if you turn up the volume after "Misery Machine" you can hear a phone very quietly ringing for 7 minutes before you hear the message.
  • Emilie Autumn puts TWO bonus and hidden tracks after Miss Lucy Has Some Leeches on "A Bit Of this and That". One an original song/short poem, another a cover.
  • KMFDM's Nihil has a short but dissonant noise jam hidden a minute after the end of "Trust". Xtort also has a hidden track, which is a story narrated by Jr. Blackmail, a former member of the band.
  • Another parody of the "extra long final track" version is on Ben Folds Five's Whatever And Ever Amen, where, after the final song "Evaporated," someone shouts "You want a bonus track? Ben Folds is a fucking asshole!"
  • The Irish comedy band Dead Cat Bounce have one such track at the end of their 'Live at the Róisín Dubh' album (just after 'The Weeping of the Willows'), which they often play at the end of their live sets, as well. The singer notes, to the live audience present, that it is the 'super hidden bonus track,' and the band play it off as though the drummer wasn't told about the song beforehand. The rest speaks for itself.
  • Electronic legends Depeche Mode have a short reprise of the song "Wrong" after the final track ("Corrupt") of their 2009 album Sounds of the Universe.
  • Godsmack's self-titled debut had an instrumental tribal set playing about two minutes after the end of the final track, Voodoo.

Pregap Track

  • A list of pre-gap tracks (most of which are before the first song, sometimes called "track 0") can be found here on The Other Wiki. Essentially, each track on a CD has Start and End markers; placing something before the Track 1 Start marker generates a pregap hidden track.
  • They Might Be Giants' Factory Showroom album has the bonus track ("Token Back To Brooklyn") before' the first track of the CD. John Flansburgh used the technique again for the second album of his side project, Mono Puff.
    • The a capella "On Earth My Nina" uses the tune of "Thunderbird" reversed, and the lyrics are Mondegreens of the backmasked vocals. Ironically, the backwards version was released five years before the original song.
  • The very first X-Files soundtrack (for the TV show) had a track 0. Since no CD players at the time could read track 0, the only way to access it was to rewind the first track beyond the beginning.
    • The Soundtrack to X Files':Fight The Future includes a secret track where Chris Carter explains the whole backstory to the conspiracy. A pity he didn't do it through, you know, the plot of the movie itself!
  • Another track 0 type example can be found on the Final Fantasy VII Reunion Files soundtrack -- rewinding the first track allows you to hear the iconic "One-Winged Angel" without the Ominous Latin Chanting.
  • And another one on (some editions of) Rammstein's album Reise, Reise: rewind the first song and you will hear the last moments of the black box recording for the Japan Airlines Flight 123 disaster (currently the worst single-aircraft accident in history). It's a pretty horrifying listen. Unsurprisingly, it was removed from the Japanese editions of the album.
  • The Sister Machine Gun album Burn contains a cover of "Strange Days" by The Doors in the pregap.
  • Fall Out Boy has a hidden track in Folie a Deux before the first track: Lullabye, which requires the person to rewind the CD at the start of the first track.
  • Calexico had a two-minute long instrumental song hidden in the pregap of Feast of Wire.
  • Five Iron Frenzy had the 10-second-long "What's Up" hidden at the beginning of All the Hype that Money Can Buy.
  • The Album "Songs For The Deaf" from Queens of the Stone Age has a pregap track, which is very unsettling, called "The real song for the deaf".
  • Tait, a band fronted by Michael Tait from dc Talk, had several minutes of what sounded like intentionally bad singing into an answering machine in the pregap of the first track on their album Empty.
  • Sarah Masen's 2001 album The Dreamlife of Angels had the song "Longing Unknown" hidden before the first track.
  • Password by Kylie Minogue
  • "Ambulance" on Blur's Think Tank is preceded by a hidden track called "Me, White Noise".
  • British copies of Autechre's EP 7 have a seven minute pregap song, followed by three minutes of silence before the first proper song.
  • Blind Melon's Soup has an untitled two minute experimental piece hidden in the pregap before the first track. It's essentially the band jamming along to an acoustic guitar piece by their friend Mike Kelsey, with backwards vocals from their song "New Life" laid over it.

Unlisted independent track

  • The Beatles did this twice. "Inner Groove" on British editions of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was made by having an endless loop of laughter and gibberish right at the end, designed to play forever if your turntable didn't have an automatic return function for the needle. "Her Majesty" was an actual song on the Abbey Road album, and arguably the Trope Maker. It was supposed to be cut from the album, but EMI's policy was to never throw away anything that The Beatles recorded. So the engineer stuck it on the end of the master tape, preceded by 14 seconds of silence. It made its way into the final version when they played it back and the Beatles liked the effect. "Her Majesty" isn't hidden anymore, though--later prints of Abbey Road include it on the track listing.
  • The Keith Urban song "You're Not My God" (about getting over drug addiction) has a hidden track after it.
  • Bloodhound Gang went nuts with this, putting 40-odd blank tracks at the end of their Hooray For Boobies CD, with Easter Egg s hidden at random among them. It played merry hell with your enjoyment when you put the CD on random.
  • Gary Allan's CD It Would Be You also features a hidden track, "No Judgment Day." The label was reluctant to add the song at all; making it a hidden track was the compromise.
  • Opposite of the above example: Eels' album Daisies of the Galaxy has the album's first single, "Mr. E's Beautiful Blues," as an unlisted track. The artist didn't want to include it, but the label insisted, so it being unlisted was the compromise.
  • Early printings of Paul McCartney's Driving Rain have "Freedom!" as a hidden track. The song was recorded in October 2001, and the album was released in November 2001. There was no time to change the outer packaging to reflect the addition. It wasn't much of a secret though. For one thing, the CD edition does have a track marker. For another, the album needed marketing stickers anyway for people to find it; given why "Freedom!" was recorded, Capitol decided to announce its presence on the stickers. It still counts because the stickers are gone as soon as the CD is unwrapped. (The editions with the colored cardboard sleeve make the track fully open.)
  • Rascal Flatts's album Feels Like Today had a hidden track called "Skin" which was actually released as a single after some radio stations began playing it as an album cut. Supposedly, it was made a hidden track because the label wouldn't let them put twelve songs on the CD. Later presses of the album list it as an official track due to its success as a single.
  • Allison Moorer's The Hardest Part featured a hidden track, "Cold, Cold Earth," a song about her parents' murder-suicide.
  • Several music critics bemoaned the composition of U2's Best Of 1980-1990 for excluding "October", proving that they looked at the track list rather than listen to the album. They'd have found it hidden at the end.
  • The back cover of Five Iron Frenzy's Quantity is Job 1 EP only listed 8 tracks. The liner notes listed "These are Not My Pants (The Rock Opera)" as the 9th track, but it's actually 8 tracks long itself. It's then followed by track 17, which consists of about three minutes of silence, and then a recording of the band messing around in the studio.
  • There's an instrumental 11th track on Woven Hand's Ten Stones.
  • Cracker's Kerosene Hat has several hidden among a bunch of short silent tracks: track 69 is "Euro-Trash Girl", Track 88 is "Ride My Bike", and track 99 is a short outtake of the title track. Oddly enough, the last listed track, "Hi-Desert Biker Meth Lab" is also preceded by a couple of tracks of silence.
  • Nirvana did this with their album Nevermind, having the dissonant jam "Endless Nameless" show up after a long silence as an independent track (as opposed to "Gallons", which was pretty much pasted onto "All Apologies"). Notably, an error left early editions lacking "Endless", which drew complaints from Kurt Cobain. "Endless Nameless" has remained unlisted on the back cover of Nevermind to this day, even if it is on all copies now.
    • "Verse Chorus Verse" (AKA "Sappy"), Nirvana's contribution to the charity compilation No Alternative, was unlisted at the end of the album at the band's request. Apparently this was an effort to not overshadow the rest of the album, as at the time they were easily the most popular band who had contributed to it. Of course, word quickly got out anyway...
  • The Clash album London Calling included the song "Train in Vain" as an unlisted track. However, it wasn't intended to be secret. It was simply added at the last second after the album sleeve had already been designed. Also worth noting is that the words "Train" and "Vain" never occur in the lyrics, so there was much confusion as to the actual title before it was released as a single.
    • Though the name of the song WAS, in fact, scratched into the inner ring of vinyl on the record itself.
    • Ironically, the song wound up becoming the band's first major American pop hit. By the time the album came out on CD, the song was given its own track and appears on the track listing.
  • The IDM compilation Autonomous Addicts has its final track, "808303", hidden after three blank tracks.
  • Some editions of Radiohead's Pablo Honey include the radio edit of "Creep" (which replaces "you're so fucking special" with "you're so very special") as an unlisted track.
  • Xorcist's Scorched Blood EP has one, partly hidden by a minute of silence at the end of "Scorched Blood (Rising From The Ashes)".
  • "One Day" from Skinny Puppy's Bites (1993 edition and up).
  • The Benjamin Gate's album [Untitled], has over 60 tracks of silence following the final listed song, and then the song "True (I Love You)".
  • Los Campesinos!' debut album, Hold On Now, Youngster... contains an unlisted track, the largely instrumental "2007: The Year Punk Broke (My Heart)" as its 12th song. The band claims its supposed to be an epilogue and not an actual song on the album, hence it being an unlisted, separate track and not hidden after the 11th song.
  • Oasis' greatest hits album Time Flies features "Sunday Morning Call" -- the only UK single not on the main tracklisting -- as a hidden track after "Falling Down". The reason for this is unknown. In fact, the American version of the album drops the unlisted "Sunday Morning Call" for "Champagne Supernova" and the Japanese version puts it after "Don't Go Away" (both were released as a retail singles in those countries) instead of "Falling Down", so some fans might not even know that "Sunday Morning Call" was supposed to be there at all.
  • Covenant's latest album, Modern Ruin, has a hidden drone/dark ambient track titled "Modern Ruin Part II"; this is only on the CD and not the digital releases. Ironically, the digital version still has the two minutes of silence at the end of "The Road".
  • Bowling for Soup has an album called A Hangover You Don't Deserve which has about 30 or so extra tracks at the end that are just a few seconds of silence. There are two bonuses on the last two unlisted tracks just before the album ends.
  • Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin place an unusual hidden track at the end of their album Spin: a lengthy instrumental prelude to the album's cover of "Eight Miles High". The music fades out at the place where the song begins.
  • The Stone Roses' "The Foz" is hidden after 12 short silent tracks on Second Coming. Presumably just to mess with the listener, there are eight more tracks of silence after that too, with nothing else hidden after them this time.
  • Mudhoney's My Brother The Cow has the hidden 13th track "woC ehT rehtorB yM". As the sdrawkcab title would suggest, it's just the entire 39 minute album played backwards.
  • Built To Spill's There Is Nothing Wrong With Love ends with the unlisted track "Preview": The track is introduced by Record Producer Phil Ek as "a preview of the next Built To Spill record", but it's really a series of snippets parodying different rock subgenres; none of the songs actually turned up in full on any subsequent albums.
  • Live's song "Horse" on Throwing Copper, which is unlisted but kicks in a few seconds after "White, Discussion" ends.
  • Silversun Pickups' EP Pikul has 7 listed tracks, with the song "Sci-Fi Lullaby" hidden after several tracks of silence.
  • Dynamite Hack's Superfast has three tracks hidden this way, but only one contains actual music: "Just Another Day" is a snippet of Studio Chatter, and "Laughter" is, well, a deliberately annoying two minute loop of band members laughing. The actual song hidden among silent tracks is more interesting - it's a Softer and Slower Cover of their song "Anyway" performed by vocalist Mark Morris' sister, Emily Morris.

Hidden in the middle of the album

  • REM's Up hides "I'm Not Over You" in the middle of the album. rather than the end. (The earlier Green puts the extra track in the usual position.)
  • A rather obscure Christian Rock band called Human buried an unlisted cover of U2's "Bullet the Blue Sky" between tracks 5 and 6 on their one and only album Out of the Dust.
  • Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy is this variant in the international editions; there's an acoustic version of "Possession" after track 12 which is the final track in the US edition but in the UK and Japan release there's a track 13 after that.
  • The Dingees' The Crucial Conspiracy has "Conspiracy Against the Youth" in the middle, stuck at the end of the track "Moving Underground".
  • Havalina Rail Co.'s self-titled debut album has an unlisted cover of Woodie Guthrie's "Take You Rid'n in my Car" at the end of "Train Song".
  • Along with a hidden track at the end of the album, Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante also has "The Secret Song", which is unlisted and occurs on the same track as "Carry Stress In The Jaw". "The Secret Song" is called that both because it's a hidden track and because the lyrics consist of Trevor Dunn adopting a raspy, Grandpa Simpson-like voice and complaining about how the rest of the band wrote and recorded the song without telling him. The LP version hides the track a bit more - the record has a double groove, so you have to place the needle in a certain way on the record in order to hear "The Secret Song" instead of just "Carry Stress In The Jaw".
  • The Crystal Method's Vegas has a short track hidden in one track's pregap. If you seek directly to track 5 ("Comin' Back"), it starts playing at 0:00. But if you have it play from the end of track 4 ("High Roller") it will play the hidden track as the tracks change normally.
  • The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief lp record was billed as a three-sided album, which could have been written off as a joke...but it's true. Side 2 has two completely different grooves cut side-by-side; the needle could land arbitrarily on one or the other. Since the record has no selection list, it could take a while to realize it.
  • Rilo Kiley's "And That's How I Choose To Remember It" is unusual in that it's broken into three parts that are hidden in the pre-gap tracks of different songs on The Execution Of All Things: The first verse comes after "So Long", the second comes after "My Slumbering Heart" and finally the third comes after "Spectacular Views", the album's last song (there's a short silent track afterwards to preserve the pre-gap effect).
  • Front Line Assembly's Civilization hides "Parasite" between "Fragmented" and "Dissident".
  • Limp Bizkit hid several skits and short jams throughout their album Significant Other. The previous album, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, contained the song "Blind" hidden after "Faith".
  • Beck's album Midnite Vultures contained hidden segues between songs. In the current digital age, iTunes separated these segues into individual tracks for its digital release.
  • On Pat Metheny Group's Imaginary Day, "Across the Sky" is bookended by a hidden segue and a hidden intro for the next song after that.
  • The CD version of Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever has a short segue after "Running Down A Dream", referred to as "Hello CD Listeners...":

 Hello, CD listeners. We've come to the point in this album where those listening on cassette, or records, will have to stand up, or sit down, and turn over the record. Or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we'll now take a few seconds before we begin side two. [pause] Thank you. Here's side two.

  • One-album trance artist Dejin's As You Dream has an unlisted thirteenth track, "Color of the Sky", between "Andromeda Strings" and "Ocean Blue".

Accessible by other technology

  • When you put The Dillinger Escape Plan And Mike Patton's Irony Is A Dead Scene in your computer's cd player, a video file appears in the directory -- it's a short montage of behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the album, mainly Patton recording vocal tracks. There is nothing on the packaging indicating this cd-rom material is there.
  • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has a hidden track Alucard's Vengeance on the Play Station version which can be heard by playing it on an audio CD player.
  • Information Society has a track at the end of Peace and Love Incorporated that was meant to be placed into a dial-up modem of the time in order to decode it. It's the band's lead singer talking about a surreal experience he had in Brazil.
  • Zanac also has a hidden track, which can be heard in the sound test or by pressing a certain button combination in Area 10.
  • The Japanese version of Super Double Dragon, which is more complete than the US version and had several stage musics changed, has two unused songs in its sound test. The first is the title theme from the US version (the JP version uses the classic DD theme), which was meant for the credits, the latter is Duke's Theme, which was supposed to be the Final Boss music.
  • Fear Factory has an extremely hard to find song called "My Grave" only accessible by digital download by putting the CD into the CD drive and accessing the shortcut. Good luck trying to find it though, its link died years ago making it exceedingly rare to find.
  • Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals hidden track came in the form of a program that automatically ran when the CD was placed in a computer.
  • The original Monster Rancher game had a strange techno track available if you put the disc in a CD player


  • If you were to play "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Running with Scissors" CD on a PC, you might find a rather enlightening documentary of what it's like to grow up as a polka-obssessed white accordion player in an all-black family.
    • "You're not Barney!"
    • Also by Weird Al, the track "You Don't Love Me Anymore" on his "Off the Deep End" CD is 14:13 in length, though the song ends after only 4 minutes. The next few minutes are silence, ending in six seconds of ear-splitting cacophony officially titled "Bite Me." Al has stated that it is intended "to scare people to death" (it does, even without coming unexpectedly after 10 minutes of silence) and also is meant as a direct parody of the above mentioned "Endless, Nameless" (since Off the Deep End parodies Nevermind in its cover art and first track). The hidden track is not included on the cassette version of the album, for obvious reasons.
    • If that's not enough, that Easter egg track contains a Backmasking Easter egg of its own (believed by some to be the result of a mastering error and not intentional): reversing and slowing down the song will reveal a snippet of "Tears of the Earth" by David Hallyday, also released by the same record label as Off the Deep End.
  • Nox Arcana also tends to hide bonus tracks in their albums. While they're usually just short jingles or narrations associated with the story of the album, the very last bonus track of Carnival of Lost Souls (yes, there are multiple) is an extended, rock version of their song "Spellbound."
  • Coheed and Cambria.
    • The Second Stage Turbine Blade has IRO-bot. - Extra long final track.
    • In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3 has 21:13. Unlisted independent track.
    • Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness has Bron-Y-Aur, which is technically included in The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut. It's a tribute to Led Zeppelin. - Extra long final track.
      • The Japanese pressing also contained A Favor House Atlantic from Live at the Starland Ballroom as an unlisted track.
  • Jarvis Cocker's self-titled album has "Running The World". What version of the trope it takes depends on which format you have it in.
    • The CD version has it hidden after 30 minutes from the final track.
    • The vinyl version just included it as a separate single.
  • My Chemical Romance has Blood in the album The Black Parade which is a distinct track but also only starts after a minute and a half into that track.
  • Five Iron Frenzy's Upbeats and Beatdowns featured an unlisted 16th track, but the majority of the recording (the outtakes from "Combat Chuck"'s spoken-word intro, and the background shouting from the "Beautiful America" finale) is in the three-minute-long pregap between track 15 and 16.
  • Sponge's Rotting Piñata has a track called "Candy Corn", which is hidden in the gap between the last listed song and a short track of silence.
  • Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar has a hidden "Track 99", and putting Mechanical Animals on a PC triggers a video with the 15th track.
  • In addition to the above listed Secret Song, the CD ofStrong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits includes a movie file containing a music video for "These Peoples Try to Fade Me".
  • Sound Horizon often includes Hidden Tracks on their albums, some of which are damn near impossible to discover; Nobody's managed to find the alleged hidden track of Seisen no Iberia, for example.


  • Coldplay has become fond of this... sorta. Their third album, X&Y, had a mysterious + at the end. It written by Coldplay for Johnny Cash before he died, so they recorded it themselves.
    • Then, they went a little nuts with it. Their next album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, had three doubled up tracks of which two had the extra tracks hidden. It played directly into the first track on the album.
  • In a web original example, Todd in the Shadows included one in his review of Alejandro. It was a cover version of the Carol King song It's too late. It wasn't uploaded to That Guy With The Glasses, but only to his bliptv account. He's done a couple more since then that can either be found at his his bliptv page or clicking on "related videos" after a review video finishes.
  • Follow The Leader by Korn is a hidden album - the first 12 tracks on the disc consist solely of silence, with the actual music not kicking in until track 13.
  • In the album Nevermind the Furthermore by The Remus Lupins, there's a track called Hidden Secret Bonus Track which starts 13 seconds after the end of the CD.
  • In Gradius III(arcade)'s third stage, if you destroy a certain enemy generator, the music changes to a medley of "Free Flyer" from Gradius I, "Fly High" from Salamander, and "Burning Heat" from Gradius II.
  • Dave Matthews Band, on the original CD release of Under the Table and Dreaming, put the song "#34" as track 34 on the CD, and put 22 blank tracks between it and the eleventh song on the album, "Pay For What You Get". This makes attempting to put this version of the CD on random a huge pain, as odds are you will "hear" one of the blank tracks rather than one with a song on it.
  • Subverted by the album Witching Hour by Ladytron. The final track is about 10 minutes too long, which would normally scream "hidden track". But if you keep listening after the last song, you'll hear...absolutely nothing. The "song" is officially titled "Untitled", so it's not an error.
  • Not exactly an inversion: on The Bobs album Coaster, there is a track titled "Hidden Bonus Track" [see above]. It offers the group's typical ironic pop-culture commentary, but, ironcally, isn't hidden in any way; it appears as a regular track in the middle of the album and is clearly listed and identified.
  • Mad Magazine issued a flexidisk in 1980 that had 8 interleaved grooves, rather the normal single spiral groove. Depending on which groove the needle picked up when you set it down, you would get one of eight different versions of "It's a Super Spectacular Day!"