The 10 best songs over 20 minutes long
Conventional music follows an unwritten rule whereby songs hit a sweet spot between three and five minutes in length. If a track is any shorter than three minutes, it’s likely too brief to immerse oneself fully, and if it surpasses the five-minute mark, many listeners will begin to zone out or flip the record.
Following the expansion of experimental music in the 1960s, lengthier compositions became more commonplace, especially as the prog rockers began to book studio time. Bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis and Led Zeppelin gradually threw radio air-time concerns to the wind during eternal jam sessions. Where once artists might stumble upon a diamond in the rough of a protracted jam, these artists often felt the jam itself could pass for an entire 12-inch side.
We can’t say for sure whether these four-song albums emerged out of laziness or progressive creativity, but they undoubtedly drove a wedge further into the chasm between two halves of rock ‘n’ roll. It was only a matter of time before people awoke from their slumber, lifted the needle from Yes’ ‘The Gates of Delerium’ and posed punk as a punchier contender.
Placing the sickeningly pretentious prog meanderings to one side, I feel it’s important to add that these bands were a crucial building block in music’s evolution, and they released some delightful material – even among the epics. For example, Pink Floyd’s explorative jams of the late ’60s may have inflicted a deep slumber among some listeners, but I defy anyone to deny the beauty of ‘Echoes’ or ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’.
Since the prog rock era, ambient and electronic music appears to have taken the mile-long mantle of lengthy composition, but across many popular genres, songs over ten minutes are no rare occurrence. With some classic films, we’re happy to sit down for a couple of hours, provided there’s an engaging plotline. It’s after the three-hour mark that people begin to feel restless.
Music’s answer to the four-hour blockbuster is the 20-minute composition. Today, we’re exploring some of music’s most interminably interminable offerings across various genres. All of the below tracks clock in over 20 minutes; some land just beyond the mark, while others would give Laurence of Arabia a run for his money.
The 10 best songs over 20 minutes long
Aphex Twin (AFX) – ’36 Shroommdot [miCro] [8th dimension transmission]’ (20:27)
Throughout his three-decade run as the most revered innovator in electronic music, Aphex Twin (real name Richard D. James) has stretched his legs toward all corners of sound. Picking up the threads of Brian Eno’s pioneering ambient work, James began his journey in 1992 with Selected Ambient Works 85-92.
Since then, he’s covered all manner of electro genres and even birthed a few of his own. While many of his tracks strain the chronometer, very few surpass the ten-minute mark, and, in contrast, 2000’s ‘Aussois’ doesn’t even make it to 15 seconds. This characteristically ludicrous title marks one of James’ most divisive compositions under the AFX alias. It’s experimental, industrial and unprecedented, but I quite enjoy areas of the ominous soundscape. Some call it pretentious nonsense, but I’d rather hear nonsense than the news.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – ‘Storm’ (22:32)
In 1994 Montreal, Godspeed You! Black Emperor emerged as a post-rock heavyweight seemingly after Pink Floyd’s heart – or the heart of the sun. Like Pink Floyd, the Canadian group have a penchant for long, meandering rock odysseys. Where Godspeed You! Black Emperor differ, is in their leaning toward instrumental music, often flavoured with post-apocalyptic spoken word monologues.
It’s easy to see why the band have never quite been involved in the charts. If these sonic explorers wanted to be, they wouldn’t create double albums consisting of just four songs. The 2000 album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven is widely considered the purest fruit of the band’s alchemy, and ‘Storm’ is the greatest moment.
Pink Floyd – ‘Echoes’ (23:33)
Like many of their contemporary space rock explorers, Pink Floyd enjoyed a lengthy composition. Extended jam sessions led to some of the band’s finest sonic revelations but also, at times, sent us to sleep. While they’re by no means abhorrent, some of the epic tracks from the Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother era could have benefited from castration.
On the flip side, some of Pink Floyd’s longest tracks were unmitigated triumphs. The highlight of Wish You Were Here, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Pts. 1-5’, flows for 13 minutes and 29 seconds, but you wouldn’t know, thanks to David Gilmour’s transcendent guitar flavourings. Remarkably, ‘Echoes’ soars like the protagonistic albatross for just over 23 minutes: the beef wellington to the hors d’oeuvre that is ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Pts. 1-5’.
Kraftwerk – ‘Autobahn’ (22:46)
As the prog rockers pressed virtuosity and pretension into soporific 12″ doses, Germany’s Kraftwerk began experimenting with purely synthesised soundscapes. Following a run of avant-garde experiments, Kraftwerk made a name for themselves in 1974 with the release of Autobahn, their more pop-orientated fourth studio album.
The 42-minute album consists of just four tracks (counting ‘Kometenmelodie’ as one), with the 22-minute title track taking up the entire first side. The epic explores the open road with modulated frequencies depicting the sounds of cars approaching, passing, and then speeding away towards eternity.
Mike Oldfield – ‘Tubular Bells – Pt. 1’ (26:01)
Legendary English composer and multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield snatched fame and fortune aged just 19 with the release of his debut album, Tubular Bells, in 1973. Initially, the album sold slowly since Oldfield was a lesser-known artist and his compositions weren’t exactly radio-friendly. However, the situation changed on a sixpence when William Friedkin released his popular movie adaption of William Peter Blatty’s horror novel The Exorcist.
The opening sequence of the first side, ‘Tubular Bells Pt. 1’, was used for the now iconically sinister soundtrack of The Exorcist, ensuring sleepless nights for nearly five decades. Beyond the sinister-piano-driven intro, Oldfield weaves in a range of phrases to create a range of emotions, including heavier guitar-driven parts. This is undoubtedly one of the most epic musical epics.
Sonic Youth – ‘The Diamond Sea – Album Version / Alternate Ending’ (25:51)
Whether you call Sonic Youth proto-grunge or noise rock, bands of this ilk aren’t known for particularly lengthy compositions. However, as curious explorers, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and their friends dished out a particularly hefty track to their loyal fans in 1990 as part of Washing Machine, their ninth studio album.
‘The Diamond Sea’ is the track in question, and while some of you sharp Sonic Youth fanatics out there may be arguing that it’s only 19 minutes and 17 seconds long, I avert your attention to the ‘Alternate Ending’ version. This extended-release is the original version of the track before radio edit regulations castrated it.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – ‘Karn Evil 9’ (29:37)
In the early ’70s, Emerson, Lake & Palmer added their names to rock’s history books alongside the likes of Genesis, Yes and Rush. As the prog brand demanded, ELP loved cutting a lengthy jam session into their vinyl quota. Alongside Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer, King Crimson alumni Greg Lake looked to push the novelty of hits like ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ to new heights.
In one of the most popular albums among fans, 1973’s Brain Salad Surgery, ELP brought an ambitious spread of rock seasoned with endless guitar and organ solos. Much like a salad, you know this album’s full of goodness, but it’s difficult to wade through too much of it. The album concludes with the four-part epic, ‘Karn Evil 9’, which clocks in just shy of 30 minutes.
The Orb – ‘Blue Room’ (39:57)
In the early ’90s, The Orb joined a wave of innovative electro producers, alongside the likes of Aphex Twin, Underworld and Autechre, to push the preconceived norms of music. Their debut, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, arrived in 1991. The continuous, progressive composition emulates a two-hour psychedelic trip. As it moves through obviously differing and titled chapters, we won’t consider this a song – but it would be 109 minutes if we did.
Instead, we’ve picked out the historic track ‘Blue Room’, which has been released in several versions of differing lengths. ‘Blue Room’ was released in 1992 and made history as the longest single ever to appear on the UK Singles Chart. After several previous maxi-singles were excluded from the charts over the ’80s, the Chart Information Network introduced a rule alongside the usual 25-minute maximum playing time, allowing “maxi-singles” to run up to 40 minutes as long as only one title was listed among the single’s tracks. With this news, The Orb decided to produce this 39-minute and 57-second-long track.
Spacemen 3 – ‘An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music’ (44:20)
Spacemen 3, the formative home of Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce, were self-proclaimed psychonauts. Their music drew inspiration from the avant-garde, proto-punk musings of The Velvet Underground and the improvisational jam zeal of the prog-rockers. If their 1990 album Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To wasn’t a clue, these guys enjoyed dabbling with psychedelic chemicals. As a result, they conjured up some particularly immersive and entrancing music.
Spacemen 3 traversed several disparate genres using synthesisers, drum machines and traditional electric guitars. The constants at the hub of the chaos were distorting effects and protracted, droning instrumentals. Across their studio catalogue, they released some lengthy tracks, but none quite so long as this live recording, ‘An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music’. The 45-minute song was recorded during a performance at Watermans Arts Centre in Brentford, London, in August 1988 and was released on the 1990 live album Dreamweapon.
The Flaming Lips – ‘7 Skies H3’ (24 hours)
Wayne Coyne and his neo-psychedelic group of kooks are anything but conventional. If this list is a competition, ‘7 Skies H3’ wins by a country mile. Forgetting the Aphex Twin loop tracks and algorithmically repeating ambient compositions, The Flaming Lips took gold with this 2011 release.
The 24-hour song resides in an EP titled 24 Hour Song Skull, and though it’s assembled as a continuous song, it is constructed from separate recordings ranging from 25 minutes to seven hours in length. The track was released on 13 limited edition flash drives encased in real human skulls costing $5,000 a piece, for Halloween 2011. A website was also set up, which streams the song on an endless loop. I wonder how much space would be left on my shelf if they cut this one into a vinyl box set.
