It took me months before I discovered the "hidden track" on Versus' Two Cents Plus Tax.

The term "hidden track" these days seems to refer to unlisted or bonus tracks (not listed on the CD but there if you play the CD all the way to the end). A true hidden track should be one that you have to make an effort to find. There are only two ways to truly hide the track.

Option one: Before the first track. Like this Versus track, a few CDs hide the bonus track before the first song. (For a pretty decent list of other songs on other CDs go here - from The Hidden Song Archive.) The reason why all tracks aren't hidden this way? Because of Red Book standards which state that there shall be exactly 2.00 seconds of silence before the start of track 1, and the the total length shall not exceed 74 minutes. So, before you go searching through all your CDs, a CD with a track hidden in this way shouldn't have the compact disc logo as the CDs aren't Red Book compliant.

Option two: As a multimedia component. By adding a multimedia component any number of things can be hidden on a CD: videos, MP3s, etc. Though most CDs will list these features there are a few Teenbeat releases which feature hidden tracks that will be profiled in this, the sixth, volume of the Teenbeat MP3 of the week.

Getting back to the Versus track, "Oriental American" was also released as a 7" single (TB 272) enclosed in the vinyl edition of Two Cents Plus Tax (TB 242) and included the non-CD track "Wallflowers." The voice on the song is supplied by Asako Fujimoto, of which I know nothing about.

The vinyl edition is still available from Teenbeat.