Studio Chatter

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A music trope. When a band record part of a song, they may sometimes leave in some of the talking that occurred during the recording session. It generally appears at the beginning or end of a song.

A subtrope of Throw It In, related to Leave the Camera Running.

Examples of Studio Chatter include:

Alternative Country

• Ryan Adams' "To Be Young" is preceded by a brief intro called "Argument With David Rawlings Concerning Morrissey", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin (more specifically, the argument is over which Morrissey album the song "Suedehead" was on). On the same album there's "In My Time Of Need", where he can be heard mumbling "all right... Sittin' on my foot is weird". Apparently he was sitting down to play guitar with one leg crossed under the other.

Alternative Hip Hop

• The first half of an obscure Fort Minor song ("Tools of the Trade") has Mike Shinoda describe and demonstrate how one makes a hip hop instrumental and ends with everyone laughing at a joke one of the rappers made about another one.

Alternative Metal

• The beginning of System of a Down's "Chop Suey": "We're rolling 'Suicide'." "Suicide" was the in-progress title of the song.

Alternative Rock

• Modest Mouse, at the beginning of "The Good Times Are Killing Me":

"Daaa da da daaa.. Is there an ashtray in here or what?" "Can we smoke in here?" "Yeah, Eric's got those pockets." * metronome starts*

• • "What People Are Made Of" starts with someone asking "What's up? Make love?".
  • "Bukowski" ends with "I fucked up the last line..."
• The end of The Used's "The Taste of Ink" has an outtake with band members complimenting the vocalist.
• Counting Crows' song "Recovering the Satellites" has an extended bit at the end that's repeated several times; before the last one, we hear the lead singer telling everyone else, "Last one!"
• The acoustic songs in Barenaked Ladies' album Everything to Everyone has some very funny chatter at the end where they call each other silly nicknames in Scottish accents.
  • There's also the stuff at the end of the Gordon album. This includes messing up a line in Grade 9 and some improvised stuff in the style of If I Had $1000000.
• The Smiths, at the end of "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish". "Okay Stephen, let's do that again" to their producer, Stephen Street.
  • And later, an alternate take of Morrissey's solo song "I Know Very Well How I Got My Name" was released as "I Know Very Well How I Got My Note Wrong". In that version the guitarist messes up near the very end and both he and Morrissey laugh about it.
• Tons and tons on Ben Folds Five's album Whatever and Ever, Amen. According the liner notes, this was part of the concept, to provide a more raw and intimate listening experience. It works.
  • The Ben Folds solo song "Dog" includes an impromptu phone conversation with his then wife. Apparently, he had been recording the vocals and she happened to call his cellphone just in time for the song's instrumental outro. After she chides him for picking up without saying hello, the following exchange happens:

Frally: What are you doin'? Ben: Makin' a record. Frally: ...You're a cumquat. Ben: (laughs) We're doin' a vocal track. Um, you're all over it now. Frally: (sarcastically) Aw, great.

• Blind Melon's "Mouthful Of Cavities" starts with Shannon Hoon saying "Listen, man, I got the window open, hear the cats?". Evidently there were some cats just outside the studio, since you can faintly hear some meowing in the background as he says this.
• The Pixies' Surfer Rosa has a few examples of this throughout. Most well-known among fans is a bit before "Vamos" where Frank Black shouts "You fuckin' die!", then awkwardly explains that he was just jokingly finishing Kim Deal's (apparently unrecorded) warning to not touch her belongings. And also before "I'm Amazed" we have:

Kim Deal: ...and fucked 'em at school, all I know is that... there were rumours... he was into field hockey players. There were rumours. Black Francis: *chuckle* So I applied, basically. Kim Deal: He was gone the next day I went out for the team. It's like, he was go- they'd just like, it was like so hush hush, they were so... quiet about it, and then the next thing you know...

• "Metal Man" on The Breeders' Pod album contains studio chatter. The end of their cover of "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" has the following exchange:

Britt Walford (drummer): Josephine, do you think you're going bald? Josephine Wiggs (bassist): No, you've asked me that before, and the answer is no!

• Radiohead's "2+2=5" opens with guitarist Jonny Greenwood plugging his guitar in and saying "We're on," and lead vocalist Thom Yorke replying, "That's a nice way to start, Jonny..."
  • At the beginning of "Polyethylene (Parts 1&2)," someone says "go" before the song starts.
• At the beginning of Coldplay's "Strawberry Swing", when the clapping starts you can hear producer Brian Eno say, "It's a bit fast."
• The song "MC5" by the Stone Temple Pilots ends with some guitar noise after a string is broken.

"I broke a string!" Laughter, followed by counting off into the next song.

• At the beginning of Tori Amos's song "Not The Red Baron," the voices of "pilots" radioing each other can be heard over the piano. The voices are actually the sound engineers communicating. This is particularly cool because the song is something of an improv, recorded in a single take.
• Beck can clearly be heard saying "One more time" at the beginning of "Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997."
  • He mutters something at the end of "Cold Brains", but what he's actually saying hasn't been confirmed. Part of it sort of sounds like "I like the moogs", which would make sense because there's a keyboard part at the end of the song that sounds like a moog synthesizer.
  • Also at the beginning of "Truckdrivin Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)," kind of. The title refers to an actual pair of truckdrivers that Beck lived above. Their shouting matches got so loud that Beck's recording equipment picked them up, and the argument was placed as an intro to the track.
  • Between it's Fake-Out Fade-Out and it's actual Last-Note Nightmare ending, "Fume" has a snippet of Beck's friend Steve Moramarco, apparently coming up with a mock-Bowdlerized version of the chorus: "...And I really don't think I know what, do you? There's an ant... in my shoe!"
• Pearl Jam's "Dirty Frank" ends with a brief guitar solo. Toward the end of the solo, Eddie Vedder can faintly be heard saying "That's enough," cuing the end of the solo and song.
  • At the end of Rearviewmirror, you can hear drummer Dave Abbruzzese say something unintelligible before hurling his sticks at the wall. According to Vedder, this was due to the producer really pressing Abbruzzese to play harder through several takes of the song.
• At the beginning of the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Tearjerker" Anthony Kiedis asks the producer "Can you turn the track up, please?"
• Ween's album GodWeenSatan: The Oneness is full of both this as well as spoken lines that were probably intentionally recorded as a joke, such as the unnecessarily lengthy count-in during "Wayne's Pet Youngin.'"
• The Butthole Surfers' "Birds" begins with Gibby Haynes saying "alright, what are we doin' here?" over the intro, then laughing and clearing his throat, before starting the song more properly with a scream.
• Belly's "Untogether" starts with the following snippet of conversation:

Unknown band member: ...Sour mash. Tanya Donnelly (probably): (coughs loudly and clears throat) Same band member: Ooh, ouch!

• Jamie T's "Brand New Bass Guitar" opens and closes with a couple of great examples:

"FUCKIN' CROISSANT! "I think that's the scrappiest version I've ever done of that in my life ..."

• The Cribs "Be Safe", featuring special guest Lee Ranaldo, finishes with this exchange:

Ryan: Yeah, mine were alright. Weren't my best one but who cares? Lee: (laughs) That's the spirit

• Right before the coda to "She Thinks She's Edith Head," one of the bandmembers can be heard shouting "One more! Go! Go!"
• It's not audible in the song itself, but someone in Cracker apparently had a loudly ticking watch on during the recording of "Someday" - at the end of the song, the band are joking about it and comparing it to the beginning of 60 Minutes.
• "Senator's Daughter" by Fountains Of Wayne starts with a barely audible count-in, followed by Adam Schleisinger starting with the wrong note and muttering "Jesus...".
• The Violent Femmes' "American Music":

Gordon Gano: Can I... Can I put in somethin' like 'this is American music, take one'? One, two, three, four...

• "Live Forever" by Oasis starts with a little casual whistling and someone muttering "oh yeah".
• "Olympia" by Hole starts with a couple of false starts from Courtney Love. Later, after something of a Fake-Out Fade-Out, she says "no, we're not done..." to either the Record Producer or the rest of the band.
• Red House Painters have a song off of Ocean Beach titled "Over My Head". The beginning of the track has about 45 seconds worth of the band just talking in the recording studio about random stuff, as if someone accidentally left the tape rolling. The ending 15 seconds has the same thing.

Baroque Rock

• Guitarist Mick Grabham asking "Is it on, Tommy?" at the start of "Nothing But The Truth" by Procol Harum.
• Emilie Autumn starts off "Let the Record Show" with this. ("How's that?" "Good.")

Christian Rock

• Relient K's "Mood Rings" ends with the singer mumbling, "That was terrible..."

Comedy / Parody

• Played with by "Weird Al" Yankovic in his parody of "You're Beautiful", titled "You're Pitiful". Early in the song he starts to sing, stops, and asks if he was too early, then talks to get ready for the song to actually start.
• sloshy from Homestar Runner is a stereotype of indie/alternative rock bands like Pavement, so naturally they did this. At the end of their cover of Limozeen's "Because It's Midnite," the singer says "Alright, we're done here."

Country

• Country Music band The Tractors included a lot of this on its first album, including one instance when a band member says, "When [the song] gets to the smutty part, you can stop me."
• Someone in the studio yells "There's your record, hoss" at the end of Shania Twain's "No One Needs to Know." Afterward, another voice (possibly record producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange) says "Yep, there you go, dude."
• At the end of Dierks Bentley's "How Am I Doin'", one of the musicians says, "You feelin' better, big guy?" and Dierks replies, "Uh, not really, dude."
• On the Marie Sisters' "Real Bad Mood", the two sisters start chattering over the end solo. After they feign an argument, the talk box guitar player starts making random syllables and another voice (the record producer?) says "Come on, guys, quit messing around in there."
• On "I Brake for Brunettes" by Rhett Akins, following the sound of a car slamming on the brakes and crashing, someone mutters, "I think somebody got hurt!"

Electronic / Techno

• Kraftwerk sometimes says "eins, zwei, drei, vier" at the beginning of their songs, which is "one, two, three, four" in German. (It can sound like "I'm swallowed by fear" to an English-speaking listener.)
• BT's "Never Gonna Come Back Down" off Movement in Still Life ends with guest vocalist Mike Doughty (of Soul Coughing) saying "Sherice!", a random name mentioned earlier. (Doughty is known for his wacky stream-of-consciousness lyrics.) Then someone (Transeau himself maybe?) is heard laughing, saying "Fucking excellent, man!" then Doughty saying "That's what I do for a living".
• It's an unfinished demo-mix, but Devo's album "Recombo DNA" has one track, "No Noise", that ends with singer/bassist Jerry Casale muttering "I sure as fuck hope it recorded that time."

Experimental

• Velvet Underground's "Temptation Inside Your Heart" is almost entirely this, since they accidentally recorded the backing vocals on the same track as the lead.

Folk

• The Kingston Trio's "Greenback Dollar" includes a few false starts at the beginning, an unsure dedication ("This song is for Shirley! * one of the trio, sotto voce :* Shirley whatshername...")... and various swipes at each other during the performance itself. It's a fun recording.

Folk Rock

• Great Big Sea has chatter in several songs, which makes sense given their history of Audience Participation. For example, in "Jakey's Gin", one singer excitedly tells the other to start singing an entirely different drinking song.

General

• The most common one, used by too many bands to count, is the count-off at the beginning: "One, Two, One, Two, Three, Four!".
  • "Five, Six, Seven, Eight" is also fairly common, especially with dance- or jazz-influenced numbers.

Hard Rock

• The remaster of Deep Purple's classic In Rock included 6 tracks of studio chatter, flubbed intro's and general goofing around.
• Right before the beginning of "Black Country Woman" by Led Zeppelin, an airplane can be heard flying over the studio - an engineer asks "should we roll it, Jimmy?" and vocalist Robert Plant can be heard saying "Nah, leave it."
  • John Bonham's low-in-the-mix, "rapped" count-in before "The Ocean": "We've done four already, but now we're steady and then they went...1...2...3...4..."
  • And In My Time of Dying ends with studio chatter. After the track is done, John Bonham coughs loudly, Plant just loudly says: Cough. After that the engineer asks them to come in and listen.
• Van Halen's "Poundcake" starts with the volume turned really low, during an exchange between two band members (one of them safely assumed to be Eddie Van Halen). As per some lyrics, someone says "Ain't that some shit?", followed by "Okay, ya ready to go?" "Yeah."
  • Also, in "Unchained" Ted Templeman interrupts David Lee Roth's trash talking with "Come on, Dave, gimme a break!" (and he replies "One break, coming up!").
• The Faces song "Too Bad" has the producer speaking over the count in to tell Ron Wood that he has to lower his guitar.

Heavy Metal

• Metallica's "Anesthesia: Pulling Teeth" starts with the words, "bass solo, take one". It is, of course, largely a bass solo with some drums.
  • As "Blitzkrieg" winds down and sort of flounders, James Hetfield belches into the mic and laughs, prompting Lars Ulrich to say, "We fucked up in just one place.."
  • And also at the end of the cover of "Helpless" on the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP, you can hear Lars saying something like "Let it ring out, let it ring out." The entire EP has little bits of chatter actually, it adds to the "garage" ambiance (including a Throw It In out of tune cover of Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" intro).
• Iron Maiden's albums from Brave New World to A Matter of Life and Death include each a spoken part with drummer Nicko McBrain, one finishing ("Awww, I fucking missed him", with the Record Producers response as well, in Brave New World) and two opening the album ("One, two, one, two, three, four!" and "AYEEE!").
• The end of Slipknot's "Scissors" has the band watching scat porn while high. It's been said that this was kind of an initiation for percussionist Chris Fehn (who can pretty clearly be heard puking his guts out).
• Megadeth's cover of "Paranoid" ends with drummer Nick Menza still playing the song even after it ends, prompting this.

Dave Mustaine: Nick. Nick! Nick!! Nick Menza: *stops playing* Fuck. Me. Running.

Hip Hop

• Ruining the otherwise creepy "Cleaning Out My Closet" by Eminem is the chatter in the beginning: "Where's my snare? I have no snare in my headphones. There you go. Yeah. Yo, yo..."
• Lauryn Hill's debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill has an interesting version of this. In between the songs, there is audio of a class of students talking about love and relationships. The audio was actually recorded in Hill's living room, and the "teacher" was poet Ras Baraka.

Indie Folk

• "Holland, 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel has Jeff Magnum starting with "Two, One, two, three, four..."
  • The album also ends with the sound of Jeff Mangum putting down his guitar and walking away.
  • And right after the 8-minute first take of "Oh Comely", you can hear the producer yelling "HOLY SHIT!"
    • Actually, that was Robert Schneider (of The Apples in Stereo fame) who played second guitar on the track. He was amazed that they had gotten it right on the first take.
• The Super Time Pilot album Did We Happen To Begin includes a lot of the two lead vocalists bantering over instrumental sections, often cracking jokes at each others' expense. The funniest moment may be in "ET", where Nikki jokingly decides to start singing a glockenspiel part she didn't get to overdub yet ("ding ding ding ding!" "No, you can do the real ones later...")
• On Sufjan Stevens' second Songs for Christmas EP, someone says "I played terrible," at the end of "I Saw Three Ships".

Indie Rock

• Motion City Soundtrack's "Shiver": "I think that was finally one of the better ones."
• Spoon's songs "U Got Your Cherry Bomb" and "Don't You Evah" end and start (respectively) with a bit of studio banter. It can get a bit annoying when listening to the album on shuffle.
• Eels' "All The Beautiful Things" has a slightly humorous variation on the count-off: "One... hmm, I'm not gonna count, sorry".
• If you listen closely to Starflyer 59's "First Heart Attack", you can hear someone say "Stop," immediately before the song and the album ends.
• In Pavement's "Grave Architecture," Stephen Malkmus says "come on in" to the rest of the band after the intro.
  • "Cut Your Hair" starts with a little bit of feedback followed by someone whispering "Stop it!"
• Centrifuge by the YouTube band Pomplamoose has a bridge/outro-first-half consisting largely of technical fumbles in the booth.
• Rogue Wave's "Harmonium" ends with something that is mostly unintelligible, but it has something to do with a screw popping off and something landing perfectly on the other note.
• The version of "Treatment Bound" by The Replacements that ended up making the album was actually a recording of the band running through the song for the very first time: At one point, the rest of the band mistakenly think the song is over, and Paul Westerberg has to tell them "keep goin'".
• At the beginning of fun.'s "All the Pretty Girls," you can hear, "Cool. So it's gonna have to be two basses (pronounced like the fish). The pretty girls."
• Mates of State's "Open Book" begins with Jason Hammel asking "wha' happened?" in a silly voice, which was probably an off-the-cuff A Mighty Wind reference.

Jazz

• In a lot of jazz recordings (especially big band, or simply those with larger bands), there's often indistinct chatter between the musicians (drowned out due to the instruments). They're usually instructions, words of encouragement, cues or even small-chit-chat, if you're able to pick out some of the more audible ones. More Egregious in live recordings, obviously.
• Miles Davis' seminal album In A Silent Way has some moments of him softly giving the other musicians instructions - the whole album was improvised, more or less.
  • At the end of a song on the album Somethin' Else, Miles can be heard talking with the producer, Alfred Lion.

Melodic Hardcore

• "Rufus Wants A Hug" by Kid Dynamite starts with "I don't hear any sounds on this recording. All I hear is bzzzzzz... Ready, Freddy?"

Nu Metal

• Korn has this in a few songs at the beginning or the end of some tracks such as "Clown" (an ongoing conversation between the band members, with joking insults being thrown around), "Wicked" ("Yo, Chuck! We got runnin' mixes in the headphones!"), and some recordings of singer Jonathan Davis bursting to tears in the studio.
• Coal Chamber's "Pig" with the band and production staff messing around.
• Collision Course has a bit of banter inserted at certain points, including this gem of an opener:

Chester Bennington: I ordered a cappuccino, where's my fucking cappucino?

Pop

• Nelly Furtado did this several times on her album Loose, where she threw in bits of her own studio speech as well as studio conversations - beginning of "Promiscuous", "Glow", "Do It", end of "No Hay Igual", and an extended 40-second conversation at the end of "In God's Hands".
• P!nk's song "Missundaztood" ends with someone saying something too quietly to be made out; Pink asks for clarification and then laughs and says, "No I wasn't doin' my Ex-Lax commercial. This my first single, man!" The grunting before the chatter sounds a bit...ambiguous. (The drumming continues through her speech, so it's possible that this was intended.)
• Alvin and The Chipmunks' original hit song "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" used a framing device of David Seville attempting to keep the chipmunks on-task in the studio.
  • The Lost Dogs' cover version of the song keeps the format, but changes the dialogue: the various musicians are complaining about getting paid or literally phoning in their performance, and one by one they storm out of the studio and leave a synthesized double to sing for them.
  • Jonathan Coulton's pastiche of the song "Podsafe Christmas Song" also has that framing device, with Coulton trying to keep Adam Curry in particular from flouncing out of the recording.
• Miley Cyrus shouts "Rrrrock'N'Rolllll!!!" at the end of East Northumberland High.
• The Veronicas start of "Mother Mother". 1, 2, 3,
• "is this thing on" on Rock n Roll by Britney Spears
  • "Turn it up, yeah" on Don't Keep Me Waiting also by Britney Spears
• Hilary Duff in Workin' It Out, "I know, don't move on" and laughing.

Pop Punk

• Green Day's "Good Riddance" begins with guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong screwing up, cursing and starting over.
• The Offspring's "All I Want" has presumably a technician saying "Okay" faintly before the Dexter starts singing

Pop Rock

• Blood Sweat And Tears's "Spinning Wheel" ends with merry-go-round music playing over the rest of the song. The effect is hilariously awful, and when it ends a bandmember can be heard saying "That wan't too good" while the band laughs and the song fades.
• "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees opens with producer Chip Douglas announcing that it's take "7A". Davy Jones obviously doesn't hear that and asks Douglas what take it is. The other Monkees say "7A" in a tone of mock-irritation. Davy accuses them of picking on him because he's short. Most oldies stations edit this out.
• McFly's "5 Colours in her Hair" has this at the end of the song.

Post Hardcore

• Zzzonked by Enter Shikari opens with a clip of the lead singer complaining: "These wars are directly out of order, you get me? They're past their sell-by date serious. I don't think any of you fucking get me. Listen." Cue Metal Scream.

Post-Rock

• Mogwai's Young Team album is filled with this, including one recording where a band member tells their manager that 2 other members got into a fistfight and left. We hear the second half of the conversation at the start of the song, and the first half at the end, played backwards...for some reason.
  • One of the songs also starts with the countoff "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, a-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and on ya go!"

Progressive Rock

• There's a secret track at the end of the CD edition of Spectral Mornings by Steve Hackett where the janitor comes into the studio to clean up the mess made by the band. He is none too pleased.
• "Are You Ready, Eddy?" off the Emerson Lake and Palmer album Tarkus ends with Carl Palmer yammering about the sandwiches in the Abbey Road commissary.
• The entire side 4 of Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? album (the only side to use outside musicians, incidentally) is loaded with between-track Studio Chatter. The version of "Hello It's Me" played on FM radio frequently retains the chatter at the end of the track.

"There goes Todd." "Yipes!"

• The Concept Album "Interview" by Gentle Giant intentionally places snippets of an imaginary interview with the band in between some of the songs. The album is meant to parody the kind of questions the band had been asked in interviews.

Progressive Metal

• The end of Liquid Tension Experiment's "Three Minute Warning": "I believe that will suffice for a record. All right, send it to Barney, as is."

Punk Rock

• Almost every song by Bomb the Music Industry! has some chatter after it.
• Sum 41 has a silly albeit quite amusing one in their song "We're All To Blame". The lead singer mumbles, "Far in, ooh..." in a strained voice but follows it up with a confused "... Are we singing?". Makes you wonder... Far in what, Derek?
• After the end of "Plans I Make," the final track of Hüsker Dü's New Day Rising album, this exchange can be heard with their producer, Spot.

Possibly Grant Hart: What do you think, Spot? Possibly Spot: I think he's going to be mad because we opened up the trashcan. Bob Mould: [In a mocking tone] Now the bleed came in. Who cares? Cause that's the last song on the album, it doesn't matter what it sounds like anyways. [guitar noise]

• At the end of "Diabolical" by Mindless Self Indulgence.

Steve: I lost my pick in the last part. Kitty: That was... That was the best we're gonna do.

• Ian MacKaye ends Minor Threat's "Stumped" by asking "Is that good enough? I think so..."
• The Ramones had many songs where Dee Dee could be heard doing the count-in. "Danger Zone" was pretty much their only song to have any more studio chatter than that:

Dee Dee: Which song are we doing? Johnny: Danger Zone! Dee Dee: Oh, ready? one two three four!

R & B

• "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" is about 33% this...but then again, so are most of James Brown's songs.

Reggae

• German singer Peter Fox's album, Stadtaffe, has its first few tracks interspersed with random noise, seemingly from assorted machines around the studio.

Rock

• The Beatles:
  • "Helter Skelter": "I've got blisters on my fingers!"
  • "Revolution #1" (the version on the White Album). "Ah. Take 18. OK."
    • Actually, not "Take 18".
  • "Get Back": "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition."
    • That's only the album version. And many tracks in Let It Be count (the album even starts with "'I Dig a Pygmy', by Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf Aids... Phase One, in which Doris gets her oats!")
  • "A Day in the Life": "Never to see any other way, never to see any other way, never to see any other way, never to see any other way..."
  • Probably neither the Ur Example nor the Trope Maker, but the best example of the "countdown" version of this has got to be the "One, two, three, FAH!" at the beginning of the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There". The Beatles themselves parodied it later in the intro to "Taxman".
    • The Monkees later parodied the "Taxman" count-in on "You Told Me", with all four Monkees shouting "one, two, three, four" randomly and repeatedly.
  • In general, Lennon wasn't comfortable with the usual "one two three four" count-in. On "A Day in the Life" you can hear him start off with "sugarplum fairy, sugarplum fairy."
• Jonathan Richman counts in "Road Runner" by the Modern Lovers as "one two three four five six". No, the song is in not in 6/8 time. Either he's counting eighth notes and the music kicks on on the fourth beat, or he's counting quarter notes and it starts on the second beat of the second measure.
• "Barbara Ann" by The Beach Boys has all kinds of laughter and general chatter in it.
  • On Pet Sounds, some talking can be heard in the background of a few songs. Humorously, in the middle of an instrumental break on "Here Today", some unintelligible chatter is followed by Brian Wilson admonishing "No talking!". When stereo mixes were made for the CD version of the album, the background chatter was removed.
  • "Brian falls into a piano" is a track near the end of The Smile Sessions.
• U2's "Vertigo" begins with Bono doing the count-off in Spanish: "Uno, dos, tres, catorce!" (For those who don't speak Spanish, catorce means "fourteen", not "four".)
• "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" opens up with the band missing its cue, causing Dylan and producer Tom Wilson to crack up before regaining their composure and completing a successful take.
  • "To Be Alone With You" starts with the band tuning up and Dylan asking producer Bob Johnston "is it rolling, Bob?" Obviously, it was.
• Neil Young's Mirrorball often includes chatter or count-ins before songs, along with a couple of false starts.
• The Police song "On Any Other Day" begins with Stewart Copeland saying, "The other ones are complete bullshit."
• Bruce Springsteen's "Seeger Sessions" album was intentionally roughly-hewn and seat-of-their-pants (they did more than one take, but didn't practice TOO much), so sometimes you can hear a bit of studio chatter as Bruce is trying to direct the band during some of the songs. The song where you can hear the most of this is "Pay Me My Money Down," during which you hear him call out two different key shifts ("Take it up to B-flat! A-one, two, three...") and cue the instrumentalists' solos (although it seems for one they got a bit confused who was getting the solo, because he says "Alright, SOMEBODY take it..." before the accordian player finally comes in).
  • On Born In The USA near the end of "Darlington County," Bruce howls to Clarence Clemons, "Big Man! Play that saxophone!" and laughs.
• Oasis is particularly fond of these, starting their single "Songbird" with "3, 4", doing the whole 1-4 counting in "Where Did It All Go Wrong?", and throwing in random acoustic riffs every so often (i.e: The intro to "Wonderwall" before the song "Hello" and an acoustic version of the main riff to "Supersonic" at the end of "Wonderwall").
  • They did it particularly frequently on their early B-sides. "Talk Tonight" begins with Noel announcing that he's removing his watch before strumming the opening chord; "Half the World Away" begins with an acknowledgement that the recording has begun; "The Masterplan" opens with: "Get on with it. 'Cmon. Get the count-in. When is it? One-there-it-is, two... three... FOUR!" and their cover of "I Am the Walrus" begins with the immortal: "What's up? Doesn't matter if it's out of tune, 'cos you're cool!"
• "Happy Jack" by The Who - at the end of the song guitarist Pete Townshend yells "I saw ya!" at drummer Keith Moon, who was banned from the vocal recordings due to his exceptionally terrible voice - Moon was trying to sneak back into the studio.
• The studio recording of the song "Hockey Monkey" begins with the band explaining that they wrote the song because they wanted to appeal to kids, and they decided that they (kids) like both hockey and monkeys.
• Laughter from band members can be heard at the end of "Six Shooter" by Queens of the Stone Age
• "David Watts" by The Kinks starts with "This is the master," and "Nice and smooth."
• David Bowie's "Life on Mars?" ends with a soft but dramatic piano playout, but you can also hear a ringing phone that's answered.
  • "Andy Warhol" starts off with the engineer announcing the song name and take number, followed by David Bowie correcting his pronunciation of "Warhol".
• Nic Cester of Jet could be heard saying "No, that's good" before the song "Rip It Up."
• Everything Else like to leave in bits of chatter. Most obviously in "Fool", but there is also some buried in "The Enemies".
• T. Rex's Electric Warrior has a couple of instances: "Lean Woman Blues" starts with the end of a botched take followed Marc Bolan laughing "Uh, take ten!", then starting the song off with "one, n' two, n' buckle my shoe!". "Planet Queen" also starts with a tiny bit of chatter, the most intelligible part being Bolan saying "lovely".
  • "Baby Strange" from Tanx features another silly count-in: One, 'n' two, 'n' a-bobbity-bobbity-boo-boo YEAH!"
• Louie Louie by the Kingsmen includes a F-Bomb when the drummer makes a mistake. Since the song was recorded in one pass they had no choice but to leave that in there.

Ska

• Several Reel Big Fish songs end with casual conversations or statements, such as a man claiming to be selling T-Shirts at the end of "Ban the Tube Top".
  • Lead singer Aaron Barrett also tries to start "Suckers" by saying "This one is for all the suckers that still believe in love," but the entire time, one of his bandmates is trying to interrupt him, asking if he can open the song instead, only to forget what he was supposed to say after being allowed to do so.
  • "You Don't Know" starts with Dan Regan saying, "Horns standing by!" followed by Aaron Barrett exclaiming, "Holy shit, we're rolling!"
• During the outro of Ska punk band Sublime's "What I Got," one of the members is heard saying, "We're not that far off. So that's... see, but... we're done, man."
• Catch-22's most well known anthem, title track from "Keaseby Nights," fades out with someone exclaiming "That was terrible!"
• The Cat Empire's album Two Shoes has the first song start with a bit of chatter, ending with "Right then. Off you go." leading into the count-off.

Southern Rock

• At the beginning of "Sweet Home Alabama", Ronnie Van Zant says, "Turn it up." He was telling the sound engineer to turn up the volume in the his headphones.

Symphonic

• The final track of Symphony of Eva, an orchestral arrangement of various music from Neon Genesis Evangelion, ends on what appears to be the main choirgirls and the conductor casually chatting as the audience meanders out of the venue.