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1* First and foremost, Music/PeterGabriel's video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJWJE0x7T4Q Sledgehammer]].
2* The very lifeblood of Music/DirEnGrey is this trope. They take their GenreBusting seriously, producing nigh-[[GenreBusting unclassifiable]] material with lyrics that [[WordSaladLyrics don't really make much sense]] unless analyzed. In addition, vocalist Kyo's HarshVocals make both his English ''and'' his Japanese completely [[TheUnintelligible incomprehensible]]. To top it off, all their music videos are just plain weird.
3* Music/TheCaretaker‘s album [[https://youtu.be/wJWksPWDKOc Everywhere at the End of Time]] is a giant mindscrew trip into dementia, Alzheimer’s and fading memories clawing at the back of your mind.
4* The directed by Creator/ShiaLaBeouf and co-written by Creator/ShiaLaBeouf and Music/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 [[https://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?"
5** 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 ''Music/HolyWoodInTheShadowOfTheValleyOfDeath)''. 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 ''Music/AntichristSuperstar''. 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.
6* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZThquH5t0ow Surfin' Bird]] by The Trashmen
7* Many Music/{{Primus}} songs features a number of psychedelic and amusingly disturbing aspects.
8* Music/DonMcLean's song "American Pie" is a Mind-Screwy combination of imagery and references to other songs and historical events. [=McLean=] did eventually auction off the original notes and lyrics for the song, which ended up providing a MindScrewdriver by explaining what each line was intended to be referencing.
9** Some of [=McLean=]'s lyrics allegedly reference Music/BobDylan (The Jester). Who, incidentally, is famous for his own well-known, mind-screwy song: "Desolation Row"... to name one of MANY in Dylan's catalog.
10*** "Desolation Row" is child's play compared to "Changing of The Guards", "Brownsville Girl" and "Highlands", all written and recorded long after Dylan's most reputedly mind-screwy era.
11** There have been many analyses of this classic song. One of the best is one of the earliest, [[http://sparkbbs.dreamwiz.com/cgi-bin/rbbsview.cgi?section=WAREHOUSE&start=3&pos=288 by Bob Dearborn]]. One of my favorites is the very Mind-Screw-friendly site [[http://www.imissamericanpie.com/ IMISSAMERICANPIE.COM]].
12* Music/LeonardCohen's early songs (late 60's early 70's) top Dylan's by far!
13* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqnlIR3AG7g music video]] for Neo-Prog group IQ's ''Drive On'' is more than a bit odd...
14** The one for ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGs8HUMow74&feature=related Promises (As The Years Go By)]]'' is probably weirder...
15* Many people have put forth their theories on The Eagles' "Hotel California," particularly regarding "the beast" that the residents just can't kill. Others just figure it's about a guy who does a bunch of drugs in a cheap hotel.
16* Music/{{Queen}}'s "Bohemian Rhapsody". Especially the part right after the guitar solo.
17** Making a mockery of their boast (on the earlier [=LPs=]) "No Synthesizers", Queen were notorious for employing over-the-top studio trickery. The vocal effects were achieved by using an astonishing number of overdubs, often well over 100. For each little snippet, not the entire "operatic" passage.
18** "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 realizes 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.
19* ''Music/{{Nightwish|Band}}''. What a grand old time it is to figure out what half of the lyrics are saying, especially since half of them are of [[WordSaladTitle word salad]] quality. Stargazers, The Poet and the Pendulum, and Ghost Love Score are all huge mind screws, especially the second one with all of its MoodWhiplash.
20** Most of their other songs have quite straightforward lyrics, though.
21* Most of the output of Music/TheyMightBeGiants falls into this territory. Especially ''Particle Man'' and ''Doctor Worm''.
22** ''The Statue Got Me High'' is probably the best example, or at least the most literal.
23** ''House at the Top of the Tree'' is notable too, particularly since it's on one of the kids' albums (''No!''). The ending is the epitome of "wait, WHAT?".
24* "Chess Piece Face" was supposedly inspired by René Magritte. It is still unbelievably bizarre.
25* Calvin Wilkerson can go into this sometimes. See for example [[https://soundcloud.com/calvinw2022/read-whats-written-on-the-wall "Read What's Written On The Wall"]], a [[EpicRocking six-and-a-half minute]] epic about everything from imperial China to baseball.
26* Most of the Anglo-French band Music/{{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.
27* "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" by the Music/PetShopBoys. The song itself is relatively straight-forward, but the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnMiwRj_C7Y music video]]'s a bit of a MindScrew.
28** For Mind Screw in their songs, look no further than "The sound of the atom splitting".
29** The same goes with the music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840B27zYfOk "Turn around bright eyes...".]]
30* The Music/{{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]].
31** This will completely fly over the head of anyone who hasn't been keeping up with Ayreon's ongoing ''Forever of the Stars'' story line, though. GuideDangIt actually applies to music for once!
32*** More like AllThereInTheManual; there are no less than ''six'' albums linking their stories together into the same overarching space opera metaplot as of 2009, and more may be coming.
33* The Dropkick Murphys (!) song "State of Massachusetts" seems like a straightforward song about a single mother, until you pick up on the clues (the title being the most obvious) that the whole thing is to be taken as an allegory, at which point it becomes an incomprehensible meditation on the SJC, the academic élite, the "culture wars," television's influence on society, and Boston's place in history.
34* Music/DavidBowie:
35** "The Width of a Circle" from Bowie's album ''Music/TheManWhoSoldTheWorld" is a surreal account of a [[DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu sexual encounter]] with an EldritchAbomination.
36** "Life on Mars?" from ''Music/HunkyDory'' has been described as "a cross between a Broadway musical and a Salvador Dali painting." A girl leaves her house as her parents fight, goes to the movies, and then there's something about fighting sailors, corrupt cops, and Mickey Mouse. On the same album, "Quicksand" and "The Bewlay Brothers" are similarly filled with WordSaladLyrics.
37** His subsequent album ''Music/TheRiseAndFallOfZiggyStardustAndTheSpidersFromMars'' is vague and open-ended enough that, when put together into a narrative, it can mean many different things. It doesn't help that in an interview with Creator/WilliamSBurroughs in TheNineties, Bowie detailed a rather bizarre CosmicHorrorStory as one possible interpretation of the ConceptAlbum.
38** "1984" from ''Music/DiamondDogs'' was written as part of an aborted stage musical version of Creator/GeorgeOrwell's famous novel ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''.
39** "[=TVC15=]" from ''Music/StationToStation'' is about how the narrator wants to enter his television set so he can be with his girlfriend who apparently already entered the TV. Loosely based on a drug-induced hallucination Music/IggyPop had about his girlfriend being eaten by the television.
40** On ''Music/{{Lodger}}'', parts of "African Night Fight" are sung in a Kenyan dialect, and the bizarre lyrics describe some kind of fight, a baby being born silent, hardships, etc.
41** The 1995 concept album ''1. Outside'' is a story told in anachronic order of a 25-year-long investigation into illegal trade in body parts harvested in ritual murders centered in [[LondonEnglandSyndrome Oxford (NJ) and London (OT)]], which also seems to be a metaphor for Bowie's own career, including an apparent disco/industrial elegy to Major Tom. The fact that it was planned as part of a [[AbortedArc scrapped 3-or-5-part cycle]] does ''not'' help.
42* The music video for Music/{{Genesis|Band}}'s "Land of Confusion", which involves puppet-version of the band, as well as [[OurPresidentsAreDifferent the Reagans]], a [[BodyHorror swamp with heads instead of plants]], and [[ImAHumanitarian the keyboardist using his own tongue as a hot dog bun]].
43** ''Music/TheLambLiesDownOnBroadway'', anyone?
44** A lot of the mind-screwiest stuff was never recorded (or sung). In the early days, the arrangements and effects were quite complicated and the equipment was fairly primitive, so there would often be long breaks between numbers at concerts while the technicians frantically rejigged the equipment for the next song. Peter Gabriel took to filling these gaps with mind-screwy narrative pieces which he usually made up on the spot. Some of them have been transcribed on the sleeves of early live albums and literature. ''The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway'' is an extended one of these, with some of the scenes set to music.
45** "Supper's Ready". A 23-minute song about... well, just try to figure out what, and you'll go mad.
46*** It's about the biblical End Times, mixed with a large dose of whatever they thought was cool. The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man, for instance, is the Antichrist.
47* Quite a few of Music/PeterGabriel's solo work, including the Family and the Fishing Net, which somehow describes both a Voodoo ceremony and a regular old fashioned wedding.
48* Music/MrBungle. Look them up.
49** Fantômas. If you ask Mike Patton, Fantômas is perfectly straightforward...
50** A lot of things involving Music/MikePatton are like this.
51* Music/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.
52* Music/TheBeatles: "Number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine..."
53** Which is nothing compared to what John Lennon said about the song later:
54---> '''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 anti-revolution.
55** Also, "I am the Walrus." Reportedly, John Lennon commented, "Let's see the fuckers figure that one out," after recording it.
56** All of these have the disadvantage that they [[TheWalrusWasPaul don't really give a sense of expecting to make sense]]... unlike "Eleanor Rigby," probably their most effective MindScrew.
57** ''Tomorrow Never Knows'', anyone? Also, ''Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite''.
58* ''Music/{{Imaginos}}'' by Music/BlueOysterCult is a Lovecraftian RockOpera which is utterly incoherent without outside explanation due to its extremely cryptic, symbolism-laden lyrics. If the album wasn't confusing enough on its own, it's only part of a greater plot taking place in the "''Soft Doctrines of Imaginos''" universe, with other pieces of the narrative scattered throughout random songs across the band's greater discography.
59* Anything by Music/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 ''Music/LumpyGravy''. 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.
60** ''Music/JoesGarage'' 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.
61* Many of the songs by Music/LemonDemon have a very mind screwy lyrics, such as "The Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Planets" or "Your Evil Shadow Has a Cup of Tea".
62** Your Evil Shadow is a deliberate attempt at this. "Ben Bernanke" is another mind screwy song.
63** "Telekinesis" is another good example.
64** "Correctional Facility Food Sucks" possibly wins the award for "Mind Screwiest" song, though.
65** "You're At The Party" from Lemon Demon's 2016 album Spirit Phone is a feverish, surreal description of what sounds like a nightmare and is frequently interpreted as the listener's death and sinister afterlife.
66* Music/TheMarsVolta's entire style is based around this. For one, they allegedly got the titles from their album ''Bedlam In Goliath'' from a ouija board, and many of them appear to be near-random assortments of letters and various non-English words.
67* Pick a Music/{{Tool}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhjG47gtMCo music video.]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiV_ue-PbL4&feature=related Any]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXBCdt5IPg&feature=related Tool]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hglVqACd1C8&feature=related music]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEeAn6_QJo&feature=related video.]] Also frequently overlaps into serious Nightmare Fuel territory.
68** Even their stage on ''VideoGame/GuitarHero: World Tour'' is a Mind Screw!
69** Seeing as it uses the artwork from their music videos and studio albums, that's kind of a given.
70** Their first video, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF_WKwbueG8 Hush]]'', averts this, as it's relatively easy to figure out the video's meaning. Still, this is way before Tool started getting into Mind Screw territory. However, how could we get this far without mentioning their [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5sIXUbMgF0 second scariest video?]]
71* The band Music/{{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!
72** All three tracks on ''Close to the Edge'' are like this: they seem to make sense, but actually don't. Although "And You And I" could be interpreted as being based on [[Creator/IsaacAsimov the Foundation trilogy]].
73** Jon Anderson, frontman of Yes's collaboration with Vangelis produced ''The Friends Of Mr. Cairo''. 12 minutes of nothing but [[MindScrew Minds Screw]]
74*** It's rather ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. The song is a homage to the classic 1930s and 1940s movies, and the lyrics are either quotes or references from them. The title directly refers to ''Film/{{The Maltese Falcon|1941}}''; the sampled dialogues are, among others, from ''Film/TheThiefOfBagdad1940''; the song ends with a sound of an old movie projector shutting down; and at one point, Anderson references Creator/ClarkGable, (Douglas) Fairbanks and Maureen O'Sullivan by name.
75* Music/DevinTownsend, 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 bored 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.]]
76** According to WordOfGod, it's supposed to symbolize how the [[MisaimedFandom fandom misinterprets]] the messages of his songs.
77* The video for Music/{{Goldfrapp}}'s 'Ride a White Horse'. Anyone who has seen it will agree. Off, and very strange.
78* Music/{{Queensryche}}'s RockOpera ''Music/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.
79* Arguably, many forms of classical music fall into this category for the non-academic listener (and the academic, for many of the modern compositions). Embedded within the music of the Romantic era through the twentieth century are such dense layers of symbolism and mathematical placement of notes that we often find pieces that look good on paper, but are not necessarily enjoyed by everyone. Even studying these compositions or attempting to play them can be a nightmare.
80** Twelve-Tone, atonal, and minimalists compositions often elicit mixed reactions from the audience, and generally a negative response from anyone outside the classical circle. It is very difficult for the average person to find coherency in just one listen and not looking at the score.
81** Complex forms of counterpoint such as the Fugue can also be mind screws because there is so much going on at once that it can sometimes be hard to latch onto the theme or subject, etc., without looking at the score first (It also depends on how well it is performed).
82* 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''.
83* When it comes to trippy concept albums, you'll have a hard time topping Pain of Salvation's "BE". Themes cover practically everything from mankind's relationship to God and vice versa through to the state of industry and consumerism; the myriad plotlines include both a Space Probe [[spoiler: which becomes God]] and a greedy misogynistic billionaire [[spoiler: who has himself cryogenically frozen and wakes up after having become immortal, the last man left alive on the planet.]] Songwriter and lyricist Daniel Gildenlow cites dozens upon dozens of sources in the accompanying booklet. Musical devices include the recitation of population statistics, two-minute long dramatic monologues, ''God's answering machine'' and a track which consists of the sound of a heartbeat, followed by four minutes of silence and then a young girl chirping, "There's room for all God's creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes!"
84* Several songs by the group Renaissance have imagery that tells some kind of story but the listener is stumped trying to figure out what it's really talking about. Take my descriptions with a grain of salt - as I said, I've no idea what these are on about either. Favorites include:
85** "Trip to the Fair" where a lady goes alone to a fair that is completely abandoned, then everything starts moving on its own (and either starts attacking her or she half-faints in terror) and as soon as she can't take it anymore everything becomes normal and the fair is full of people wondering what she's afraid of.
86*** From the CD notes of ''Scheherazade and other stories'': "... a delicate story of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Wood Roy Wood]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Haslam Annie Haslam]] showing up at Hampstead Heath for a fair that had closed down..."
87** "Black Flame", where the only thing that's certain is that the singer has been somehow taken over by a 'black flame' that now has full control of her, feeds off her, and apparently hurts. There's a lot of weird imagery of being mouth sounds "I am words, I am speaking", "I'm just a sigh, just a crying" and in the bridge the singer is talking to someone as though she is inside them, while still telling them to try and escape.
88** "Running Hard", where someone just seems to be slipping through a world of weirdo nightmare images and metaphors, and the more they try to escape or find reality, the freakier it gets.
89* 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.]]
90** On the topic of DT, there's also the video for "Forsaken." [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XcWeB5oohY See for yourself.]]
91* A number of Music/TheBirthdayMassacre videos fit this trope. For example, "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmDgtJyc1U Blue]]" and "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SREZ-ggSDjM Looking Glass]]."
92* Just try to figure out the plot of any Music/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.
93** 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.
94* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etxd0z5TfiA The music video]] for the Music/{{Madness|Band}} 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 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 bizarreness, the song's meant to be about [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]] in UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica.
95* The music video for "Disturbia" by Music/{{Rihanna}}. It looks like if nightmare fuel manifested itself in music video form, and didn't care about whether it made any sense or not.
96* "Syncronicity II" by Music/ThePolice. Its predecessor was a straightforward, bouncy song about harmony of mind and understanding. While it is a song about a middle-class man in a rather disastrous home situation, a mundane job, and a generally depressing, repetitive, and horrible life. With a giant sea monster looming somewhere in the distance. [[EpilepticTrees Yeah, there was some headscratching.]]
97* Music/PinkFloyd's ''Music/TheWall'' is pretty straightforward conceptually (it's a metaphor based on Music/RogerWaters trying to open up—basically, tear down his emotional walls—after a CreatorBreakdown) but how it's told does raise questions as to what's literal or metaphorical. [[Film/TheWall The movie]] only serves to make things even ''more'' confusing.
98** 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 forbodings too, I'll see you on [[AlbumTitleDrop the Dark Side of the Moon.]]"
99* Carrie Underwood's song "So Small" is pretty straightforward, but the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEQj6RrQbgA video]]...
100* The {{Music/Vocaloid}} artist Kikuo's videos tend to be pretty bizarre, but [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTrm_idbhUk Aishite, Aishite, Aishite/Love Me, Love Me, Love Me]] takes the cake. If you're epileptic or easily disturbed it's probably best to not watch it.
101%%* Pick a song by Music/CaptainBeefheart. ''Any'' song by Captain Beefheart. Founder Don Van Vliet is also very fond of TrueArtIsIncomprehensible; both in his music and his painting.
102* Oingo Boingo (a.k.a. Music/DannyElfman's old band) has had its fair share of these (which is kind of unsurprising when you consider their headliner). Most notable include [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CyjmxEoRFg Reptiles and Samuri]] from the album Nothing to Fear and [[https://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?
103* The music video for Fatboy Slim's ''Weapon of Choice''. Christopher Walken dancing around a Los Angeles hotel is strange enough in its own right. But Creator/ChristopherWalken ''flying'' around a Los Angeles hotel? Woah...
104* Music/PorcupineTree. 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.
105* The lyrics to "Dollar and Cent Supplicants" by The Fire Show probably mean something, but good luck figuring out what.
106* The Music/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.]]
107* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_OlWN8A--Y Bounce]] by Music/SystemOfADown, and most of their other songs as well fall into this.
108** That one's about [[APartyAlsoKnownAsAnOrgy group sex]]. Most of System of a Down's songs usually combine overtly political, social or environmental themes with Mind Screwy surrealism and absurdism.
109* Most of Music/{{Current 93}}'s career starting with Thunder Perfect Mind is based on arcane Christian mysticism, with allusions to Aleister Crowley and Tibetan Buddhism, and a strange obsession with cats. The general consensus seems to be that it's mostly about the apocalypse, but beyond that it's pretty hard to parse.
110** Their early work is just as difficult to fathom at points, as well as often ''intentionally'' invoking EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory...
111** In both lyrical ''and'' musical terms, any of their collaborations with horror author Creator/ThomasLigotti, especially ''I Have A Special Plan For This World''.
112* The particular strain of [[{{Industrial}} Post-Industrial Music]] that Music/Current93 emerged from is known for its mind-screwiness, with frequent collaborators Nurse With Wound and Coil quite often taking the cake.
113* 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" seems even more crazy in comparison.
114** He named one of his relatively-later albums ''Rehearsals for Retirement''; it had [[CreatorBreakdown his own gravestone]] as the cover photo.
115* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In3fgGPADAI It must have been the evil sausage!]]
116* "Blinded by the Light" by Music/BruceSpringsteen[=/=]cover by Manfred Mann.
117** Several songs from Bruce Springsteen's first album had [[WordSaladLyrics weird, incomprehensible lyrics]]. ''Especially'' "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street."
118* Many, many songs by the Music/{{Melvins}} are just plain odd. Their whole style is pretty bizarre.
119** The music video for "The Talking Horse" mainly seems to riff on the idea of a ReptilianConspiracy, with its main character stealthily following a stop motion lizard man to an outwardly non-descript office that seems to be some sort of secret base for disguised reptilian humanoids. Meanwhile buildings, newspaper boxes, and a cologne ad with the lead singer's face on it are animated to lip-sync the lyrics in the background. The ending is especially weird, as [[spoiler: the lizard people ultimately dispose of the threat by turning the man's head into a cake and eating it]].
120* The lyrics to "the Riddle" themselves are quite unclear about what they are supposed to mean, but then watch [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ehHOwmQRxU the music video to them and try to understand what's going on]].
121** [[http://web.archive.org/web/20050305171404/http://www.nikkershaw.net/theriddle.shtml Nik Kershaw himself confirmed it didn't mean anything]]
122* The infamous Music/{{Vocaloid}} PV ''Tower of Sunz''. Just try to explain [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P7uUlQOENA this]] load of bull honkey. ''You can't.''
123** Anything by the Vocaloid producer Hachi is almost certain to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSCnsTGuroM mess]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEeb9rOKn3Y with]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JGaQ3g8WU4 your]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZQ2tvqLgok head]]. Their videos, also made by him.
124** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8uO1FfnGfU&list=FLnKgyG2qb9WvZQHYJc8v5Hg&index=164&feature=plpp_video This.]] And yet it's supposedly supposed to act as a [[MindScrewdriver Mind]] ''[[MindScrewdriver Screwdriver]]'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeVhHLggZ5U&feature=BFa&list=FLnKgyG2qb9WvZQHYJc8v5Hg to]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfkn9FvjH90&feature=related these]]. Really, the Benzene Chemical Series just piles more of these on every song. [[MemeticMutation Curse you, Owata-P!]]
125* Dan Deacon's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1cA1E_BN5c Lion with a Shark's Head]].
126* Helen Reddy's song "Angie Baby" is an example of this. In later years, vague and sometimes conflicting explanations were given by Helen and Alan O'Day, but it's still a bit trippy to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQKyGt_I5L4 listen to]].
127* Shortly before their first hiatus in March 1980, post-punk band Music/{{Wire}} became especially fond of doing this to their audiences when playing live. See TrueArtIsIncomprehensible for details.
128* The videos to 'The Riddle' and 'Bla Bla Bla', both by Gigi D'Agostino.
129* Music/LadyGaga increasingly seems to be aiming for this. The best examples being her music videos for Alejandro and Born This Way.
130* ''Soundtracks for the Blind'' by Music/{{Swans}}. This double-CD behemoth [[TropeCodifier codified]] the PostRock genre [[UnbuiltTrope before there was a "Post Rock" genre to codify]]. It is also probably one of the greatest continuous Mind Screws in the history of rock music, as well as being a nigh-bottomless well of High Octane Nightmare Fuel. It is best explained as being a kind of [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin soundtrack to an imaginary movie]]. A very long, very weird movie. Directed by Creator/DavidLynch.
131** Swans have kept this up since their reformation, with ''The Seer'' and ''To Be Kind'' both containing excellent examples of this trope.
132* Finger Eleven's 'One Thing' music video. That is all.
133* Much of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's work; particularly "My Pink Half of the Drainpipe" and "Rhinocratic Oaths" which feature extended spoken sections which require several listenings to even begin to visualize, let alone understand.
134* Music/WeirdAlYankovic's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05av9iJvgiQ Everything You Know Is Wrong]]", among others.
135* Many of the works of modern classical composer Giacinto Scelsi can be just a tiny bit confusing. Take "Uaxuctum," a piece based on the legend of a Mayan city that ritually destroyed itself. His music has been described as "all transition."
136* The music video for Music/BobbyMcFerrin's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU Don't Worry, Be Happy]]". Includes a white tux [=McFerrin=] wearing no shoes, [=McFerrin=] levitating out of his shoes and socks, and [=McFerrin=] reclining on top of a limousine, which has been parked inside of a room. Strange music video indeed.
137* Everything Music/NewKingdom ever recorded.
138* Divine Styler's second album, ''Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light'' makes roughly as much sense as the title would imply. Musically it's a mixture of hip-hop, jam band like improv sessions, funk, and spoken word. Lyrically it makes very little sense, Styler's bizarre delivery (on this album, anyway) doesn't help.
139* Some of the music videos for Music/PoetsOfTheFall are really weird, but the best example has to be "[[https://youtu.be/il3c14eR9C8?list=PLjACqN5i5sDUEienDV52g85W6J7chzLXV Carnival of Rust]]", where a woman with a gas mask and a lollipop visits a dilapidated [[CircusOfFear Carnival of Fear]].
140* Music/KyaryPamyuPamyu, while only debuting in late 2011, is certainly in this section. Her first song PONPONPON (meaning "clap clap clap") [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g has this]] [[SurrealMusicVideo 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.
141** Her second song was called "Tsukema Tsukeru" which is about putting on false eyelashes. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLy4cvRx7Vc Video makes... sense...]]
142*** 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...
143* Zechs Marquise's first video "Everlasting Beacon Of Light" certainly seems like a drug trip, and that's because the video is. The protagonist of the video, played by Rx Bandits frontman Matt Embree, smokes a particularly strong strain of weed known as the Everlasting Beacon. He goes on a trip through El Paso encountering men in suits and animal masks. In the end he and his dealer discuss the mind screwy nature of the Everlasting Beacon.
144* Music/BritneySpears has a video where she sees a video of someone complaining about something she did, which made many people mad; then she decided to do it, but at the end the same video is played, at the same time, but she is no longer there to witness it.
145* ''Every'' Music/SoundHorizon album. ''Roman'' is especially infamous for this, but even the seemingly straightfoward ''Märchen'' album starts getting more and more confusing once you start thinking about it. (is Märchen RewritingReality, or [[UnreliableNarrator is he just telling fanciful revenge stories loosely based on depressing happenings?]] Is he in a PlatonicCave? [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane Magic or Mudane]]? Does Idolfried Ehrenberg actually have any significance to the story, or did [[TeasingCreator Revo]] just put him in to mess with the audience? Märchen is Idolfried - [[LukeIAmYourFather and by extension the Well Girl's father]] - isn't he?...)
146* Music/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
147* Doseone (perhaps best known for his involvement in Music/{{Clouddead}}) was an ordinary battle rapper once upon a time. Nowadays his lyrics tend to form weird, tightly-interlocked cadences that may or may not actually mean anything in particular.
148* [[Music/TheWho Pete Townshend]] is prone to this in his concept albums. When The Who were at work on ''Music/{{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 ''Music/WhosNext''.
149* Thomas Rhett's hit song, "It Goes Like This," is actually severely confusing. The opening line of the song goes, "hey girl, you make me want to write a song," which can only make one wonder if the song he's singing or if it's another song. Made even more confusing by the chorus, "and it goes like," which makes it seems as though the song he is referring to is both this song and a different song.
150* {{Krautrock}} band Music/{{Can}}'s music can get this way. "Aumgn" and "Peking O" are good examples.
151* The music videos, tour antics, promotional materials and overall atmosphere generated by Music/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.
152* {{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."
153** Perhaps the biggest MindScrew in their discography is ''Pure Guava's'' "Mourning Glory," a spoken word story about a trio of talking pumpkins' adventures in the woods set to HarshNoise.
154* Pretty much any Project Pitchfork music video. They usually don't even match with the lyrics.
155* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdWX0IDhbCU music video]] for {{Music/Sakanaction}}'s "Rookie".
156* The music video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m86ae_e_ptU The Writing's On the Wall]] by Music/OKGo.
157** The fittingly-titled "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12zJw9varYE WTF?]]" is another example.
158* Music/WolvesInTheThroneRoom's trilogy of albums from ''Two Hunters'' up to ''Celestial Lineage'' is apparently a flowing ConceptAlbum trilogy, but yet fans are unable to expand onto what the concept is. The fact that the band haven't released lyrics for ''Black Cascade'' doesn't help. Overall, this is probably one of the weirdest aspects of this band.
159* Music/{{Deafheaven}}'s album ''Sunbather'' is described as a ConceptAlbum that "deals with the profound sadness found in the quest for one's personal perfection... serving as an artistic lucid dream of warmth despite the stinging pain of life's cruel idealism". Even if you read the lyrics, you'll be stumped over what they really mean.
160* Music/{{Sigh}} is one of the very mind-screwiest BlackMetal bands in existence, in a clear example of InvokedTrope. The band are prone to extreme GenreRoulette; any given Sigh song is bound to have influences from a wide number of disparate genres, from classical to disco to dub reggae to jazz. And that's just on one album (''Imaginary Sonicscape''). Beyond this, they seem to take extreme delight in making their songs and arrangements as weird as possible, throwing in all kinds of [[UncommonTime bizarre time signatures]] and generally just [[MoodWhiplash shifting moods seemingly at random]]. On the album where they really got serious about this trope (''Hail Horror Hail''), they had the following to say:
161-->This album is way beyond the conceived notion of how metal, or music, should be. In Essence it is a movie without pictures; a celluloid phantasmagoria. Accordingly, the film jumps, and another scene, seemingly unconnected with the previous context, is suddenly inserted in between frames. Every sound on this album is deliberate, and if you find that some parts of this album are strange, it isn't because the music is in itself strange, but because your conscious self is ill-equipped to comprehend the sounds produced on this recording.
162* This is really very common amongst the avant-garde and progressive BlackMetal bands (Music/DeathspellOmega and Music/BlutAusNord are two more excellent examples of this), and really could be said to be a staple of the genre in its entirety, what with its unconventional song structures, strange melodies, IndecipherableLyrics, and often [[StylisticSuck lo-fi production]].
163* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prH0Y4ex_m0 The music video]] for "The Oriental Nightfish" by Linda [=McCartney=] and Wings. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oriental_Nightfish#Creation Director Ian Emes did give an explanation of the plot]], but if you hadn't read his explanation you wouldn't know what was happening.
164* Probably the most confusing music video ever made in Ukraine: Vremya i Steklo - [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Go8ub9a1k "Imya 505" ("Name 505")]]. It almost reaches "Pon Pon Pon" level of crazy! {{HotterAndSexier}} Pon Pon Pon, to be precise.
165** The music videos for their other songs, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5K7I7UEQ7Q "Back2Leto" ("Back2Summer")]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeRCDH_zUnU "Pesnya 404" ("Song 404")]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q--5Ht49vNY "Troll"]] are similarly bizarre.
166* Another Ukrainian example: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRfXy_-0xnY the first music video]] for Ivan Dorn's "Stytsaman" that was kept unreleased for 6 years. The one that got officially released is not this trope.
167* Psychedelic {{Trance}} is all about this trope, using layers of weird (and ofttimes darker) sounds to essentially make the listener feel like they're on psychedelic drugs.
168* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmaVK1E-VKQ This]] video for "And She Was" by Music/TalkingHeads.
169* Music/{{Edguy}} has some songs that definitely fit this trope. The weirdest might be [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWR1yzUnaGE "Judas at the Opera"]]. It only (kinda but not really) makes sense once you realize the band wrote it in response to critics who thought the band was "too silly" and "not serious enough". So they made this.
170* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLrnkK2YEcE Frontier Psychiatrist]]'' by Music/TheAvalanches. The song is very strange, with lyrics and backing track all comprised from samples from a wide range of sources. The real stars of the show are the visuals, which present the song as being performed by an equally eclectic group of people, animals, etc: a choir of {{Bedsheet Ghost}}s, a turtleguy, a monkey drummer, lots of old people, a skeleton with a golden eyeball, a cowboy with a kazoo, a giant bird, and rapping psychiatrists. You'll need a therapist to recover from the trauma of this mindfuck.
171* ''Music/KidsPraise'': The ninth album is...a search ''for'' the ninth album. [[spoiler: And it's a plot point that every copy of the ninth album is destroyed by being thrown into a volcano, and this happens ''during the ninth album''.]] Yeah...
172* The music video for Music/TessaViolet's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4NLarMj4xU "Dream"]] is filled with disparate and assorted scenes and imagery that don't have much to do with each other or even the lyrics, and were apparently selected on the basis of how dreamlike they are, both in isolation and in evoking the RandomEventsPlot nature of [[RealDreamsAreWeirder most actual dreams]]. The end result manages to be incredibly beautiful and well-executed.
173* The video for Ranetki's song [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=EpWopjrxGdM "Tipa Tovo" ("Something Like That")]] consists purely of the band members making silly faces into a distorted camera lens.
174* Everything about Maria Teriaeva and Vadik Korolev's song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRfjVsJ2gM "Merinos"]] is this trope.
175* Music/{{Meshuggah}} in general is this trope. Try learning to play 'Bleed', we dare you.

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