First song that jumps to mind, while probably rather obvious to many, is Led Zeppelin's The Battle of Evermore.
Reason being, as much as they touched on folk music a few times, their roots were firmly fixed in the Blues of old. This is so not blues I would honestly peg this as a different band if it wasn't for Plant's distinctive voice.
Honourable mention to Marillion's Cannibal Surf Babe
. This is simply a deliciously eccentric song that really doesn't sound like Marillion, save for Hogarth's voice.
edited 2nd Jul '13 1:30:47 AM by TopographicOcean
YUUGI WANTS YOU FOR DRINKING BUDDYFirst thing that popped to mind is Joy Electric's EP The Tick Tock Companion (not to be confused with his album The Tick Tock Treasury). For those unfamiliar with JE's work, it's synthpop and sounds more or less like this
. But for The Tick Tock Companion, he dropped the "pop" entirely and improvised an hour's worth of completely abstract music.
It's closer to the Forbidden Planet soundtrack than to any JE albums before or since. It took me a few years to really appreciate it, but now I think it's super great.
edited 2nd Jul '13 8:30:16 AM by MetaFour
Anything off Alan Jackson's "Like Red on a Rose" album. It's really jazzy and sultry, and he nails it, but it's a total departure from his usual meat-and-potatoes neo-trad country style.
On their latest album, Memorious, Texas progressive melodic death metallers Vex had a sound primarily built around a complex and eclectic but still recognizably death metal
sound albeit with strong folk and progressive rock influences a la Primordial and Gentle Giant. However, on the final song, they decided to do away with most of that and just make a metallized Irish drinking anthem
. Good song, but stylistically a rather awkward fit.
Pretty much anything Adema ever done after the original singer was gone is a style shift and yet, Kill the Headlights is far superior than their early stuff.
Also, The Dillinger Escape Plan made "Unretrofied"
, and there's a reason it's pretty much the only song I like from them.
This is that Black Sabbath song I was talking about in the other thread. Part of the reason it sounds so different is that Bill Ward is stepping up to the microphone, but even if it were sung by Ozzy it'd sound pretty different for them.
Speaking of Black Sabbath...
Anyway, the first thing that came to mind was the Nile Song
by Pink Floyd.
...that is surprisingly restrained for Mr. Half-Hair.
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.The most succesful example of Genre Adultery (as in, resulted in the most awesome music) would have to be Bruce Springsteen's album Nebraska.
"Welcome To The Jungle" by Guns N' Roses, or hell, half of the that first album as well as the later "You Could Be Mine", written shortly after the first album but released on a later one. After that they moved more into the regular rock rock, blue rock, and also November Rain-ness. Not a fan of that, especially GNR Lies.
edited 24th Jul '13 7:43:47 PM by ZestierThanThou
Huh? Welcome to the Jungle is one of their most famous songs and is very much an image-defining and sound-defining song for them. Appetite for Destruction is their most famous album and generally considered to be what made GNR the band that it was. The only song on that album that sounds different from the others is Sweet Child, but compared to November Rain and the like SCOM isn't that different.
GNR Lies is basically a demo EP packaged with an acoustic EP, and many don't consider it an official album. Plus, hard rock bands going acoustic was a trend at the time. The Use Your Illusion albums have a bit of a Genre Roulette thing going on but many of the songs have the same sound as their first album. I'm not sure which songs you mean are "regular rock rock".
When I think of "good music that doesn't fit the band's style", I think of the Epic Rocking Coma
, which is almost Progressive Metal.
"Rock 'n roll" can either be a very vague or a very specific term (either referring to rock as an entire overarching subset of musical genres or specifically the kind of music you'd hear when rock and roll was just coming about in the '50s).
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.
Yup. Personally speaking, I use "rock and roll" to specifically refer to the Buddy Holly/Chuck Berry/etc. music of that time and "rock" to refer to the entire super-genre that sprang from it.
edited 29th Jul '13 5:42:31 AM by Willbyr
Yeah, that's how I use the term too.
Anyway, this is Deep Purple making a spacy country song with traces of Dylan.
"Cruisin' California (Bumpin' In My Trunk)" by The Offspring
Yeah, I do realize it's a parody, but still...

Inspired by an offtopic moment
in the "Generally “discredited” albums you like" thread, let's list music that bands have made that are good but does not at all fit into their established style. Could be a Black Sheep Hit, could be some obscure song in their oeuvre that if you'd heard it on its own, you wouldn't immediately make the connection between the band and the song.
One I can think of might be "Cobwebs and Strange" by The Who, a quirky little ditty from their second album that was also the second song written by Keith Moon to appear on a Who album. It kinda sounds like a funny little circus calliope from hell.
edited 2nd Jul '13 12:48:13 AM by 0dd1
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.