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What is the longest song ever recorded? Top 10 contenders
You've likely never heard of any of them, but I had to laugh when I thought about all the times DJs put on "Stairway To Heaven" or "MacArthur's Park" in order to be able to take a quick washroom break during a shift. With some of these tunes, you can not only take a break, you could go out to dinner, grab a nap, go out shopping, visit a friend and still have time to get back.
The longest? More than 48 hours. And as a bonus for radio on this side of the border - it's Canadian Content! This is a fun article, although I'm not entirely sure I buy all of it.
As for actual music someone might really play on the radio, they offer this, although I somehow doubt this is actually the longest ever played on a station.
"It probably would be the song Thick as a Brick by the band Jethro Tull. Back in the 70's, it was played in its 43+ minute glory on the Denver radio station KFML. Technically it comes in two 20+ minute parts, but the station played it as a single track.
It is tough to say whether a similar feat has been performed since, as there are thousands of radio stations in the world, but Thick as a Brick has to be one of the longest."
What is the longest song ever recorded? Top 10 contenders
- Jody Thornton
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Re: What is the longest song ever recorded? Top 10 contenders
As a finished ready to play record however, would the 12" single of Soft Cell's Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go qualify? Or what about Side A of Stars on Long Play?
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Jody Thornton
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Re: What is the longest song ever recorded? Top 10 contenders
Maybe if they did a list on what feels like the longest song on the radio!
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Thread Starter- Jody Thornton
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Re: What is the longest song ever recorded? Top 10 contenders
RadioActive wrote:
Maybe if they did a list on what feels like the longest song on the radio!
Very funny, but I was seriously speaking of length. Now do these songs HAVE to have been on the radio? It sounds like longest recorded songs. By the way, special radio station assembled edits wouldn't count, would they?
Soft Cell is out because I think even Richard Harris outdoes it slightly. But Stars on Long Play, I believe clocks in at nearly twenty minutes as a single LP track over the one side.
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Jody Thornton
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Re: What is the longest song ever recorded? Top 10 contenders
May not be the longest radio track but Genesis' 1972 "Supper's Ready" from the Foxtrot LP, Mike Oldfield's 1973 side one of Tubular Bells (26:01) and the first side of Shawn Phillips' Second Contribution ( admittedly a segue of several songs commencing with perhaps the longest title - "She Was Waiting For Her Mother At The Station In Torino And You Know I Love You Baby But It's Getting Too Heavy To Laugh" aka "Woman") received regular airplay at CHOM-FM until the AOR culling later in that decade. A short list of but a few long songs from that era.
- Tq345
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Re: What is the longest song ever recorded? Top 10 contenders
Back in college I used to put on Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie when I needed an extended break. It runs about 18 minutes or so.