The One Track Built to Spill Never Played on the There’s Nothing Wrong with Love Anniversary Tour

“This feels so real to me / this angst inside of me”

“And I’ll hold on to you / my midnight star”

“Kick you in the head and then / I’ll kick you in the head and then / I’ll kick you in the head and then / I’ll kick you in the head”

    —Built to Spill’s “Hidden Track” (1994)

Built to Spill’s 30th anniversary tour for There’s Nothing Wrong with Love, the 1994 LP that launched them to the top of the college radio charts and put them on the radar of major labels, wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. The Sacramento gig on September 29th capped off a run of 42 shows in tribute to the album that was many fans’ introduction to the band. This kind of album-focused tour has become standard over the last decade or so, with a band playing a specific beloved record in its entirety, usually pegged to some major anniversary that ends with a 0 or 5. This Built to Spill tour has been a little different than most of those types of things, though; not once, at any of the 40 plus shows they put on, did the band actually play all of There’s Nothing Wrong with Love.

If you just went off these shows, or the setlists that have been shared online, you’d think this album only had 12 songs on it. When Built to Spill plays it live, they play it in order, starting with “In the Morning” and climaxing 40 or so minutes later with “Stab,” the “official” last song on the record. Anybody who’s familiar with There’s Nothing Wrong with Love knows there’s a track after “Stab,” though—and that it’s one of the most memorable things about the record.

The album’s 13th track, which isn’t listed on the artwork, is one of the truly great rock ‘n’ roll jokes, and as fundamental a part of the record as any of its “real” songs. There’s Nothing Wrong with Love ends with a “preview” of the band’s next album, supposedly scheduled for release in August, 1995. Introduced by producer Phil Ek, it crams together snippets from four intentionally terrible songs that mock other genres, from hack hardcore and generic pop-punk to cringey hair metal power ballads. 

These bite-sized pastiches are hilariously bad, but part of the joke is that they’re not really any worse than the songs they’re making fun of. That speaks to Built to Spill’s never-again explored skill at writing Weird Al-ish style parodies, but also to the creative bankruptcy of the genres being mocked. Yes, the same year Dookie came out and brought pop-punk to the middle schools and mall chain stores of America, Green Day’s take on punk already felt like a lifeless stereotype to those in the know. From the driving tempo to the major chord riffs to the general teen angst lyrics, the third of Built to Spill’s four snippets could’ve fit on any ‘90s pop-punk record. 

As funny as these short blurts can be, I don’t think they’re done entirely out of malice or condescension. Yeah, a power ballad that starts with the lines “A man needs lovin’ / A woman needs a man to love” has its tongue buried so deeply in cheek that it’s torn a hole in the side of the face, but Built to Spill songwriter Doug Martsch later confirmed himself as a man with respect for classic rock platitudes in the transcendent Keep It Like a Secret song “You Were Right.” That doesn’t mean he has respect for something like Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” the clearest signifier for the Built to Spill snippet, but he clearly understands it, which shows a deeper level of thought than simply dismissing it as some major label bullshit—a very common mentality among listeners to college radio and indie rock at the time when There’s Something Wrong with Love was released. Also “Hidden Track” is just entirely too goofy to be mean-spirited or an attempt at serious satire. It is, above all, a joke—something that Martsch and his bandmates, and the audience they were playing to in the early-mid ‘90s, would’ve found funny. 

It’s not a surprise that Built to Spill didn’t revive this joke on the 30th anniversary tour. It’s a little juvenile, and although I don’t think it’s especially harsh or cruel or anything, I could definitely see younger listeners who are less hung up on “credibility” finding it smug. Jokes don’t always age that well, and “Hidden Track” probably wouldn’t be funny to younger audiences who don’t share a sense of distrust for the music industry like the band’s target demographic did at the time. And of course seamlessly swapping between four songs with different tempos, styles, and instrumentation isn’t especially practical live. Still, if I had made it out to one of these anniversary shows, I would’ve held out a little bit of hope that it would end the way the album itself ends: with 80 seconds of making fun of bad music, capped off with a high-pitched cartoon voice saying “Look for the record with me on the cover!”

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, music, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and more. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.