One rainy day at university we sat down to watch Magnolia, a film I’d recently bought on video. I thought it was great. Dave pronounced it ‘the biggest heap of fucking shit’ he’d ever seen. The songs in it were provided by Aimee Mann, whose name I was dimly aware of but hadn’t heard anything by.
A few months went by and I watched Magnolia again, without Dave this time, and really liked the song Save Me. So, tech-savvy and skint student that I was, I headed off to Napster and got hold of it. In fact thinking about it, the MP3 I have saved is probably the same one from twentysomething years ago. I wonder if it’s worth anything now. I could go on Antiques Roadshow with it.
For whatever reason, I decided against buying the soundtrack to the film and went for this instead. It has quaint little details from the era, like being released on V2 and having a hastily-added bonus video to play in your CD-ROM drive (the aforementioned Save Me). It’s also a really, really good album. Or at least I thought so until recently, until it turned out the version I had wasn’t what the rest of the world knew Bachelor №. 2 to be.
For decades, before the advent of streaming, album tracklistings would often vary between countries. Record companies would think nothing of taking an artist’s carefully thought-out running order and would merrily rearrange it or swap songs for others with barely a thought for the effect it would have on the overall mood or flow of the record, much to the artist’s consternation.
So it was only recently, when I had an urge to listen to Bachelor №. 2 for the first time in yonks, that I discovered that the tracklisting on my UK CD was different to the one on Spotify/Apple, which seems to be the US version of the album. The songs Susan and Backfire were out, Driving Sideways was in, and the last third of the album had been rearranged into a different order. Most odd.
Having lived with it for a few months though I think I actually prefer the streaming/US version. My CD will always sound ‘right’, but the flow of the US version is better overall.
Happily, both versions have the sense to end with You Do, an absolutely sublime tune, and one of the greatest Aimee Mann songs there is.
