Most underappreciated song by ...

Not a huge Eagles fan but I will nominate "James Dean".

 

More picks...

The Kinks - "Oklahoma U.S.A."

David Bowie - "Width of a Circle"

Big Star - "Stroke It Noel"

Velvet Underground - "Foggy Notion"

The Clash - "The Card Cheat"

The Raspberries - "Nobody Knows"

 

The thing about "Tomorrow Never Knows," my Beatles pick, is I still can't figure out how Ringo does it. I'm no drummer, so maybe it's simpler than I thought, but a pattern like that would drive me insane.

Can I put in a Billy Joel nomination for "Second Wind"?

 

It got plenty of airplay on FM when it came out in the mid-'80s.

 

Some else pointed up "Sad Cafe," which is my Eagles pick, too. I think it's one of their best songs anywhere.

 

Van Morrison: Natalia
Bob Seger U.M.C.
Lovin' Spoonful: Darlin' Be Home Soon
Elvis: Little Sister
Ray Charles: Mess Around Blues
Clapton: Living On Faith
Cream: Politician
Paul McCartney: Every Night

 

Great call on this one.

A few others I thought of:

Dire Straits: Telegraph Road (although the mention earlier of The Man's Too Big was pretty good, too)
The Kinks: Apeman
CSN: Helplessly Hoping
Genesis: Musical Box (especially the version on Genesis Live, which is a hugely underrated record)
Fleetwood Mac: Coming Your Way
The Band: Long Black Veil
Mott The Hoople: Crash Street Kidds
Badfinger: Perfection
Eagles: Bitter Creek (OK, it's the Desperado album, but still, this is a great unheralded masterpiece IMO)
Little Feat: Teenage Nervous Breakdown
Stevie Ray Vaughan: Willie The Wimp
Queen: Great King Rat (their first album is the only one I can listen to, and this is by far the best song on there)
CCR: Effigy
Aerosmith: Walkin' The Dog
Steve Miller Band: Goin' To Mexico
J. Geils Band: Detroit Breakdown (I'm also partial to Hard-Drivin' Man, from the Full House album, but that's probably their best and best-known record)
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Whiskey Rock-N-Roller
Deep Purple: Fools
Eric Clapton: Mainline Florida
Frank Zappa: Peaches En Regalia
The Animals: When I Was Young
Rod Stewart: Cut Across Shorty
Santana: All The Love In the Universe (Deep Tracks on XM has discovered this one and they play it every so often, but it's still not one of their more widely-known songs, and it cooks)

 

Radiohead: I'm going to go with a strict adherence to the rules here and avoid Radiohead's three seminal albums.

the second track on Hail to the Thief, is good enough that it doesn't matter. Thom Yorke gets about as frenetic as he ever has as he screams about raindrops. The production on the track is beautiful, too.

Prince: Following the same stringent rules, I'm not counting Prince's four major albums here. But Parade gets overlooked anyway and probably is better than 1999 anyway, albeit less influential and sprawling and vainglorious. The opening four-track suite is really unique and fascinating, but the two standouts are single "Kiss" and closer "Sometimes It Snows in April," which may be the slowest, most subdued Prince track ever.

Guns N' Roses: Axl Rose might be the most underrated lyricist in rock history because of his frequent overindulgences. But there's some legitimate genius in

the closer to Use Your Illusion I, which has the distinction of being the longest Guns N' Roses track and one of the few without a chorus.

OutKast: Anyone who thinks Andre 3000 got weird after Stankonia hadn't heard ATLiens. His verses on

are some seriously out there, wildly unique and utterly beautiful stuff. Though Aquemini is the gold standard for OutKast musically, ATLiens trumps it lyrically and for a long time was my favorite album by the group.

Belle and Sebastian: The Boy with the Arab Strap gets underrated amid the praise for If You're Feeling Sinister (which is a better album and deserves that praise). But the title track,

is charming as hell and fits perfectly with their 1960s-in-1998 aesthetic.

 

This has been a helluva thread. Love nearly everyone's choices.

 

Yeah, great thread. I just emailed this to myself for my work soundtrack tomorrow.

 

was my no. 1 pick.

runner-up: drive all night.

 

I'm not a huge Springsteen fan, so some of you might think this one is too "popular."

Still, I'd go with "Atlantic City," off his Nebraska album (certainly NOT his most popular, but one of my favorites):