Commercial Album


Commercial Album is an album released by the Residents in 1980. It is commonly considered a follow-up of Duck Stab/Buster & Glen. The album pares down the concept and structure of the average commercial pop song and reduces it to a one-minute redux. It contains a compilation of 40 such sixty-second vignettes. The album used several session musicians, including Chris Cutler, Snakefinger and Fred Frith as well as two anonymous guest vocalists, Lene Lovich and Andy Partridge. Brian Eno is also thought to appear on the album, but this was never been conclusively confirmed until the release of the 2-CD pREServed Edition in 2019, the liner notes of which confirmed that Eno played synthesizer on "The Coming Of The Crow" as well as David Byrne's appearance on harmony vocals on "Suburban Bathers"..
The faces on the album cover are John Travolta and Barbra Streisand. The backside of the original LP labels listed the length as "1:00" after each of the 40 song titles. The first edition sleeve listed the tracks in the wrong order.
The liner notes state that songs should be repeated three times in a row to form a "pop song". The Residents purchased 40 one-minute advertising slots on San Francisco's most popular Top-40 radio station at the time, KFRC, such that the station played each track of their album over three days. This prompted an editorial in Billboard magazine questioning whether the act was art or advertising.

Track listing

All tracks written by the Residents except where noted
  1. "Easter Woman" – 1:03
  2. "Perfect Love" – 1:03
  3. "Picnic Boy" – 1:01
  4. "End of Home" – 1:04
  5. "Amber" – 1:02
  6. "Japanese Watercolor" – 1:02
  7. "Secrets" – 1:03
  8. "Die in Terror" – 1:03
  9. "Red Rider" – 1:02
  10. "My Second Wife" – 1:02
  11. "Floyd" – 1:03
  12. "Suburban Bathers" – 1:04
  13. "Dimples and Toes" – 1:03
  14. "The Nameless Souls" – 1:04
  15. "Love Leaks Out" – 1:04
  16. "Act of Being Polite" – 1:03
  17. "Medicine Man" – 1:04
  18. "Tragic Bells" – 1:03
  19. "Loss of Innocence" – 1:04
  20. "The Simple Song" – 1:02
  21. "Ups and Downs" – 1:04
  22. "Possessions" – 1:03
  23. "Give It to Someone Else" – 1:03
  24. "Phantom" – 1:04
  25. "Less Not More" – 1:03
  26. "My Work Is So Behind" – 1:04
  27. "Birds in the Trees" – 1:04
  28. "Handful of Desire" – 1:04
  29. "Moisture" – 1:04
  30. "Love Is..." – 1:03
  31. "Troubled Man" – 1:04
  32. "La La" – 1:04
  33. "Loneliness" – 1:04
  34. "Nice Old Man" – 1:04
  35. "The Talk of Creatures" – 1:04
  36. "Fingertips" – 1:04
  37. "In Between Dreams" – 1:03
  38. "Margaret Freeman" – 1:03
  39. "The Coming of the Crow" – 1:04
  40. "When We Were Young" – 1:02
  1. "Shut Up Shut Up"
  2. "And I Was Alone"
  3. "Theme for an American TV Show"
  4. "We're a Happy Family/Bali Ha'i"
  5. "The Sleeper"
  6. "Boy in Love"
  7. "Diskomo "
  8. "Jailhouse Rock"
  9. "It's a Man's Man's Man's World"
  10. "Hit the Road Jack"

    Personnel