Favourite 3-song runs

Thinking here particularly about albums that are not great, but lurking within them is a great runs of songs which keeps drawing you back.

For example, a common bargain bin record of note is Lionheart by Kate Bush. Overall- not great, and she doesn’t like it much herself, but it has this excellent trio which closes out side 1:

• Wow
• Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake
• Oh England My Lionheart

Always leaves me thinking ‘Wow, nice trio’.



Any more nice trios, anyone?

 

Of course, the best trios on great albums are also included. So, Tango In The Night / Fleetwood Mac gets off to a brilliant start with:

• Big Love
• Seven Wonders
• Everywhere

And also Super Furry Animals from their brilliant Guerilla:

• Check It Out
• Do Or Die
• Turning Tide

And, if you don’t want to include Check It Out as a full song then you can easily add the brilliant Northern Lites (Track 4) to the mix instead. Terrible lip-syncing in the video though:

 

The Who Dr. Jimmy/The Rock/Love Reign O'er Me
The Pretty Things In the Square/The Letter/Rain

 

Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains the Same Soundtrack

The Song Remains the Same -> The Rain Song -> Dazed and Confused

 

The Smiths - "Meat is Murder"

The Headmaster Ritual -> Rusholme Ruffians -> I Want the One I Can't Have

 

Off the top of my head:

Ambrosia's s/t debut album
Nice, Nice, Very Nice -> Time Waits For No One -> Holding On To Yesterday

Crime of the Century by Supertramp
School -> Bloody Well Right -> Hide In Your Shell

 

Cheap Thrills - Big Brother & the Holding Co.

• I Need A Man To Love
• Summertime
• Piece of My Heart

Pearl - Janis Joplin

• Move Over
• Cry Baby
• A Woman Left Lonely

 

Juju - Siouxsie & the Banshees

1. Spellbound
2. Into the Light
3. Arabian Knights

 

New Pornographers, from Whiteout Conditions LP (2017)

1. "Play Money"
2. "Whiteout Conditions"
3. "High Ticket Attractions"

This isn't their best album but that's a strong 3 song intro!

 

XTC- Black Sea
-"Respectable Street"
-"Generals And Majors"
-"Living Through Another Cuba"
.....oh, wait! I gotta add
-"Love At First Sight", too!
That's a FOUR-song run, right there!

 

Close to the Edge, the whole album. Or is that cheating?

 

That's a great one! Siouxsie probably has a lot of these. From Kaleidoscope I'm very fond of:
"Tenant"
"Trophy"
"Hybrid"

 

Sugar - Copper Blue (best album of the 90s)
1. The Act We Act
2. A Good Idea
3. Changes.

 

Next To You, So Lonely, Roxanne

 

The Queen Is Dead / The Smith’s has three of my favourites in a row:

• Cemetry Gates
• Big Mouth Strikes Again
• The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

 

From 'Schoolboys in Disgrace' by The Kinks:

I'm In Disgrace - Headmaster - The Hard Way

The nucleus of the perfect rock operetta.

 

I love the way the Stones’ US ‘Out of Our Heads’ starts with “Mercy Mercy,” “Hitch Hike,” and “The Last Time.”

 

2 from the same album!
side 1: Good Times Roll/Best Friends Girl/Just What I Needed

or side 2: You're All I've Got Tonight/Bye Bye Love/Moving in Stereo

 

Beatles For Sale - not their finest but I love this trio:

• Every Little Thing
• I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party
• What You’re Doing

[EDIT]: Just listening to I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party now- what a harmony vocal (whoever it is..)!

 

Easy. First three songs on Patti Smith's Wave. All great, and the only memorable songs on the album (IMO).

 

Heart: Magic Man - Dreamboat Annie (Fantasy Child) - Crazy On You

 

Side two of Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies:
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Generation Landslide
Sick Things

 

Peaches
Willie The Pimp
Green Genes

 

Shiny Toy Guns-We Are Pilots, 2005
When They Came For Us
Joel's Theme
Sky Fell Over Me

 

Syntax-Tripolar, 2012
Zero Vision
Thorns and Roses
Pennies and Change