B-Side Guys

Andrew Becker’s “Practice Songs For The Unloved” emerged from chance—sitting around with a Silvertone guitar case amp, its built-in tremolo demanding a specific chord sequence, which demanded the iconic Hal Blaine “Be My Baby” drum beat, which demanded a female voice (Amira Nader’s), which demanded soaring choruses, which demanded a title celebrating outcasts making music most people wouldn’t like. Sometimes the best songs write themselves when you stop resisting what they want to become.

The Human Potential founder (formerly of Dischord Records’ Medications and Brooklyn’s Screens) built this track around that Phil Spector-era drum foundation, then layered voices into confectionary sweetness that belies the song’s themes. The lyrics invoke Greek mythology—Hera singing pagan songs, Eris writing practice material, Poseidon at Medusa’s gate—framing the unloved as ancient tradition rather than contemporary failure. When Becker sings about being “always too close to paint counterpoints,” he’s acknowledging the impossibility of gaining perspective when you’re inside the experience, when distance would help but proximity is what you’ve got.

The production embraces dream pop shimmer without sacrificing indie rock grit, that tremolo guitar creating waves of sound that support rather than overwhelm the vocals. There’s genuine joy here despite the outsider positioning—this isn’t bitter exclusion but chosen community, friends fucking around together making music on their own terms. The title itself functions as both self-deprecation and defiance: we’re practicing because we’re not good enough for the real thing, or maybe we’re practicing because the “real thing” doesn’t interest us anyway.

Becker describes the feeling as “a community of outcasts banding together,” which he notes resembles what his friends have been doing for years. “Practice Songs For The Unloved” doesn’t argue that misfit music deserves mainstream recognition—it celebrates making it regardless.