Switching things up: 10 artists that wrote songs outside their genre
Once you’ve been around the block a couple of times in rock and roll, there comes a point where playing the same old riff starts to become a little bit stale. It’s every musician’s right to experiment with something different, and it’s no use regurgitating the same thing over again in hopes that your fans will accept the same thing. Any artist wants to start exploring after a while, and acts like The Beatles were ready to see where their muse was going to take them.
Then again, these aren’t dramatic shifts into different genres all of the time. Even though some of these tonal shifts may have been fairly drastic when we first heard them, these are actually nice switch-ups from the typical formula that we were used to, making strides to push themselves creatively or trying their hand at a style that they had an interest in.
They didn’t half-ass these things either, putting their heart and soul into every one of the notes until they found something that they thought would work. They may have had to deal with a few fans scratching their heads at the time, but these acts were just tapping into what they could do on these tunes.
There are even a few that pointed to new sonic avenues in the artist’s career that didn’t necessarily have a tie to traditional rock and roll. Music is just a spectrum of different sonic flavours, so it’s okay to pull from all over the map whenever you want to.
10 bands that wrote songs in other genres:
10. ‘Mama Said’ – Metallica
There are more than a few Metallica fans who will say that everything that happened during the Load era was a huge mistake. Despite them achieving some of the biggest success of their career on The Black Album, the metal icons’ switch to more hard rock-leaning songs made many fans think they were selling out, trying to mooch some money off of the alternative crowd. They may have had a few points, but you wouldn’t hear this kind of twang on a Soundgarden record any time soon.
Outside of the heavier moments on the record like ‘Bleeding Me’ and ‘The Outlaw Torn’, ‘Mama Said’ has the most intimate lyrics James Hetfield would ever write, most of it being dominated by him on acoustic guitar and the rest of the band filling things out in the background. Picking up almost exactly where ‘The God That Failed’ left off, this is a much more loving portrait of what Hetfield’s strained relationship with his mother was like, talking about her instilling the values that he kept his entire life while also taking into account the man that he’s become along the way as he lives the life of a rock star.
Even though Hetfield is known as the rough-and-tumble master of the universe in Metallica, this is the first time where you see the frightened little kid that exists underneath all of those “yeahs”. He reached the top of the mountain, but that doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t find inner peace.
9. ‘Jellybelly’ – Smashing Pumpkins
Even in a genre as enigmatic as grunge, Billy Corgan was one of the toughest nuts to crack in the age of irony. If Siamese Dream already made you feel like this guy was complicated, Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness is all of his complexity on parade, putting together singles as diverse as the ballad ‘Tonight Tonight’ and the digitally-infused ‘1979’. In between the single material, Corgan had a lot of aggression that needed unleashing.
Being a big fan of heavy metal since he was a kid, there are more than a few times where Corgan goes for it on this record, with ‘Jellybelly’ being the first real sign of his metal chops. Compared to the blistering sounds that we heard on ‘Cherub Rock’ a few years before, this is miles above anything in the Pumpkins’ canon, with a riff that Dimebag Darrell could have written around the exact same time.
This isn’t just a case of Corgan stumbling into writing a cool riff, either. He had studied the biggest guitar virtuosos of his time, and his solo has a lot more in common with the hair metal gods of the 1980s than anyone was expecting in the 1990s. This kind of guitar playing may have been considered taboo, but Corgan wasn’t afraid to let loose and express himself in any way he knew how. Metal was suffering in the 1990s, but you just needed to know where to look for the good stuff.
8. ‘Setting Sun’ – The Chemical Brothers feat. Noel Gallagher
For as great as Oasis was in the 1990s, they were coming dangerously close to sounding like a one-trick pony. No matter how many times they could write an anthem, there were only so many Beatles licks to crib from before people started asking questions. Noel Gallagher wasn’t afraid to take a leap, though, and working with The Chemical Brothers on ‘Setting Sun’ is one of the more interesting forays into electronic music that any mainstream artist has ever made.
Even though electronic music and rock and roll were seen as bitter enemies by the masses, hearing them play so nicely together is actually a welcome change of pace. The Prodigy may have used all of the aesthetics that rock acts were using, but Gallagher was looking to channel the Fab Four rather than try to make some ambient track that lights up the dancefloor.
In essence, the whole track is ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by way of The Stone Roses, and having Gallagher’s voice soaring across the beat is a much better fit than what he could have done for Oasis at the time. Any artist is going out on a limb when making this kind of jump, but even if it were a different approach to music, Gallagher would always collaborate on his own terms.
7. ‘Virginia Moon’ – Foo Fighters
The entire concept behind Foo Fighters’ In Your Honor was a bit of a mixed bag. Dave Grohl had just recently graduated to the stadiums of the world, and the first disc delivered on the promise of making what seemed to be the ultimate arena rock album. But we did have a whole different disc in store, and the back half of this project had some of the most mellow songs that he would ever write.
Granted, it’s not out of the question for a rock musician to break out the acoustics every now and again, with acts like Neil Young priding themselves on switching on a dime depending on which project you’re listening to. You need something more to end up on this list, and ‘Virginia Moon’ is the kind of off-the-wall decision just crazy enough to work, with Grohl working with Norah Jones and delivering some jazzy rock to the table. Considering how many switch-ups are on the album, this almost feels out of the jurisdiction of rock altogether, bringing in the kind of chords you would find in a Steely Dan single.
Grohl also has a more muted tone to his vocals, framing the tune as a sort of lullaby as we enter the final chapter of the record. The frontman might seem like the musical Swiss Army Knife, but any musician has achieved god-tier status when they can please both the arena rock crowd and the coffeehouse circuit simultaneously.
6. ‘Triumph of a Heart’ – Björk
Most artists treat every record as an opportunity to make something new. The last effort may have sold a ton of copies and been a critical darling, but where’s the fun in being confined by just one sound for the rest of one’s life? Björk sure as hell wouldn’t get bogged down with that title, and for ‘Triumph of a Heart’, she didn’t even need proper instruments to reinvent herself.
While Vespertine was probably as close to a perfect album as she had ever made, Björk made it a point to work with different vocalists to create an acapella masterpiece on Medulla. There are a few tracks that bleed more towards church music, but ‘Triumph of a Heart’ has all the groove of a mainstream hit despite all of the notes coming out of the back of someone’s throat.
If anything, the fact that Björk pulled this off really speaks to the medium she was working in. Sure, she could have made another orchestral piece that sounded pristine coming out of headphones, but the fact that she made the entire groove with just mouth sounds is a more adventurous take on composing. Other acts find their muse by adding new instruments, but sometimes, the key move is to take a few things out.
5. ‘Misery’ – Green Day
Depending on what type of Green Day fan you talk to, Warning is either the most underrated or worst project they’ve put out. For a band that started off playing letter-perfect pop punk, this one was definitely a switch-up, bringing in the acoustics on most of the tracks and making songs that were about more universal topics than the teenage angst of ‘Longview’ and ‘Geek Stink Breath’. Billie Joe Armstrong was definitely indebted to classic rock this time around, and ‘Misery’ is the most oddball story he’s ever written.
Detailing lives of some of the seedier people that exist in California, this track has a more macabre sound going for it, taking the electric guitars out entirely and bringing in everything from strange organs on the intro to mandolins and a full-on mariachi band halfway through. For a tune that’s all about the more spooky side of California, though, this is probably the best approach, putting a sort of demented smile on the life of Virginia, who may or may not have had to kill a few people to get to where she is today.
While Armstrong’s voice is still as snotty as ever, you can definitely hear them trying to flex their muscles into something a lot more theatrical, sounding closer to The Nightmare Before Christmas than anything from the likes of Sum 41. Wait a minute… a strange horror story, bratty vocals, and a whole bucket of darkness? Yeah, Green Day practically wrote the template for My Chemical Romance before they were even a thing.
4. ‘Good Company’ – Queen
In Freddie Mercury’s own words, he envisioned Queen as being the equivalent of Cecil B DeMille in the world of rock and roll. As nutty as it sounds, you can kind of see where he was coming from, with every single Queen project having a larger-than-life scale behind it. Just before we get to the mammoth showstopper ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, though, Brian May’s main contribution to their masterpiece sent us back a good 20 years in musical history.
Although there’s still a traditional rock band setup for ‘Good Company’, most of the tune is indebted to the sounds of jazz bands that May heard growing up, even sprinkling in a bit of ukulele banjo that previously belonged to his father. May definitely knows his jazz vocabulary, but the real head-trip is when we hear the full jazz band coming out of his guitar, layering different parts on top of one another to get what he wanted, from bell sounds to horns to even a trombone.
This is a far way away from rock and roll altogether, but that’s never slowed Queen down before and wasn’t about to start now. Freddie Mercury was the acknowledged musical genius of the group, but he also had a fellow musical eccentric just to his left onstage every night.
3. ‘The Nile Song’ – Pink Floyd
When people describe Pink Floyd as heavy, they normally talk about the emotional headspace they put the listener in. Anyone who has ever listened to one of their records in full knows that this isn’t a band willing to tiptoe around delicate subjects, and their best records usually leave their listeners pondering what the hell they just heard. While it took them a bit to get their footing after Syd Barrett left, hearing them take on heavy metal before it had a proper name is white-hot from the moment it starts.
Which is strange considering it came from an also-ran in their catalogue. For all of the great moments on the soundtrack to More, a lot of it can get bogged down in the context of the film, usually sounding a little too jammy, as if they were bored in the studio and had to scrape together something that resembled a “mood piece”. In the case of this track, that mood is pure anger, complete with Gilmour making some of the biggest vocal leaps of his career.
What makes it even stranger is that this was released right at the tail end of 1969, a good few months before Black Sabbath’s debut came out. Even though Floyd has a lot of credits to their name in terms of breaking down musical barriers, it’s safe to add “heavy metal pioneers” to that list as well.
2. ‘Little Wonder’ – David Bowie
Putting David Bowie on this list feels like cheating half the time. Ever since his first few records, the ‘Starman’ practically made it his job to go through different genres, making his millions in the world of glam rock before moving to krautrock, blue-eyed soul, and eventually straight-up pop music during Let’s Dance. Even when going into his third decade, ‘Little Wonder’ was Bowie still willing to twist his art however he wanted.
After working on ‘The Hearts Filthy Lesson’ for the movie Seven and Outside, ‘Little Wonder’ picks up right where he left off, being a full-on foray into the world of electronic music. Though you can definitely hear the drum and bass influence, there’s also a fair amount of that artsy David Bowie flair that comes on every record of his, being totally disoriented in some spots to the point where you can’t really find where the beat is.
Then again, Bowie was always one to serve the song first, and the core of the tune is still great regardless of the tempo switches, sounding like it could be played in arenas just as well as it could if it were being pumped out of a club in the belly of New York. Most artists might pick their style and stick with it throughout their career, but after two decades already behind him, Bowie still seemed as excited to see where his muse took him as he did back on Ziggy Stardust.
1. ‘Within You Without You’ – The Beatles
After The Beatles decided to stop touring, they were free to do whatever they wanted in the studio. Making Abbey Road their de facto playground for the time being, the band’s second life as studio lab rats resulted in some of the best albums that rock and roll has ever made, with Sgt. Peppers standing as one of the most drastic shifts in popular music history. Each of the Fab Four was a much different person than when they started, but George Harrison went down the rabbit hole of Eastern music on ‘Within You Without You’.
While Harrison had flirted with his fascination with Indian music in tunes like ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Love You To’ on their last few projects, this was the first time that he put a pure raga on a record, bringing in different Indian musicians and having them work off the Western session musicians to create some sort of balance between both worlds. Although George is mainly on sitar for this affair, the best moments are hearing every instrument work off of one another, with the sitar virtually having a duet with the other Indian instruments halfway through before closing things out with one final verse.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were at the top of their game, but Harrison wrote the best standalone lyrics on the album, talking about the nature of human existence and trying to see beyond yourself to find some sort of peace of mind waiting outside of your headspace. The fascination with Eastern mysticism may have just seemed like a trend for stoned-out hippies at the time, but this is the closest that rock and roll will ever come to finding real enlightenment.
