For a long time since the beginning of recording technology, most recordings were monaural (reproduced on a single channel), in spite of explorations by Clement Adler starting in 1881, and Bell Laboratories in the 1930s under the direction of Harvey Fletcher. The first stereophonic disc was released by Audio Fidelity in November 1957 and the technology quickly took off, by 1968 all major record labels having stopped manufacturing monaural records.

This all happened at the same time that rock music was rapidly becoming very psychedelic or garagey, and as a result many people in the studio probably couldn't resist the temptation to show off with their new technology. So, we got many albums from the mid-sixties up to the early-seventies (sometimes) that isolate various tracks on separate channels, or heavily employ fancy panning effects, as if avoiding the center was a matter of life and death.

This description does not mean to imply in any way that this is a bad thing. There are often good reasons to use stereo separation, such as allowing instruments to be heard more clearly than the usual lump-everything-in-the-center approach. It is a sort of musical equivalent to Science Marches On as this sort of production tricks aren't as widespread anymore, and Your Mileage May Vary on whether the result is good or bad. I'm probably biased because I listen to everything on headphones, and that's why it's just a list.

• The Beatles:
  • Good luck trying to hear the vocals on "Norwegian Wood" if your right channel/speaker is broken.
  • "Run For Your Life" puts the rhythm section entirely on the left channel.
  • "Taxman" used the "I Feel Free" method, bundling everything on the left channel, leaving tambourine and cowbell on the right, and filling the center with vocals.
  • "Yellow Submarine" throws the vocals on the right channel, and the rest on the left. The sound fx stay on the center.
  • "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" puts the vocals on the left, and the rest on the right.
  • "Fixing a Hole" and "Lovely Rita" put most of the instrumentation on the left channel.
  • Most songs on the White Album and some on Abbey Road separate the drums on one of the channels, and sometimes most of the instrumentation as well.
  • The Magical Mystery Tour album has egregious, distracting abuse of this trope, putting almost everything on the left channel, brass on the right channel, and the vocals in the center. The not-so-distracting exceptions: "The Fool on the Hill", "Your Mother Should Know", "I Am the Walrus".
• Jimi Hendrix:
  • Are You Experienced - "Foxy Lady" puts the vocals on the left channel, whereas "Purple Haze" favours the right. "Manic Depression" has all the guitars on the left. "Fire" separates the bass and guitars to the left and right, respectively. "Are You Experienced" does the same, but with the drums and guitars. "The Wind Cries Mary" does the same, but this time with the vocals and drums.
  • Axis: Bold as Love - "If 6 Was 9" keeps the vocals on the right channel and the guitars on the left... mostly. "You Got Me Floatin'" separates the drums on the left channel. "Castles Made of Sand" puts the rhythm guitar on the right channel, and the reversed licks on the left. "She's So Fine" and "Little Miss Lover" keep the rhythm guitar on the right, before indulging in rapid panning of their own.
  • Electric Ladyland - "Crosstown Traffic" twiddles the panning knobs like crazy (curiously keeping the rhythm guitars on the right channel). "Voodoo Chile" keeps the organ on the left channel. "Little Miss Strange", "Long Hot Summer Night" and "Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)" do the same to the drums. "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" pushes the harpsichord to the left and the wah'ed guitar to the right. "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" too engages in heavy knob-twiddling throughout its 13 minute length. The slide guitar solo in "All Along the Watchtower" is slightly panned from left to right.
  • Both the introductions to Axis ("EXP") and Ladyland ("...And the Gods Made Love") apply heavy, disorienting panning to guitar feedback, and phased noise respectively.
• The Who:
  • "I Can See for Miles" piles the drums on the right channel and the guitars on the left.
  • "Magic Bus" throws the backing vocals of "Ride on the magic bus!" on the right channel, and the guitars on the left. Then proceeds to bounce the vocals between left and right.
  • The vocals of "I'm a Boy" are exclusively on the left channel.
  • "Armenia City in the Sky" and "Odorono" stack the guitars and drums on the left channel.
  • "Our Love Was", "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "The Real Me" restrict the drums to the left channel.
  • "Behind Blue Eyes" sticks the acoustic guitar on the right channel, and its reverb on the left.
  • "Young Man Blues" (studio version) puts the guitars on the right channel and the bass on the left.
• The Doors:
  • Invariably throughout The Doors the drums are kept on the left channel, and the guitar and organ take turns remaining on the right.
  • The Strange Days gimmick is to keep the bass on the left channel and the guitars sometimes on the right ("People Are Strange", "Love Me Two Times"), or the keyboards.
  • Waiting for the Sun pans the keyboards to the left, and the guitars (or the bass) to the right.
  • Morrison Hotel returns to the technique of the first album - drums left, alternating guitar/keyboards right, with the occasional variation.
  • L.A. Woman combines all these techniques,
• While producing Fresh Cream, Robert Stigwood decided to put all the drums on the right channel. Then he went overboard on "I Feel Free", where all the instruments are on the right channel, the tambourine on the left, and the vocals filling the gaps.
  • Felix Pappalardi applied the drums on the right technique to Disraeli Gears as well, and restricted the reverb on the vocals to the right channel on "Mother's Lament".
• Ted Templeman's main studio gimmick when producing Van Halen was panning the guitar to the left channel to simulate a "live" sound, which guitarist Eddie Van Halen resented.
• Velvet Underground: "White Light/White Heat" keeps the drums on the right channel, and separates the two vocalists (Reed, Cale). "The Gift" keeps the instrumentation on the left and the spoken word on the right. "The Murder Mystery" has two spoken word performances by Reed and Cale on the left and right channel respectively, and vocals by Maureen Tucker and Reed with the same arrangement.
• Led Zeppelin:
  • Led Zeppelin I: "Good Times, Bad Times" and "I Can't Quit You Baby" pan the drums to the right channel. "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" does the same to the acoustic guitar.
  • Led Zeppelin II: "Whole Lotta Love" keeps the driving riff on the left channel, and furiously twiddles during the middle freakout. "The Lemon Song" keeps the guitars mostly on the left, "Thank You" does the same but on the right channel, and "Bring It On Home" alternates.
  • Led Zeppelin III: "Gallows Pole" puts the acoustic guitar intro on the left channel, and afterwards separates John Paul Jones' mandolin and Jimmy Page's mandolin on the left and right. "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" pans the percussion to the left. "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper" is the most extreme example, keeping the slide guitar on the left channel and the vocals on the right.
  • Led Zeppelin IV: "Stairway to Heaven" keeps the acoustic guitars on the left channel. "Misty Mountain Hop" has the same riff played by keyboards panned to the left and guitar panned to the right. The disorienting coda of "When the Levee Breaks" was achieved entirely through panning, according to Jimmy Page.
  • Houses of the Holy: "The Rain Song" keeps two sets of acoustic guitars on the left and right channels.
  • Physical Graffiti: "Custard Pie"'s main riff is played on guitar (right channel) and clavinet (left)
• Black Sabbath:
  • Black Sabbath mostly pans the guitar towards the left channel, either obviously ("Black Sabbath", "Sleeping Village") or more subtly (exception being "Evil Woman"). "Black Sabbath" also pans the the bass to the right channel, "The Warning" puts the guitar solo on the right channel, and "Wicked World" reverses the guitar-left-bass-right panning of "Black Sabbath".
  • Paranoid mostly shoves the guitar on the right channel and the bass on the left channel, with the exception of "Hand of Doom", where their position is reversed, and "Fairies Wear Boots", "Rat Salad" and "Paranoid", which center both.
  • Master of Reality begins with a tape loop of Tony Iommi coughing panned from left to center. "Embryo" uses subtle panning. "Children of the Grave" uses panning on the spooky feedback-drenched coda. Outside of these, the album largely centers everything.
  • Volume 4 continues the trend of centering everything, with the exception of "FX" and "Laguna Sunrise".
• George Clinton didn't have much experience as a producer in Funkadelic's early years, and thus employed this trope often ("Mommy, What's a Funkadelic?", "What Is Soul?"), and arguably drove it to its logical conclusion on Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, with the erratic, disorienting panning of the title track and "Eulogy and Light".
• The Temptations song "Slave" (from Puzzle People) has been described by one reviewer as having "enough panning to make George Clinton dizzy".
• The Sly & the Family Stone albums Life and Stand! love putting the drums on the right channel.
• The Cars' song "Moving in Stereo" does exactly that with the vocals.
• Iggy Pop's supposedly diastrous first mix of The Stooges' Raw Power isolated all the instruments on the left channel and all the vocals on the right (it couldn't have been worse than his last one). David Bowie was called in for a remixing job.
• Jefferson Airplane:
  • Surrealistic Pillow:
  • After Bathing at Baxter's:
  • Crown of Creation:
  • Volunteers: "Meadowlands" isolates the synth on the left channel and the speech on the right channel.
• Blue Cheer's album Vincebus Eruptum invariably separates the drums on one channel (either left or right). On "Summertime Blues" and "Doctor Please" the rest of the instruments are put on the left. "Out of Focus" separates the guitar (left channel) and bass (right channel). "Second Time Around" has an entire bass-and-drum solo entirely on the right channel.
• The acoustic version of "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel has the vocals on the left channel, with the backing vocals and guitar on the right. The electric version has the drums on the left and the guitar on the right.
• Zaireeka by the Flaming Lips is this trope taken to eleven.
• "Astral Traveler" by Yes, Or So I Heard.
• "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart does this with every keyboard note.
• "30th Century Man" by Scott Walker.
• "Talk Talk" by Alice Cooper.
• Nine Inch Nails tend to fool around with stereo more subtly, but they have their more obvious examples, such as: "Gave Up"'s outro, "I Do Not Want This" and "Last".
• Napoleon XIV, most prominently in the song "I Live in a Split Level Head".
• Esquivel! often used gratuitous panning in his lounge jazz music; sometimes going so far as to have separate bands is different rooms to emphasize the stereo.
• Paris' song "AWOL" has the sound bounce around when the narrator of the song describes a confusing situation where his unit was caught in friendly fire.
• "Supper's Ready" by Genesis twiddles the vocals from left to right for 20 minutes.
• Parodied by Spinal Tap with their 1965 single "Gimme Some Money", the drums being entirely on the left channel and the clapping on the right.
• Satirically used by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention throughout We're Only in It for the Money.

We Probably Should Not Have This but I wanted to try...