10 songs that sound nothing like the rest of a band’s repertoire

‘Fight for Your Right’ – Beastie Boys

It’s easy not to fault a band too much for what their debut sounds like. Oftentimes, everyone is still new to recording, and not everything that they were trying to make necessarily pans out the way they want it to. Beastie Boys did hit it out of the park on their debut, though, and the trio had to live with being treated as the Bowery Boy New York punks for the rest of their lives thanks to ‘Fight For Your Right’.

While the song itself is a mindless ode to partying, the problem with this tune is that the band sell it a little bit too well. From their vocal cadence to the casual references to causing as much trouble as possible, this wasn’t that far off from what a lot of kids were living around the time that the band were growing up, but they had meant the whole thing as a parody. It was meant as a send-up of all the jock-types, but since no one understood it, they had to run as far away as they could when making albums like Paul’s Boutique and Ill Communication.

The backing tracks for their albums would always be on another level, but the fact that they were always treated like the punk-ass kids of hip-hop drastically undersold what they were about. They had pieces of that in them, but this would be the equivalent of a Wall Street stockbroker watching something like American Psycho or The Wolf of Wall Street and not understanding that it’s not exactly a glowing endorsement of their lifestyle.

‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ – Bjork

Bjork has never been comfortable fitting into any genre throughout his discography. From world music to synthesised beats to whatever the hell was going on in Volta, she seemed to look at a musical staff and throw caution to the wind whenever she decided to open her mouth to sing. So while putting her on a list like this at all feels wrong, it’s definitely strange to think that 90% of casual fans were introduced to her through the world of jazz.

While most of Post deals with a lot of glitchy beats and trip-hop elements like on ‘Possibly Maybe’ and ‘Army of Me’, throwing in an old jazz tune in the middle of the record on ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ feels like throwing a layer of nacho cheese in the middle of a freshly-cut salad. It might not necessarily be bad if anyone is feeling adventurous, but it’s also the last thing they would want to try if they were given the opportunity for something else.

But for what it’s worth, Bjork sells every minute of the tune, owning the stage like an old-school crooner and even showing off her vocal range with the sudden shrieks she throws in there for good measure. She may have helped bring the strangest ideas to life through her music, but if anyone in the 1990s listened to this and thought that the next musical movement would be traditional jazz, they were in for some bad news.

‘Song 2’ – Blur

The entire story of Blur has always been somewhat strange when it comes to their appeal in America. Damon Albarn may be one of the biggest rockstars the 1990s ever spit out, and yet overseas, he’s known more now for his work with Gorillaz than nearly anything that went on during the Britpop movement. At a certain point, anyone would get fed up, and it turned out frustration and anger was the best thing Blur could have asked for when making a throwaway tune.

Even though ‘Song 2’ was meant to be one long piss-take on American alternative rock, it turned out that The Yanks didn’t have that much of a sense of humour about it, turning it into one of the biggest hits the band ever had. While their status in the US was more along the lines of a borderline one-hit wonder, that would be doing a disservice to the miles of classic material they had, whether that’s their atmospheric early period or every single tune to come out of their ‘Life’ trilogy of albums.

Granted, some people might not have been quite English enough to understand what ‘Parklife’ was about, but that shouldn’t have been a hindrance on the band themselves. Britpop may have had a clear home the minute Blur and Oasis started making it big, but if all anyone’s exposure to Blur was was ‘Song 2’, they would not see something like ‘The Universal’ coming when going through their back catalogue.

‘We’re Going to Be Friends’ – The White Stripes

The entire appeal of The White Stripes was an exercise in minimalism. Since the entire band was made up of two people, it was about embracing everything that they had learned together and trying to squeeze as much emotion out of the rudiments of rock and roll. And while ‘Seven Nation Army’ would go on to become one of the biggest football chants of the modern age, did anyone really count on them being responsible for one of the most innocent rock songs of the entire 2000s?

Although a lot of the success of ‘We’re Going To Be Friends’ can be traced back to Napoleon Dynamite, Jack White’s innocent tune about finding a friend in his class when he was young is almost too childlike to belong in the rock category. There were moments where they could get simplistic, but for an album that has tunes like ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’, hearing this would make people expect that the whole album is going to be nothing but children’s songs to play to preschoolers.

But that has less to do with the quality of the tune itself and more about the versatility of Jack’s songwriting. Throughout The Stripes’ catalogue and his solo career, he never put any limits on what was worthy of going on an album, but while the blues is always a safe bet, this feels like the kind of nursery rhyme that could have existed at the dawn of time before instruments were even invented.

‘Ocean Man’ – Ween

Ween might also fall into the same category as Bjork where it’s hard to judge any one of their songs. Their whole process is to make something sound as strange as possible, and while that’s usually a good thing when listening to their later albums like Quebec and Chocolate and Cheese, their “brown” period was always going to be an acquired taste even for the Captain Beefheart enthusiasts of the world. So how the hell did the same band that made tunes like ‘Push Th’ Little Daisies’ manage to soundtrack one of the greatest children’s shows of all time?

Because no matter what strange tune might turn up on one of their albums, everyone who grew up around the turn of the century knows ‘Ocean Man’ as being on the soundtrack to The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, complete with the vocal effect on Gene Ween’s voice to make everything sound like it’s going on underwater. Whereas most items on this list do a piss-poor job of representing the band with a lacklustre song, the production design behind this is phenomenal.

From the guitar solo break to the vocal effects to the mandolin in the background, this is a perfect two minutes of pop music that happens to be talking about a man living under the ocean and sharing his wonders with the world. But, like all good periods of Ween, they had to make sure to destroy it before people started to fall into too much of a holding pattern with their music.

‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ – Depeche Mode

The entire 1980s pop scene practically had a rule that indicated there needed to be synth on 70% of the charts. Even though there were strange anomalies on the charts from time to time like Stevie Ray Vaughan, the advent of the synthesiser was the entire reason why the 1970s turned into the 1980s for people, especially with MTV reaching its first major peak in popularity. But for a band that was as pitch-black as they would be later, ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ is Depeche Mode’s attempt at a silly pop song.

Although much of their greatest material is based on love, it’s usually broken and dysfunctional, so hearing Dave Gahan play the lovestruck teenager in this tune is almost funny in a certain way. Compared to the pure darkness on ‘Enjoy the Silence’ and ‘People Are People’, the lyrics here are so goofy that they could have been written inside the mind of a puppy, but only one album later, Depeche Mode were already firmly moving away from this.

With Gahan leading more into that brooding baritone register and eventually making albums like Violator, it was clear that any cheery, peppy version of Depeche Mode was a thing of the past. It was still firmly in the world of pop music, but whereas most bands’ attempts to go dark meant the start of their descent, Depeche Mode only got started when they began using their pain as a paintbrush.

‘Good Riddance’ – Green Day

From the minute they got big, Green Day always had a fear of getting pigeonholed. They may have had to outrun people calling them sellouts for leaving their old stomping grounds on Dookie, but the real injustice was trying to keep the band in a box and never allow them to grow any further than their odes to masturbation and smoking weed. Insomniac may have let them let out their anger, but ‘Good Riddance’ was their line in the sand to tell everyone they weren’t the band they thought they were.

Although this has become the go-to song for any prom, graduation, or general transitional moment in life, Billie Joe Armstrong didn’t skimp out at all when writing the tune. Ignoring the fact that most people don’t know it’s about a bitter breakup, this was the first time that people saw the heart behind Green Day, almost ignoring the fact that they were telling everyone to go to hell and talking about the wonders of being bored not even two years before.

Then again, the fact that they had the guts to actually put this tune on an album speaks volumes about how far they had come. Any average punk band wouldn’t dare have something this mainstream next to their fast songs, but ‘Good Riddance’ was more of a statement than a song. These three goofballs were far from being out of gas, and the most punk thing they could do was put out something a bit more subtle.

‘Tusk’ – Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac having one singular sound is an oxymoron in many respects. Since there have been a seemingly endless amount of lineup changes, it’s hard to tell what defines them in any respect, whether that’s the smooth sounds of Bob Welch, the pop marvels with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, or the dirty blues rock that started it all with Peter Green. But there’s one thing for sure: no pop band on the charts was ever going to consider a song like ‘Tusk’ one of their definitive statements.

Although the album of the same name is a decent grab bag of classic songs from them, Buckingham’s foray into primal rock and roll feels like the opposite of what their strengths were on Rumours. They had spent all that time trying to combat any allegations of being a one-trick pony, so I guess the only way to avoid any of that is to make sure that something is so weird that no one else could have taken credit for it.

Make no mistake, the song is incredible in its own weird way, but it’s not exactly surprising that some of Buckingham’s bandmates had a hard time getting on board with what he was trying to accomplish here. ‘Go Your Own Way’ may have been a tough pill for Stevie Nicks to swallow, but it’s also not shocking if some of his bandmates looked at Buckingham like was scary when he brought this in.

‘Creep’ – Radiohead

One of the biggest fears that any rock band can face is being typecast. Radiohead would always be considered alternative to the mainstream, and while Pablo Honey was a certain kind of alternative, it had the songs that would have fit right in on any average rock radio playlist. And despite some tunes holding up, ‘Creep’ feels more like a cruel gamble that they had to take to reach the big time.

Because despite reinventing themselves with one album after another, Radiohead’s first hit will forever be the most accessible thing they ever made. From the old-school chord progression to the primal aggression coming out of Thom Yorke’s voice in the bridge, this is everything that a kid could have been asking for circa 1993, complete with Yorke’s haircut that made him look a little bit like Kurt Cobain.

Any other rock band would have been dead in the water with a song like this after grunge faded, but looking through everything from Kid A and In Rainbows, Radiohead refused to let anyone put them in the category of “The ‘Creep’ Band”. And for any bands trying to make it in the mainstream, let their story be words of encouragement. No matter how many times people throw around the term “one-hit wonder” around some bands, this is proof that escape is possible.

‘Coming Up’ – Paul McCartney

Most people in the 1980s didn’t really need to get introduced to the music of Paul McCartney. The Beatles had become so omnipresent in people’s lives that he was practically one of the most famous men on the planet, so it wasn’t hard to figure out what song on the radio was him. Once he disassembled Wings after his drug bust, Macca’s decision to make a studio in his home and get weird was a stroke of genius.

While most people weren’t supposed to hear McCartney II, the album of borderline demos that McCartney was making for fun featured one of his most outlandish songs in ‘Coming Up’. ‘Temporary Secretary’ is certainly a stranger listening experience by comparison, but based on the first two guitar stabs at the beginning of the tune, you’d swear that someone put on a new wave playlist before thinking of the guy who made syrupy ballads like ‘My Love’ and ‘The Long and Winding Road’.

Even his old writing partner was taken aback, with John Lennon being shocked to find out that it was McCartney and eventually got back into making music shortly after listening to it in 1980. Although Paul McCartney will forever be known as the tunesmith of The Beatles who wrote many of their classic silly love songs, this tune could be used as a way to show everyone that he could be as eclectic as his songwriting counterpart could.