This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2003 Week continues here with a dive into our picks for the best songs from that year that never made it to single release — but live on as essential cuts from the albums we most frequently return to.
There was no shortage of blockbuster albums to go around in 2003. File-sharing had started to cut into physical sales, but the CD still reigned supreme in the marketplace, and plenty of big-ticket releases put up massive numbers. Some of those were with debut sets, like 50 Cent finally making his long-awaited LP arrival after years of mixtape hype or Beyoncé confirming her solo superstar status outside of Destiny’s Child. Others were follow-ups to early-decade smashes, with Linkin Park and Alicia Keys proving they were no one-album wonders with their similarly successful sophomore sets. And a few were career culminations, as OutKast and Jay-Z released perhaps their most-anticipated albums yet — with industry hiatuses for both soon to follow.
But it wasn’t just the huge albums making a major impact in 2003. Internet word-of-mouth, spurred on by peer-to-peer networks, webboards and review publications like Pitchfork and Stylus Magazine, turned imagination-capturing releases by the Postal Service and Broken Social Scene into Little Albums That Could. Veteran alt-rock favorites Liz Phair and Fountains of Wayne glossed up their sounds a little and were rewarded with the biggest crossover successes of their careers. And cult-favorite LPs by artists like Songs: Ohia and Dizzee Rascal were likely never destined for the U.S. mainstream, but earned devoted followings that still persist 20 years later.
While a lot of these albums spun off big singles that continue to define them in the public consciousness, they all also had even greater treasures buried below their surfaces. Some of those are still celebrated today, and some of them — well, you kinda just had to be there. Here are our 40 favorite songs from albums released in the U.S. in 2003 that never became official singles.
