I just made this top 5 (in no particular order: )
Weezer: say it aint so: 2:43-3:22 (“dear daddy” part)
Red Hot Chili Peppers - I could’ve lied 3:19-3:37 (chorus with guitar)
Led Zeppelin - When the levee brakes 2:32-3:04 (“don’t it make you feel bad” part)
Tool - Ticks and leeches 1:39-1:52 (“My blood is bruised and borrowed” part)
William shatner - Common People - 2:32-2:44 (chorus with choir)
That part in When the Levee Breaks is kind of repeated again later in the song, although it’s without those same lyrics.
Some of my favorites:
Gang of Four - Damaged Goods at 1:44, where they strip it down to just the drums and vocals
Sufjan Stevens - Come On! Feel the Illinoise! at 2:20, where the song transitions into its second part
The Clash - The Right Profile at 3:07, where Mick or Paul or whoever is singing lets out this garbled nonsense, like he forgot the lyrics or something
Don’t Dream It’s Over, by Crowded House – the guitar bridge (2:09-2:24) after the organ solo.
It’s Joe Strummer singing. He did have a habit of forgetting lyrics and filling them in with gibberish.
'Til Tuesday, “Voices Carry.” Right at the end, almost always cut off on the radio or MTV, Amy Mann’s last line, “I wish he would let me talk.”
I was just listening to that song like, five minutes ago, and was er… “singing” along (if you could call it that), and laughed myself stupid trying to do the interesting “awsiksukaspitsoooarrwww!” or whatever the hell that was.
For me:
Not sure if this one counts or not, but it’s the first one I thought of when I read the thread title, so I’m going with it. Musically, the part is repeated several times, but lyrically it’s only said once, and it’s my favourite. So here it goes:
The Vandals - Cafe 405 at about 1:40 or so (“Shopping mall renegade”) - the song is pretty upbeat throughout, but for some reason, when this line is sung, that’s about the time I start jumping up and down, throwing stuff happily around the house, whirling my shirt in the air, or leading a stampede. Or something.
The other ones I thought of:
Gorillaz - *Every Planet We Reach Is Dead * at 1:48-ish (“Picture I’m a dreamer”)
*Cruel Angel’s Thesis * (Remix - can’t remember which one, I managed to flub the name when I burned it from my CD to my comp years ago, and naturally, I can’t find my CD now) at around 3:52 - 4:00+ - there’s a short bit where they remove the bass and some other instruments from the background, leaving only vocals (the chorus: “zankoku na tenshi no TE-ZE madobe kara yagate tobitatsu”) and a stray flute-sounding instrument… at 4:00 they bring the rest back in (returns in the middle of the lyric “hotobashiru”). I describe this part to my husband as “Oh - stop dancing.” listens attentively to the lyrics bass returns “okay! We can dance again!” grooves
No it isn’t.
The drum solo in “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly.
I’m serial.
Hmm, listening to it again I recognize that the instruments are playing the same thing at 5:15. However, at first there is no singing, and after that he only sings “aah”. So I don’t think it counts.
Elvis Costello, ‘Accidents Will Happen’. A beautiful middle eight with a bass line that simply climbs and climbs and climbs: “It’s the damage that we do, and never know / It’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so”.
This is the first example that came to mind and I’m not even much of an EC fan (could never get past the nasal, whiny singing voice, sorry).
They’re called bridges.
Magnetic Fields: I Think I Need A New Heart
The bridge (?)
“the words you long to hear, you will never hear from me.
you’ll never hear me say, ‘happy anniversary’, never stay long enough to say ‘happy anniversary’.”
So heartbreaking.
The Rolling Stones:
“We all need someone to lean on…”
“… to dream on…”
“… to cream on…”
Wow I thought I was the last person on earth that still listened to the vandals.
Air Supply, in “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” - the part which starts “Everytime I see you, all the rays of the sun…”
I like it so much, I proposed to my wife with it.