History MindScrew / Music

* Mr. Bungle. Look them up.
** Fantomas. If you ask Mike Patton, Fantomas is perfectly straightforward...
** A lot of things involving Mike Patton are like this.

* Devin Townsend, a Canadian musician, has distilled this into the purest form possible with his album "Ziltoid the Omniscient". Beginning as a somewhat lighthearted tale of the titular Ziltoid invading Earth demanding coffee, it ends with [[spoiler: him questioning the state of the universe, the creator revealing that they're all 'just puppets' and it finally turning out that it's all a daydream in the mind of a coffee shop employee]]. Not even mentioning that it tends to shift from speedy metal to weirdly dissonant ambient music seemingly at random, and EVERY SINGLE VOICE on the album is the same man singing, up to and including whole choral arrangements of just his voice. [[spoiler: Oh, and he made the puppets he mentions in the story. In fact, THAT'S THE INSPIRATION FOR THE WHOLE THING.]]

* The Music/ProcolHarum song "Whiter Shade of Pale" is a classic example. Much like Hotel California, most people have their own idea about what it means. WordOfGod says the band members came up with the song while sitting around drunk. The song's melody began as a botched attempt to play Bach's ''Air on a G String''.

* Music/DreamTheater's ''Scenes From A Memory: Metropolis Part 2'' Album definitely has some mind screwing going on. It tells the story of Nicholas, who has visions of a girl. He visits a hypnotherapist and under his guidance realizes that he is just a reincarnation of Victoria, a girl that was murdered by The Miracle, one of her two lovers, the other one being The Sleeper (and The Miracle and The Sleeper are brothers, too!). However, in the last song on the CD Nicholas is [[spoiler: shot by the hypnotherapist, who, in turn, is actually a reincarnation of The Miracle.]]

* Just try to figure out the plot of any CoheedAndCambria song without the comics. Especially anything from Second Stage Turbine Blade or Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Part one. Go on, I'll wait.
** Some of their songs are fairly comprehensible on their own, but others are just bizarre. Like ''Ten Speed (Of God's Blood and Burial)'', which is about a possessed, talking bicycle. For example.

** Also ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'': "And if the dam breaks open many years too soon, and if there is no room upon the hill... And if your [[YourHeadAsplode head explodes]] and dark forbodeings too, I'll see you on [[AlbumTitleDrop The Dark Side Of The Moon.]]"

* Porcupine Tree. It's not just the songs (and entire albums) depicting LSD trips, there are songs which just reach into one's head and scramble things about as one tries to make sense of them.

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_OlWN8A--Y Bounce]] by System Of A Down, and most of their other songs as well fall into this.
** That one's about group sex. Most of System of a Down's songs usually combine overtly political, social or environmental themes with Mind Screwy surrealism and absurdism.

* The particular strain of [[{{Industrial}} Post-Industrial Music]] that Current 93 emerged from is known for its mind-screwiness, with frequent collaborators Nurse With Wound and Coil quite often taking the cake.

* "Blinded By The Light" by BruceSpringsteen/cover by Manfred Mann.

* Krautrock band Can's music can get this way. "Aumgn" and "Peking O" are good examples.

----

** That one's about group sex. And it can be taken as read for most of System of a Down's songs that if they're not singing about overtly political, social or environmental themes... they're just being silly.

* The music video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m86ae_e_ptU The Writing's On the Wall]] by OK Go.

* The directed by ShiaLaBeouf and co-written by ShiaLaBeouf and MarilynManson trailer for the Manson album Born Villain set to the song "Overneath The Path Of Misery" is already a mind screw just from that description. Then you get to the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB0Dp9TrR1c actual video]] (criminally NSFW). You will not get to the [[spoiler: eyeball in the vagina]] before you're going "What the fuck?"
** While that is perhaps one of Manson's biggest mind screws, a fair portion of his work is this. ''Antichrist Superstar'' takes at least several listens to figure out the plot of, as do the other two concept albums, ''Mechanical Animals'' and ''Holy Wood (In The Shadow of The Valley of Death)''. And then you find out they form a triptych, an interconnected trilogy with three different main characters, one for each part. And then you find out that it starts at the last of the three released, ''Holy Wood'', then the second, and then ''Antichrist Superstar''. Yeah, they were done in reverse. And it's up to the fans to figure out how it works, because all Manson willingly will tell is that it goes in that order. The plot of each album is pretty clear, but the connections between Coma Black, Coma White, Adam, Omega and The Worm? Good luck figuring that out.

* DonMcLean's song "American Pie" is a Mind-Screwy combination of imagery and references to other songs and historical events.

* LeonardCohen's early songs (late 60's early 70's) top Dylan's by far!

* {{Queen}}'s "Bohemian Rhapsody". Especially the part right after the guitar solo.

* Most of the Anglo-French band {{Gong}}'s work hit this trope while Daevid Allen was in charge. ''Prostitute Poem'' from the album ''Angel's Egg'' seems to be a deliberate attempt to induce a bad trip in any listening acid heads. "I break off the corner of your mind and eat it... I am eating your mind..." Brrrrr.
* "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" by the PetShopBoys. The song itself is relatively straight-forward, but the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnMiwRj_C7Y music video]]'s a bit of a MindScrew.

* The {{Ayreon}} RockOpera "The Human Equation" appears to simply be a look into the mind of a comatose man dealing with a lifetime's worth of angst and misdeeds... until the very end of the final track, where [[spoiler:it's revealed that it is simply a computer simulation being run for the benefit of an advanced alien life form]].

** ''[[ConceptAlbum The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway]]'', anyone?

* Quite a few of PeterGabriel's solo work, including the Family and the Fishing Net, which somehow describes both a Voodoo ceremony and a regular old fashioned wedding.

* TheResidents are pretty consistently this, with their album Not Available (intended never to be released until the band forgot they made it in the first place) as a standout example.

** Tomorrow Never Knows, anyone? Also, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.
* Anything by FrankZappa that's supposed to tell some sort of story will eventually turn into this to some degree, but a pretty extreme example is the album ''Lumpy Gravy''. In between music concrete collages of an unfinished ballet and other leftovers, a group of people, who are apparently hiding inside of a giant drum, discuss encounters with boogey-men, pigs, and vicious ponies with claws, and speculate that the entire universe is one musical note.
** ''Joe's Garage'' is a full double-album Mind Screw. The first half sounds like a pretty straightforward story of a guy playing music in a totalitarian society where music is illegal (OK so far) who discovers he likes to have sex with appliances (ok, so maybe not so straightforward) but by the end of the second disc, it, uh... well he ends up working in the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, pooting little green rosettas onto muffins. All narrated by The Central Scrutinizer -- a cheap looking flying saucer kinda thing about five feet across covered with stupid looking headers and exhaust hoses and some spoked wheels but who actually gets around by being dangled from a string held by a union guy eating a sandwich.

* The video for {{Goldfrapp}}'s 'Ride a White Horse'. Anyone who has seen it will agree. Off, and very strange.
* Queensrÿche's RockOpera ''OperationMindcrime''. [[spoiler: The main storyline is a flashback suffered by a man in an insane asylum, and it's possible that none of it actually happened.]] And that's just the surface twist.

* The ProcolHarum song "Whiter Shade of Pale" is a classic example. Much like Hotel California, most people have their own idea about what it means. WordOfGod says the band members came up with the song while sitting around drunk. The song's melody began as a botched attempt to play Bach's ''Air on a G String''.

** Also ''Music/DarkSideOfTheMoon'': "And if the dam breaks open many years too soon, and if there is no room upon the hill... And if your [[YourHeadAsplode head explodes]] and dark forbodeings too, I'll see you on [[TitleDrop The Dark Side Of The Moon.]]"

* Pick a song by CaptainBeefheart. ''Any'' song by Captain Beefheart. Founder Don Van Vliet is also very fond of TrueArtIsIncomprehensible; both in his music and his painting.
* Oingo Boingo (a.k.a. DannyElfman's old band) has had its fair share of these (which is kind of unsurprising when you consider their headliner). Most notable include [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CyjmxEoRFg Reptiles and Samuri]] from the album Nothing to Fear and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqunhHxfiug Long Breakdown]] from Dark at the End of the Tunnel. You figure out a) Why a reptile AND a samurai would have one's head and 2) Why would someone wander in geometric patterns in the dark?

* The LambOfGod song "Black Label" has lyrics [[IndecipherableLyrics completely impossible to understand]], even while attempting to read along with the lyric sheet. Allegedly, the song was ''supposed'' to be impossible to hear; [[MindScrew the lyrics were printed for the sole purpose of fucking with people.]]

* LadyGaga increasingly seems to be aiming for this. The best examples being her music videos for Alejandro and Born This Way.

* BoardsOfCanada thrives on this, but their song Aquarius is particularly egregious. It starts of with samples of sarcastic children, then a woman starts counting, then she starts saying the numbers in a seemingly random order, and finally starts outright inventing numbers (sixty-ten and sixty orange)... and there's a sample of a man saying the word "orange" throughout the song. If there's a meaning behind any of it, no one seems to know what it is

* The music videos, tour antics, promotional materials and overall atmosphere generated by MileyCyrus during her promotion of the 2013 album ''Bangerz'' is fueled on this and SurrealHumor, when it's not the usual RefugeInAudacity or HotterAndSexier. From dancing midgets and...erm, [[ShakingTheRump bottom-heavy twerking dancers]], to dancing rainbows, teddy bears and unicorns, plenty of not-very-subtle references to Miley's [[TheStoner recently revealed love for marijuana]] to the DerangedAnimation projected onscreen during the ''Bangerz'' Tour, to the surrealism surrounding her "We Can't Stop" video, all convention seems thrown out the window.

* The Evillous Chronicles. To give you an example? A doll is pregnant with God after the BigBad impregnated her with his soul. Said BigBad fused with her ArchNemesis a while later, and they caused [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8L75guzMn4 THIS]] to happen to create [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans Utopia]]. Maybe. Which may also be the EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.

** In both lyrical ''and'' musical terms, any of their collaborations with horror author ThomasLigotti, especially ''I Have A Special Plan For This World''.

** Also ''Music/DarkSideOfTheMoon'': "And if the dam breaks open many years too soon, and if there is no room upon the hill... And if your [[YourHeadAsplode head explodes]] and dark forbodeings too, I'll see you on [[TitleDrop The Dark Side Of The Moon.]]

* Music/PinkFloyd's ''Music/TheWall'' falls here. The movie even more so.

* I don't know if this would count, but perhaps Music/{{Rammstein}}'s music video for "Mutter". Features Till Lindemann, with hair and fully dressed, going on a seemingly very long journey, on a rowboat through a swamp, in order to bring a bowl of drinking water to another Till Lindemann, bald and naked, living in concrete hole in the ground. The song is anti-cloning/genetic engineering, so it's possible that the bald/naked Till could be a clone, being kept in a hole and perhaps only to be used to harvest its organs in case clothed/hairy Till needs them. [[spoiler: Or the mind screw interpretation could be that the bald/naked Till is the REAL Till, and the clothed one is the clone who has taken his place as Doppelganger, but still retains some guilt, and keeps his true self safe and alive.]]

** Both songs were influenced by Carl Jung's ''Synchronicity'', which I haven't read in full, but from which I recall the phrase "an acausal connecting principle." Sting took this to be something similar to the Butterfly Effect, but in which one event is followed by another--and the latter couldn't have happened without the first--despite the '''absence''' of a cause-and-effect relationship. One song traces a (very) general outline of the theory, while the other gives a concrete example. Yes, it's difficult to understand how an emotional storm in the mind of a businessman could not merely '''coincide''' with a far-from-occult appearance of the Loch Ness Monster: but in fact the two things '''must''' happen together, though not for a "reason" in the conventional sense. To believe synchronicity occurs, one must step outside of (what are considered) rational explanations.

* I don't know if [[DisneyAcidSequence Pink Elephants on Parade and Heffalumps and Woozles]] belong here or not. Even without the video, the songs are pretty damn trippy.

** While that is perhaps one of Manson's biggest mind screws, a fair portion of his work is this. ''Antichrist Superstar'' takes at least several listens to figure out the plot of, as do the other two concept albums, ''Mechanical Animals'' and ''Holy Wood (In The Shadow of The Valley of Death)''. And then you find out they form a triptych, an interconnected trilogy with three different main characters, one for each part. And then you find out that it starts at the last of the three releaced, ''Holy Wood'', then the second, and then ''Antichrist Superstar''. Yeah, they were done in reverse. And it's up to the fans to figure out how it works, because all Manson willingly will tell is that it goes in that order. The plot of each album is pretty clear, but the connections between Coma Black, Coma White, Adam, Omega and The Worm? Good luck figuring that out.

** "39" from the same album is also like this (they set off in '39, traveled for a ''year'', and ''returned'' in '39 -- [[WritersCannotDoMath WTF?!?!]]), unless one realises that [[spoiler:this is a FilkSong, which like many folk songs is an ''allegory'' about a voyage (this one being a space voyage, so one year of ship time is 100 years of Earth time)]]. Watching the video on the DVD version of the album makes it suddenly make sense.

---> '''John:''' I thought I was painting in sound a picture of revolution, but I made a mistake, you know. The mistake was that it was antirevolution.

* The ProcolHarum song "Whiter Shade of Pale" is a classic example. Much like Hotel California most people have their own idea about what it means. WordOfGod says the band members came up with the song while sitting around drunk. The song's melody began as a botched attempt to play Bach's ''Air on a G String''.

* Music/DreamTheater's ''Scenes From A Memory: Metropolis Part 2'' Album definitely has some mind screwing going on. It tells the story of Nicholas, who has visions of a girl. He visits a hypnoterapist and under his guidance realises that he is just a reincarnation of Victoria, a girl that was murdered by The Miracle, one of her two lovers, the other one being The Sleeper (and The Miracle and The Sleeper are brothers, too!). However, in the last song on the CD Nicholas is [[spoiler: shot by the hypnotherapist, who, in turn, is actually a reincarnation of The Miracle.]]

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etxd0z5TfiA The music video]] for the Music/{{Madness}} song "(Waiting for the) Ghost Train" is a fairly mild example. It features the band dressed in suits that look like newspapers, a random [[UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground London Underground]] sign for a station that doesn't exist, a man dressed as a frog appearing out of nowhere and disappearing just as suddenly, lead singer Suggs wearing a succession of [[CoolHat funny hats]] for no good reason, the saxophonist dressed as a Japanese man with angel wings being thrown out of a plane and the drummer's head appearing from a pot of baked beans, among other truly weird things. In spite of this bizareness, the song's meant to be about [[TheApartheidEra apartheid]] in UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica.

* Music/PhilOchs was known as a protest singer who dealt with fairly straightforward subjects (anti-Vietnam War, workers' movement, civil rights, etc.) so his eight-and-a-half minute long allegory of ultimate mindfuckery known as "Crucifixion" [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs seems even more crazy in comparision.]]

* Pick a {{Tool}} [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhjG47gtMCo music video.]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiV_ue-PbL4&feature=related Any]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXBCdt5IPg&feature=related Tool]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hglVqACd1C8&feature=related music]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEeAn6_QJo&feature=related video.]] Also frequently overlaps into serious Nightmare Fuel territory.
** Even their stage on ''GuitarHero: World Tour'' is a Mind Screw!

* The band {{Yes}} dodged this trope all the time, and did so by explaining that they mostly composed their lyrics based on how the words ''sound'' rather than what they ''mean''. However, "Siberian Khatru" (on the album ''Close to the Edge'') is supposed to be about life on the Siberian steppes, but ''at the same time'' is about a balmy summer day by a riverbank in England. Figure that one out!

* {{Music/Ween}} is known for having their fair share of songs with surreal lyrics. Interestingly enough, they actually drop the trope name in such a song; the [[WordSaladLyrics word salad]] heavy, "Marble Tulip Juicy Tree," which gives us lines such as, "inhaling kitties in the sea," and "just stay away from my adenoids."

* The music videos, tour antics, promotional materials and overall atmosphere generated by MileyCyrus during her promotion of the 2013 album ''Bangerz'' is fueled on this and SurrealHumor, when it's not the usual RefugeInAudacity or HotterAndSexier. From dancing midgets and...erm, bottom-heavy twerking dancers, to dancing rainbows, teddy bears and unicorns, plenty of not-very-subtle references to Miley's [[TheStoner recently revealed love for marijuana]] to the DerangedAnimation projected onscreen during the ''Bangerz'' Tour, to the surrealism surrounding her "We Can't Stop" video, all convention seems thrown out the window.

* The music videos, tour antics, promotional materials and overall atmosphere generated by MileyCyrus during her promotion of the 2013 album ''Bangerz'' is fueled on this, when it's not the usual RefugeInAudacity or HotterAndSexier. From dancing midgets and...erm, bottom-heavy twerking dancers, to dancing rainbows, teddy bears and unicorns, plenty of not-very-subtle references to Miley's [[TheStoner recently revealed love for marijuana]] to the DerangedAnimation projected onscreen during the ''Bangerz'' Tour, to the surrealism surrounding her "We Can't Stop" video, all convention seems thrown out the window.

* [[TheWho Pete Townshend]] is prone to this in his concept albums. When The Who were at work on ''{{Tommy}}'', their manager Kit Lambert actually had to act as his TranslatorBuddy just to explain to people "what [he] was on about". It got worse when Pete attempted ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifehouse_(rock_opera) Lifehouse]]'', a project so complex and ambitious in its scope that ''no one but himself'' could understand it, leading to his having [[HeroicBSOD a complete nervous breakdown]] and the project being scrapped in favor of the album ''Who's Next''.

* Music/KyaryPamyuPamyu, while only debuting in late 2011, is certainly in this section. Her first song PONPONPON (meaning "clap clap clap") has [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g this]] music video. Good luck trying to figure out what's going on. Whatever it is, it seems to involve microphones coming out of people's ears and eyeballs dancing. Although, the [[http://superhappyawesome.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/hengao-pon-pon-pon-lyrics-and-a-chance-to-meet-kyary-pamyu-pamyu/ lyrics]] make slightly more sense.

* Music/KyaryPamyuPamyu, while only debuting in late 2011, is certainly in this section. Her first song PONPONPON (meaning "clap clap clap") has [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g this]] music video. Good luck trying to figure out what's going on. Whatever it is, it seems to involve microphones coming out of people's ears and eyeballs dancing. Although the [[http://superhappyawesome.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/hengao-pon-pon-pon-lyrics-and-a-chance-to-meet-kyary-pamyu-pamyu/ lyrics]] make slightly more sense.

* Music/KyaryPamyuPamyu, while only debuting in late 2011, is certainly in this section. Her first song PONPONPON (meaning "clap clap clap") has [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g this]] video, though the [[http://superhappyawesome.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/hengao-pon-pon-pon-lyrics-and-a-chance-to-meet-kyary-pamyu-pamyu/ lyrics]] make slightly more sense.

* The music video of ''Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g Pon Pon Pon]]. Good luck trying to figure out what's going on. Whatever it is, it seems to involve microphones coming out of people's ears and eyeballs dancing.
** You know what? Let's just say ''Kyary Pamyu Pamyu'' is the Japanese equivalent of ''Music/LadyGaga'', as those who've seen her music videos can attest...

** You know what? Let's just say ''Kyary Pamyu Pamyu'' is the Japanese equivalent of ''Music/LadyGaga''...

** Forget it. Let's just say ''Kyary Pamyu Pamyu'' is the Japanese equivalent of ''Music/LadyGaga''...

** Forget it. Let's just say ''Kyary Pamyu Pamyu'' is the Japanese equivalent of ''Creator/LadyGaga''...