Beyond the Hits: 10 essential experimental side-projects by iconic musicians

‘Unchained’ – Tom Petty

Tom Petty was always a fan of all forms of American music. No matter if it was rock and roll, folk music, or even country, it didn’t take long for the heartland rocker to internalise everything he heard and spew it out into his own version of rock. However, while Traveling Wilburys gives him a good chance to live out his rock legend fantasies, Unchained is what happens when you give Petty the excuse to become a modern-day musical outlaw.

While Petty did have his fair share of country-leaning tunes on his studio albums, he and the Heartbreakers served as the backing band for Johnny Cash on his second comeback album with Rick Rubin. Even though a lot of the material was worked on the same way Cash did with most of his post-1980s albums, Petty leans into it perfectly, playing the kind of guitar parts that would have been too rootsy for Garth Brooks but also clean enough to rope in the casual listeners.

Full Moon Fever was Petty’s first proof of concept that he could create something timeless on his own, but this is really The Heartbreakers’ country album with Cash singing on every song. ‘The Man In Black’ still dominates every track on the record, but it’s saying something when Petty considers a record that he didn’t even sing on to be one of the major highlights of his career.

‘Above’ – Mad Season

It’s almost an oxymoron saying that anyone from the grunge movement had side projects. The whole point behind the alternative scene was that no one had to really be confined to one band, so it wasn’t out of the question for a group to have one phenomenal show and then make another album with a different lineup. While Temple of the Dog may have been a sad epilogue for Mother Love Bone, Mad Season was created with the hope that things might all work out in the end.

Even though Layne Staley was in the throes of addiction months before releasing this album, his teaming up with Mark Lanegan and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam was his way of trying to get himself clean. And outside of a few songs that feel like Alice in Chains leftovers, Staley lays into himself on half the record, talking about the shame he feels having been a junkie and trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

While it’s all the more tragic knowing that Staley would lose his personal fight with his demons, Above is mandatory listening for any casual grunge fan as well as anyone who’s ever dealt with some sort of addiction problem. Staley is no longer with us to tell his story, but if anyone hears the pain in his voice on this record, they would be tempted never to touch any junk for the rest of their lives.

‘Petals for Armor’ – Hayley Williams

Paramore has never been a band that relied on one specific style. Calling them purely pop-punk nowadays feels inaccurate at this point, given their 2010s run, and seeing them go from glittery 1980s pop to pure post-punk on This is Why is a good indicator that nothing is off the table for them to tackle. When Hayley Williams did find time to herself, though, her solo career offered up the best songs that Thom Yorke never wrote.

Whereas Flowers for Vases shows Williams more in control of her solo career, Petals for Armor is one of the strangest detours she has ever gone down. Many pop listeners may have known her for tracks like ‘The Only Exception,’ but this is the kind of art-rock that fits somewhere between Radiohead’s experimental period on Kid A and the nervous energy of a band like Talking Heads, even verging on spooky territory on ‘Simmer’.

Even though Paramore is still Williams’s priority, this is a welcome change of pace that helps keep things fresh in between her typical projects. She might still be capable of writing the best pop hooks that a rock band has to offer today, but this feels like what Williams would have sounded like if she had been reborn as the next Bjork rather than her signature vocal powerhouse.

‘Untitled Unmastered’ – Kendrick Lamar

How is it possible to follow up a career-defining album? It’s a question that every artist has to answer sooner or later once they have that one record that changes it all, but there’s usually too much riding on their shoulders to think of what they might write next. And when Kendrick Lamar decided to follow things up, he figured the next best thing was to give ‘em what they asked for and bring back the jazz beats.

While To Pimp A Butterfly still had some aggressive tracks, Untitled Unmastered feels like hearing Lamar live rather than putting together something in the studio. All of the players are the same as those who worked with him on his previous record, but if those songs had a set structure, this feels like Lamar throwing in every other verse that wasn’t quite good enough for the main record, even including a few verses that were reserved specifically to be played during the live show.

But even if the songs don’t have the same attributes as his hits or even proper titles, they occupy a distinct shift in what ‘K-Dot’ was doing. Anyone who makes something that iconic could have stewed in it for the rest of their lives, but Lamar figured this was a nice way of putting a bow on that era of his career before experimenting with something more popular on Damn and Black Panther.

‘Garage Inc’ – Metallica

In the grand scheme of every artist’s discography, covers albums shouldn’t really count. They are still great ways to discover new music, but in terms of someone’s favourite band, hearing them do karaoke versions of their favourite tunes feels like a cheap way to make a quick buck. And while Metallica have gone out of their way to make every collector’s item a fan could ask for, Garage Inc is the kind of covers record that feels like a genuine progression of their sound after The Black Album.

Since a lot of Metallica’s early shows consisted of covers, they made this record as a way of giving back to the artists that they rode in on the back of. Now with Bob Rock’s style of production, this is the cleanest the band have ever sounded while still having some teeth, especially when they try their hand at Black Sabbath and James Hetfield hits on one of the highest notes of his professional singing career on ‘Sabbra Cadabra.’

But the real highlights are them going into obscure, either when they take a swing on ‘Tuesday’s Gone’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd or give a virtual greatest-hits cover session by playing the best moments from Mercyful Fate’s career for 11 minutes at a time. While Garage Inc is a fairly lengthy sit and might not be “pure” Metallica, fans are more likely to have a good time listening to this than having to shovel through the healthy amount of manure that is St Anger.

‘Box Car Racer’ – Tom DeLonge

No one was really coming to a band like Blink-182 to have the most intellectual musical experience. The whole point behind their first handful of records was to make the kind of songs to make 12-year-old boys laugh or occasionally write a song that tugs on one singular heartstring. That doesn’t always make for the best long-term career move, and Tom DeLonge figured the next best thing was for him to take things in a darker direction.

While Box Car Racer was never meant as a replacement for Blink, DeLonge took Travis Barker and a bunch of friends to make a record that was indebted more to hardcore music. Even though his melodic side still comes through on songs like ‘There Is’ and ‘Cat Like Thief,’ the beauty of the record is how chaotic it can be, having massive key changes that happen at fairly random times during the song with no real warning.

Unfortunately, this is the one entry on this list responsible for wrecking the mainline band, with a lot of the arguments on their self-titled record coming from DeLonge doing Box Car Racer without Mark Hoppus’s involvement. Since they have officially reunited, though, Box Car Racer is practically water under the bridge, and now that we have a lost song from them that came to fruition on their comeback album One More Time, maybe there’s more life in that style than what DeLonge originally thought.

‘The Truth’ – Prince

Prince never really needed a band behind him. He could practically play any instrument he could get his hands on, and hiring The Revolution to play behind him during the 1980s almost felt like a common courtesy to his fellow Minneapolis musicians that anything that he truly needed. But even with all the flash that comes with Prince’s records, no one can truly see the artist underneath it until all those bells and whistles are stripped. 

Being packaged with his album Crystal Ball, The Truth is Prince as nature intended, featuring him playing original material on acoustic guitar for 40 minutes. Since a lot of his best records have seemed pristine in terms of production, this is the first time where it feels like walking into Prince in his rehearsal room, going through every one of his songs and seeing what happens like a pop-rock version of Joe Pass or Django Reinhart.

And given that this came out directly after his mammoth Emancipation album, this feels like a nice palette cleanser to get people away from ‘The Purple One’s traditional sound. Everyone knew he could pull off a groove better than anyone else, but if those records showcased Prince as a bandleader, this is everyone’s first look at the human underneath it all who could command a stage with only his presence.

‘Probot’ – Dave Grohl

Dave Grohl was never one to be satisfied working in one outfit. Although Nirvana will always be where he feels at home behind the drumkit, seeing him lead Foo Fighters, serve as the drummer for Queens of The Stone Age, and work with Them Crooked Vultures only comes from a man with neverending musical stamina. Even that wasn’t enough, either, and to satisfy his heavy side, Probot became the record that Grohl made in tribute to the teenage metalhead inside of him.

Despite being one of the forebearers of grunge, Grohl never stopped liking heavy music, and this record was his excuse to work with everyone he could get his hands on. While many would have given the seal of approval for getting Lemmy for a song, bringing in Cronos from Venom on a few tracks was enough to satiate the metalheads who were sceptical about whether Grohl could actually walk the walk.

And given how hard he plays on the record, Grohl was willing to prove his chops as well, never shying away from tunes that need to be kicked up a notch in the rhythm department. Even though a lot of bands in Grohl’s record collection are from the worlds of punk, alternative, pop, and everything in between, someone should tell him that there’s no shame in showing his Slayer influences more often.

‘Money Money 2020’ – Green Day

By the mid-2000s, Green Day needed something major to pull them out of the doldrums. Warning had done decently well with fans, but since everyone from Blink-182 to Sum 41 were riding their coattails, they needed to prove why they were worth keeping around before everyone moved on to the next phase of punk bands. And while American Idiot helped them establish themselves again, Money Money 2020 was their way of having fun outside of their wheelhouse.

While the name on the record sleeve is The Network, the whole thing was an elaborate joke band done by Green Day with masks on. Despite the name, the band should have been Devo Jr given what they are playing, with every member of the band taking turns playing synthy new wave with some of the most bonkers song titles that they can think of, like ‘X-Ray Hamburger’ and ‘Transistors Gone Wild.’

Even though the band had a rock opera to write in between these sessions, Money Money 2020 was the project that truly deserved a reunion instead of their garage-rock alter ego, Foxboro Hottubs. Each of them has some fantastic music among their ranks, but everyone that’s clamouring to hear the unreleased album Cigarettes and Valentines is going to have to make do with their synth-led adventure.

‘Electric Arguments’ – Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney is probably the only musician still around who has done everything there is to do. Considering his role in The Beatles, his years with Wings, and his solo smashes, he feels more myth than man in the modern age, as if some piece of musical history is standing in front of everyone and continuing to write the rest of his story. That story does have some strange chapters, though, and getting together with Youth was exactly what Macca needed to refresh his batteries with The Fireman.

While McCartney has benefited from having many great producers by his side, like George Martin and Nigel Godrich, the laid-back sound of this record picks up right where McCartney II had left off in the 1980s. Instead of relying on his ear for melody, a lot of the songs here are being made up on the spot or based on a single idea that the duo had when working on the record.

And despite McCartney’s insistence on keeping everything separate between his solo career, ‘Sing the Changes’ was one of the few songs that was able to survive all the way to his solo setlist, becoming a favourite on the live album Good Evening New York City. Many people are still willing to die on that hill saying that John Lennon was the most creative of The Beatles, but Electric Arguments would have existed if McCartney wasn’t free to make the strangest music he could think of.