
Blanc de Noir: In Praise of B sides
by Paula Redes Sidore
“I feel like B sides are always better, no matter whose record it is.” - Alicia Keys
I’ve been a fan of B sides since, well, pretty much since there have been B sides. Record companies have historically used vinyl’s flipside as a holding pen for unreleased or less desirable concept material. Pieces that don’t fit the brand; supplementary songs with minimal hopes and lower aspirations. Filler. Yet, to me B sides embody the edgy and unpredictable, the vulnerable creative underbelly of both artist and medium.
Let’s call rosé, the pink “wunder” of the last decade, our A side.
Industry figures show that rosé now constitutes some 9% of the global wine market. Thirty-nine percent of wine drinkers in the U.S. alone acknowledged in a recent trade study that they drink rosé two to five times a week. That’s the vinous equivalent of Cyndi Lauper’s 1984 hit single “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” — fun but not likely to end up in a museum.
Making Blanc de Noir our B side.
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