History Main / EpicRocking

* Norwegian [[GenreRoulette musical chameleons]] Music/{{Ulver}} are fond of filling up a CD with as much audio data as possible. Their live album ''The Norwegian National Opera'' runs for 79:53 (the DVD[=/=]UsefulNotes/BluRay version is even longer), while their latest album ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'' (comprised of live {{improv}} overdubbed with studio compositions) runs for a few seconds beyond that. The band's album ''Themes from Creator/WilliamBlake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' was even longer and had to be split over two [=CDs=]; even if you discount the silence before the hidden track at the end of the album, it's still over eighty-one minutes long. For the record, the maximum capacity of a CD is 79:58.

* Given the fact that the file size of UsefulNotes/{{MOD}} files is determined more by the instruments included in the file than by the actual song data, it's not too surprising that quite a few {{Demoscene}} compositions are very long pieces when played back.
** UsefulNotes/{{MIDI}} files and {{Chiptune}}s can also produce long playbacks from small files.

** Also, Exogenesis. Split into 3 parts to avoid fatigue.

* Arguably, "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" by Music/TheBeastieBoys, which is 12 minutes long. However, it's really a suite of short songs that flow into each other and are indexed as one track. In fact, the 20th Anniversary Edition of ''Paul's Boutique'' separates it into nine different tracks.

* Faunts' M4 is officially an EP, and priced as such. To be fair, it does only have 5 songs. It's still 39.2 minutes long, pretty much full album length. There is only 1 song under 7 minutes long.

** Ditto the UsefulNotes/PlayStation[=/=]Saturn port of ''Doom'', also scored by Aubrey Hodges. The 20th Anniversary Extended Edition of the OST, including the [[CutSong unused bonus tracks]], totals about ''5 1/2 hours'' long.

* VideoGame/{{Tetris}} on UsefulNotes/Commodore64 out of ''all systems'' has a single soundtrack spanning to ''26 minutes long'' without a single loop!

* Ricardo Villalobos is known in techno circles for going on nearly forever. His debut album opened with the 10:06 "Easy Lee" and closed with the 9:11 "Dexter". His second album opened with the 14:47 "Hireklon"[[note]]An edited version, at 9:01, graced the CD version[[/note]] and closed with the 14:19 "True to Myself". Two of his biggest singles are "Enfants (Chants)", which is 17:03; and "Fizheuer Zieheuer", which is ''37:09'' and is accompanied by a ''35:30 dub mix''. Even his remixes for other artists, including Music/{{Beck}} and Señor Coconut, are of extended length; his longest as of 2015 was for DJ Pierre, whose "What Is House Muzik (Ricardo Villalobos What Is Dub)" lasts for over 36 minutes across two sides of vinyl (18:33 per side, with some amount of overlap between sides.)

* {{Music/Beck}} has done this a few times in different genres.

* Homestuck Fancomic ''{{Webcomic/VastError}}'' also has its fare share of long songs: "Vast Error Vol. 1-3" has "Ultima Hoc Fatum" (6:09). "Repiton" has "Only the Beggining" (6:59). "Vast Error Vol. 4 has "Pandora" (7:12). "Sound Test 1" has "Godroot [Demo] (8:08). "Dead Shufflers: Anything Goes" has "Skullheart Duskwalk" (10:32). "Vast Error Vol. 5: Side 1" has "Storyteller" (7:29), "Searching for Answers" (6:32), "Mx. Misery" (7:10) and "Negative Feedback" (8:43). "Vast Error Vol. 5: Side 2" has "Kingdom Come" (10:00), "Ghost Writer (Extended)" (8:09), "Jettison (Redux)" (6:40), "Fictionalized" (6:22) and "corruptedcultist" (6:03). "Magnum Opus" has "Insecurity" (6:21), "Kheparia" (7:24) and "Analemma" (9:20). "Faux Dramatica" has "Turncoat" (6:00), "Requiem For A Dying Planet (Ft. The Emek Hefer Choir)" (8:11) and "Naught" (6:04). "Fighting Further" has "Go Beyond and Fight Further" (13:22)

* Homestuck Fancomic ''{{Webcomic/VastError}}'' also has its fare share of long songs: "Vast Error Vol. 1-3" has "Ultima Hoc Fatum" (6:09). "Repiton" has "Only the Beggining" (6:59). "Vast Error Vol. 4 has "Pandora" (7:12). "Sound Test 1" has "Godroot [Demo] (8:08). "Vast Error Vol. 5: Side 1" has "Storyteller" (7:29), "Searching for Answers" (6:32), "Mx. Misery" (7:10) and "Negative Feedback" (8:43). "Vast Error Vol. 5: Side 2" has "Kingdom Come" (10:00), "Ghost Writer (Extended)" (8:09), "Jettison (Redux)" (6:40), "Fictionalized" (6:22) and "corruptedcultist" (6:03). "Magnum Opus" has "Insecurity" (6:21), "Kheparia" (7:24) and "Analemma" (9:20). "Faux Dramatica" has "Turncoat" (6:00), "Requiem For A Dying Planet (Ft. The Emek Hefer Choir)" (8:11) and "Naught" (6:04). "Fighting Further" has "Go Beyond and Fight Further" (13:22)

* Music/{{Blondie}}: The full version of "Call Me" (originally the theme song for the film ''American Gigolo'') runs for eight minutes. "Rapture" runs for six and a half minutes, with the "Special Disco Mix" of the song clocking in at an even ten minutes.

** Also qualifying, in approximate chronological order, are "Reno, Nevada" (7:44), "Percy's Song" (6:57), "Matty Groves" (8:10), "Tam Lin" (7:14), "Quiet Joys of Brotherhood" (10:17, although part of this is a HiddenTrack; the actual song is still around eight minutes long, though), "Sloth" (9:15), "Flatback Caper" (6:22), "Bonny Bunch of Roses" (10:48 in its 1970 recording, and 12:38 in its 1977 one), "One More Chance" (7:59), "Jack O'Rion" (11:04), "Sigh Beg Sigh Mór" (7:16), "Red and Gold" (6:45), "The Wounded Whale" (6:43), "The Golden Glove" (6:05), the 1997 recording of "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" (6:32), "Wat Tyler" (6:31), "Portmeirion" (6:01), "The Crowd" (6:13), the 2002 recording of "The Deserter" (6:59), "The Light of Day" (6:15), "I'm Already There" (6:42), "The Fossil Hunter" (6:16), and "Mercy Bay" (6:47). Also of note is ''"Babbacombe" Lee'', whose vinyl edition listed five tracks and ran for forty-one minutes, with the longest track being 13:20 (however, these could be considered to consist of multiple songs or song fragments; CD reissues broke them into multiple tracks apiece). On the whole, they did this less often from the mid-seventies through TheNineties, but they began demonstrating more willingness to stretch out again by the turn of the millennium.

** "Sister Ray" from ''Music/WhiteLightWhiteHeat'' is a 17-minute jam recorded in one take. Live performances often stretched to even longer amounts (one version on both ''The Quine Tapes'' and ''The Complete Matrix Tapes'' is almost forty minutes long), and sometimes they would also sometimes include an introduction called "Sweet Sister Ray" that itself was almost forty minutes long. A bootleg recording of "Sweet Sister Ray" exists, but unfortunately without the performance of "Sister Ray" that followed. (The band also performed plenty of other lengthy live songs, often improvised and stretching to half an hour or more; the ones that have been recorded can be found on the bootleg box set ''Caught Between The Twisted Stars'').

** "Sister Ray" from ''Music/WhiteLightWhiteHeat'' is a 17-minute jam recorded in one take. Live performances often stretched to even longer amounts (one version on ''The Quine Tapes'' is almost forty minutes long), and sometimes they would also sometimes include an introduction called "Sweet Sister Ray" that itself was almost forty minutes long. A bootleg recording of "Sweet Sister Ray" exists, but unfortunately without the performance of "Sister Ray" that followed. (The band also performed plenty of other lengthy live songs, often improvised and stretching to half an hour or more; the ones that have been recorded can be found on the bootleg box set ''Caught Between The Twisted Stars'').

* Music/The Weeknd has Kiss Land (7:35) and Tears in the Rain (7:24) on his album titled Kiss Land.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

* The final boss track of ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'', The Genesis, is nearly 8 minutes long with no looping. It's one of the longest tracks in Shin Megami Tensei history, if not the longest.
* ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' makes use of procedurally generated music, which is produced in real-time by the game's engine (the extra melodies made while the player accomplishes a task, for example.) Mike Morasky, the game's composer, said that one piece of music "only repeats itself every 76,911 years, 125 days, 7 hours, 56 minutes and 30.3 seconds." The soundtrack naturally contained excerpts of all of these pieces.

* Hell March by Frank Klepacki from Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Over six minutes long, and about halfway through it changes from metal to ambient electronica.

[[folder: Further Reading]]

* Music/MichaelJackson had a few, starting with ''Music/OffTheWall'' opener "Don't Stop 'Til Get You Enough". ''Music/{{Thriller}}'' had "Thriller" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" (5:57 and 6:04, respectively). ''Music/{{Bad}}'' was more straightforward (No songs over 5:20)... then ''Music/{{Dangerous}}'' had 7/14 songs at least 6 minutes long (two clocking in over 7!). The [[DistinctDoubleAlbum second disk]] of ''[=HIStory=]'' had 3 songs over 6 minutes ("Earth Song", "[=HIStory=]" and "Little Susie") - which are even longer on remix album ''Blood on the Dance Floor'' (which in turn has the epics "Morphine" and "Superfly Sister"). His final album, ''Invincible'', opens with another epic, "Unbreakable"