Green Day - When I Come Around

This is one of the odder findings in recent memory.

The "Album Version" (printed 2:58 on the vinyl LP and the CD single) is the only studio version that was released (not counting the cassette demo and the 4-track demo released on the giant 65-track reissue of Dookie).

The promo CD single, labeled as "Album Version", is ostensibly the same version as the Dookie album (a differently EQ'd digital clone, to be precise).

However, there must have been some digital glitches when Reprise assembled the promo CD single. Compared to the true Album Version on Dookie, the promo CD single has a zillion edits that each remove a very small chunk of the song. You can't hear each little edit, but they're there. I found edit points at 0:06.6, 0:07.8, 0:08.4, 0:10.1, 0:11.4, 0:14.6, 0:15.2, 0:15.8, and 0:16.2, and then I gave up. Between the edits, the song plays at the proper tempo, so I was able to get good cancellation in a null test. But the overall effect of having a zillion of these little edits is that the promo CD single runs exactly 1.36 seconds shorter than the Dookie album; it's as if the song were sped up by 0.8% without changing the pitch.

I have the true Album Version on:

• Reprise's Dookie (1994)
• a rare multi-artist promo CD called Powertrax Vol. 4 (1994)
• another rare multi-artist promo CD called WEA Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Vol. 5 (1996)

I have the promo CD single version (called "Album Version" but has the zillion little edits) on:

• the promo CD Hitmakers Vol. 108 (Dec 2 1994)
• Top Hits USA's recurrent disc RH028 (Feb 1995)
• TM Studios Goldwav track no. 00011702

I recommend picking up a copy of Reprise's Dookie (1994), because "When I Come Around" plays flawlessly, and it also happens to be one of the high points of pop in 1994 (my opinion).

Edited by crapfromthepast - 11 hours 9 minutes ago at 10:12pm

That's certainly odd. Was the album version played to a click track, or does the tempo drift? If it's the latter, maybe the edits were made to keep the BPM exact (for mix DJs)?