Okay, there are plenty of bad songs stinking up good albums, and plenty of one-hit-albums whose hit song is markedly different from the rest of the stuff.
This thread is about songs you like that seem out of place in albums you also like:
– Teenagers from The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance. The rest of the songs are either about death, or about nothing much at all. While Teenagers is better than the nonsense songs, and is certainly catchy, it doesn’t refer to death other than an offhand reference to Columbine, and its structure and feel is different from the rest of the album. I have a suspicion they had that song hanging around when they wrote the album and they were so proud of it they couldn’t resist sticking it in there.
– Wicked World from Black Sabbath. While closer in “feel” than my other two examples, it seems jarring to include a “message song” amongst songs about the occult and general angst. “Warning”, OTOH, has a theme that’s different from the rest of the album but Sabbath made the song theirs by transforming the tone and feel into something that totally gels by making it dark and mysterious.
– Money off of DSotM. I say this even though I love the song and the album, and Pink Floyd is my favorite band. While the theme fits (money ranks up there with time, death, and war, as the major stumbling blocks to sanity in the world,) the feel and pacing of the song just scream “Single!”
"A Favor House Atlantic," from Coheed and Cambria’s In Keeping Secrets of the Silent Earth: 3. It’s catchy. It’s short. It’s a terrific song. It’s Jimmy Eat Rush. It doesn’t fit at all with the rest of the long, proggy concept album.
"Sloop John B," from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. This makes sense, since it was originally a single and was just tacked onto the album to help push it’s poor sales. It’s a terrific song, but it’s jarring to hear it on this album of mini-symphonies.
I’d agree with you, and actually held that opinion for a long time. My opinion has been altered, though, in continued listens to Camper Velorium I: Faint of Heart. Most of the lines are sung almost like the ones in AFHA, but not quite, in a way that ties AFHA to the rest of the album more closer than I thought originally. That particular move could have backfired but instead rises to the level of musical genius.
But I agree with you on the difference in tightness and tone. (And believe it or not, you’re the only one who’s come up with the Rush similarity without me specifically asking them.)
ETA: maybe I’m not sure which one it sounds like. It’s the one that goes “coo coo ca choo”.
It’s funny; for me the similarity was plain as day from the first time I heard C&C (and AFHA was the first song I heard)…Claudio sounds exactly like Geddy Lee on that song. Most of my friends don’t agree with me (most of us are Rush fans).
How Soon Is Now? by The Smiths. It was originally a single in the UK, but repackaged as the first song on side 2 of the American Sire Records’ release of Meat Is Murder in '85. The rest of the album is rockabilly inspired, some funk, some melancholia, and HSIN? seems like it should be on a Depeche Mode record or something. I love this album, and I love the track, but HSIN? is otherworldly, while the other great songs on the album sound like they were recorded at the same period.
Rock and Roll Girlfriend on Green Day’s American Idiot seems out of place. 45 seconds of Meat Loaf-style over-the-top ass-kicking bombast shoved into a punk-pop concept album. It is one of the two cuts on the album not written by Billie Joe Armstrong (Tre Cool gets writing credit). It’s like he came up with the kernel of a great song, but didn’t feel like fleshing it out into its own song, and plopped it into one the album’s suites.
Actually, from the same album, I’ve never been able to tie the two political songs, American Idiot and Holiday into the rest of the album’s Jesus of Suburbia-St.Jimmy-Whatsername storyline.
I feel that “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” on **Born to Run ** and “Adam Raised a Cain” on **Darkness on the Edge of Town ** belong on Springsteen’s earlier albums. They have that more manic feel and don’t belong where they are.
:dubious: 