The B-Side Capitol Barely Promoted—Until Listeners Chose the Hit Themselves

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Los Angeles, March 11, 1950. Nat King Cole entered Capitol’s recording studio to sing a ballad that his own record company did not seem to regard as an obvious hit.

Songwriters Jay Livingston and Ray Evans had created Mona Lisa for the Paramount film Captain Carey, U.S.A. The song imagined the mystery behind Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painted smile, asking whether beauty might be hiding loneliness or heartbreak.

Before Cole recorded it, Livingston and Evans had gone to his home to play the composition for him. According to Evans’ later recollection, Cole was distracted by his young daughter Natalie and was not convinced that a song inspired by a Renaissance painting sounded particularly commercial.

Still, he agreed to record it.

YOUTUBE 1 — NAT KING COLE OFFICIAL PERFORMANCE

The session paired Cole’s intimate voice with a lush string arrangement created by the young Nelson Riddle, with orchestral backing credited to Les Baxter. Instead of overselling the emotion, Cole delivered the words quietly, giving the mysterious woman at the center of the lyric an almost private sadness.

But Capitol Records remained unconvinced.

When the single appeared in 1950, Mona Lisa was placed on the B-side. The company promoted the other side instead. Songwriter Jay Livingston later remembered that Capitol’s original advertisements did not even mention the recording that would eventually become the hit.

Then something unexpected happened.

YOUTUBE 2 — REMASTERED RECORDING

Livingston, Evans and Cole traveled through a series of radio appearances promoting the record. DJs heard the overlooked side. Listeners heard it too.

Gradually, the attention shifted.

The song Capitol had treated as secondary began generating the response the promoted side never did. Radio helped reverse the company’s original expectations, and Mona Lisa climbed to No. 1 in 1950.

At almost the same moment, the composition received another extraordinary validation: it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for its use in Captain Carey, U.S.A.

The forgotten side of a record had suddenly become one of the defining recordings of Cole’s career.

YOUTUBE 3 — LIVE PERFORMANCE

Its success also arrived during an important transformation for Cole. Audiences had first known him as a brilliant jazz pianist and leader of a small group. By the early 1950s, his warm baritone was increasingly carrying him into a much broader world of popular music.

This recording helped open that door even wider.

Decades later, the irony remains irresistible.

The label barely promoted it. Cole himself reportedly wondered whether such an unusual subject could become a commercial success. Yet listeners heard something timeless in the restraint of his performance.

In 1950, the record company chose one side.

The public chose the other.

And the B-side became history.

Dave Grohl Heard Norah Jones and Imagined Her on a Foo Fighters Song — Then “Virginia Moon” Became Something Completely Unexpected

A song that didn’t fit anywhere

By 2005, Foo Fighters were known for loud guitars, huge choruses and Dave Grohl’s unmistakable rock voice.

But Grohl had an older song that never seemed to fit the band’s albums.

That song was “Virginia Moon.”

Grohl later explained that he had written it years earlier and had tried to record it before, but an acoustic, almost Brazilian-jazz song didn’t make sense in the middle of a rock record. When Foo Fighters began working on In Your Honor, a double album divided between electric and acoustic music, he finally saw where it belonged

Then Norah Jones entered the picture

Grohl wanted a female vocalist for the song.

After listening to one of Norah Jones’s records, he felt her warm, jazz-influenced voice was exactly what the song needed.

So he called her.

Jones came into the studio in 2005, expecting perhaps something much more rock-oriented. Instead, Grohl asked her to sing on the quiet acoustic track.

The combination sounded unusual on paper.

A Foo Fighters frontman.

A Grammy-winning jazz-pop singer.

A gentle song with a bossa nova feel.

But Grohl could already hear it in his head

It came together remarkably fast

Jones recorded vocals and piano for “Virginia Moon,” while Grohl supplied the lead vocal.

According to accounts from the recording sessions, the vocal work took only about three hours, with Grohl particularly impressed by how naturally Jones fit the song.

The B-Side Capitol Barely Promoted—Until Listeners Chose the Hit Themselves

The track appeared on In Your Honor in June 2005.

It wasn’t a typical Foo Fighters single.

There were no screaming guitars or arena-sized chorus.

Instead, it felt intimate, dreamy and almost weightless

A different side of Dave Grohl

“Virginia Moon” revealed something that could easily be missed when looking at Grohl’s career from the outside.

The man who had spent years making aggressive rock music also had a deep appreciation for quieter songwriting.

The song allowed him to step away from the intensity of Foo Fighters and create something much more delicate.

And Norah Jones gave it exactly the musical color he had imagined.

An unexpected collaboration that worked

The pairing was surprising.

That’s probably part of what made it memorable.

Grohl didn’t ask Jones to sound like a rock singer.

Jones didn’t try to turn Foo Fighters into a jazz band.

They simply met somewhere in the middle.

“Virginia Moon” became one of the most distinctive tracks on In Your Honor — a reminder that sometimes the most interesting musical moments happen when two artists leave their usual worlds behind.

Listen to “Virginia Moon”

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The B-Side Capitol Barely Promoted—Until Listeners Chose the Hit Themselves