The Best Songs Aren’t Perfect: 5 Musical Mistakes by Famous Artists

Using AI in art has become a hot topic over the last few years. From drawing and design to writing and producing, AI has caused debates over what counts as original art and how artists can protect their work from being used to teach large language models. Recently, musicians like Charlie Puth have voiced their opinions about AI’s place in the art world. 

Puth stated that when it comes to music, AI tends to make songs that sound “perfect” by frequently using a constant tempo, or by removing any imperfections that might make a melody or beat sound original and different. Unique time signatures and changing tempos, along with unconventional instruments and unintended mistakes, can make a song memorable and, most importantly, human.

Whether musicians want their mistakes to be noticed by listeners or not, all five of these timeless hits include them. Plus, check out a bonus song where an initial mistake became an iconic and intentional sound!

1. The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”
2. The Police’s “Roxanne”
3. Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” 
4. Led Zeppelin’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You”
5. Ben Fold Five’s “Steven’s Last Night in Town”
6. BONUS: The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” 

The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”

The Beatles were known for leaving subtle easter eggs or jokes in their songs—and they left mistakes, too. At around the 2:58 mark of “Hey Jude,” when Paul McCartney sings, “The minute you let her under your skin/then you begin,” listeners can hear him curse.

During the recording session for the song, McCartney yelled out “[Expletive] hell!” after he accidentally played the wrong chord. In his book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, he says, “We were having so much fun that we even left in the swearing around halfway through, when I made a mistake on the piano part. You have to listen carefully to hear it, but it’s there.”

The Police’s “Roxanne”

About four seconds into the song “Roxanne,” fans of The Police will hear an off-key piano chord. During the band’s recording session, Sting rested on a piano behind him, thinking that the instrument’s lid was down. Instead, he accidentally sat on the open keys, creating the odd chord. It made him laugh, so he left it in the song.

Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” 

The percussion instrument making the whirring noise at the beginning of Aerosmith’s hit “Sweet Emotion” is called a vibraslap. Steven Tyler plays it three times during the intro before breaking it around 23 seconds into the song. The broken vibraslap resulted in a “clink,” and that sound was left on the record.

Additionally, the band didn’t have maracas during the recording session for this song, so out of necessity, Tyler found some sugar packets and shook them in front of the microphone to create the desired effect. You can hear the shaking sugar packets loud and clear at the beginning of the track.

Led Zeppelin’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You”

At the very beginning of Led Zeppelin’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” listeners will notice a soft squeaking in the background. That noise was caused by John Bonham’s iconic playing style and the Ludwig Speed King 201 kick pedal he used on the bass drum. The kick pedal, nicknamed the “Squeak King,” is apparently audible in a few Zeppelin songs, including “Bonzo’s Montreux,” but it’s arguably the most noticeable on this track.

Years later, guitarist Jimmy Page spoke about the squeaking in “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” saying, “It sounds louder and louder every time I hear it! That was something that was obviously sadly overlooked at the time.”

Ben Fold Five’s “Steven’s Last Night in Town”

At the 2:53 mark of “Steven’s Last Night in Town,” listeners will hear a telephone ring. The band was recording at a friend’s house in California when a phone happened to go off in another room. Since the ringing got onto the recording, Folds decided to just keep it in the song.

BONUS: The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” 

While the guitar feedback at the beginning of “I Feel Fine” was completely intentional and included on all nine takes of the song, The Beatles discovered the sound by mistake.

In his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, the band’s sound engineer, Geoff Emerick, says he was told that during a break in recording, John Lennon leaned his guitar against his amp but didn’t turn down the volume of the pickup on his instrument. Randomly, McCartney played a low “A” on his bass, and the sound waves from his instrument caused Lennon’s guitar to feed back. 

The group loved the sound so much that they turned it into the song’s iconic intro, even though feedback like this was against the recording policies of the band’s record label at the time.

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