# Songs that change gears drastically **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 18, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379 "2005-01-18T15:54:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Honey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honey/32/5074_2.png) [@Honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honey)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2005, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/41 "2005-01-20T20:56:00Z")
**Lose Yourself - Eminem** It starts out melodiously, then changes over to the driving rap beat. Man I love that song. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Torgo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@Torgo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Torgo)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/42 "2005-01-21T01:20:22Z")
[QUOTE=Biffy the Elephant Shrew] The Who: “A Quick One While He’s Away” [QUOTE] Not to mention “Quick One”'s precursor, **"Rael."** Howzabout **Helter Skelter**? The song suddenly dissipates into white noise and feedback, then comes back, fades out, fades back in, fades back out, fades back in then Ringo yells. I love that fade-in, fade-out stuff; don’t you wonder what the look was on George Martin’s face when the band asked him to do that? GM: You want to do what? JL: We fade it out…then fade it back in! GM: Won’t that confuse the listener, not to mention the deejays? PM: That’s the bloody point, Georgie. JL: We want to expand people’s ideas about music, and studio engineering. GM: Get out of my house. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/43 "2005-01-21T02:00:22Z")
_Suppose They Close the Door_ from Sloan’s _Navy Blues_ switches back and forth between two entirely different songs, several times. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/44 "2005-01-21T02:45:28Z")
> [@Raygun99](#): > > _Suppose They Close the Door_ from Sloan’s _Navy Blues_ switches back and forth between two entirely different songs, several times. Chris Murphy said in an interview that it _was_ two different songs, and was never intended to be one song until the final cut of the album. They had two songs that just weren’t working on their own, so they spliced them together. [sub]In another thread, I just made a post about “Money City Maniacs.” What are the chances of two songs from _Navy Blues_ appearing in Cafe Society withing the space of five minutes?[/sub] Another song that changes gears dramatically: “Rush” by Big Audio Dynamite II. About halfway through the song everything’s cut off by a plummy English voice wondering “Hmmm…I wish I could sing like that. It’s not everything, though, all they want these days is rhythm and melody, rhythm and melody…” Followed by a bass and drum segment, which eventually segues back into the main body of the song again. Really strange, especially for something which was B.A.D.'s only hit (apart from the sublime “E=MC[sup]2[/sup] (The Einstein Groove Equation)”). An antidote to these songs–“Dumb Dumb Dumb” by Teenage Fanclub. Norman Blake’s answer to the question “Can you write a song with only one chord change?” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/45 "2005-01-21T02:52:28Z")
Paul McCartney & Wings’ _Live and Let Die_ is a massively schizophrenic song, going from a schmaltzy love tune to brassy menacing jazz to bouncy pseudo-island rhythms. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/46 "2005-01-21T08:59:41Z")
_Love is Like Oxygen_ by Sweet _Hard for Me to Say I’m Sorry_ by Chicago _Who’s Behind the Door?_ by Zebra ---
**Author:** ![sturmhauke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/47 "2005-01-21T10:12:56Z")
Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage” starts out with a spare, high guitar buzz for a few bars, then shifts into a fast crunch for most of the song until the end, where it falls into a slow rumble. ---
**Author:** ![Othersider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/cab0a1/32.png) [@Othersider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Othersider)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/48 "2005-01-21T11:19:32Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > Early metal, not anything modern. Black Sabbath is early metal. Queen is not. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/49 "2005-01-21T11:59:49Z")
_Only The Strong_ by **Midnight Oil** ---
**Author:** ![RobuSensei](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/919ad9/32.png) [@RobuSensei](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobuSensei)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379/50 "2005-01-21T14:07:53Z")
Now _here’s_ one that I bet not a lot of people thought of… **Firth of Fifth** from _Selling England by the Pound,_ by Genesis. Starts out with an amazing piano intro (Tony Banks deserves to be more famous than he is, in my humble opinion) that races through a variety of different meters and rhythms, morphs into a slow power rock ballad-type thing, moves into an instrumental bit, drops into a synthesizer version of that same intro, then a huge Steve Hackett guitar solo in the same vein as the ballad-type section. wah. I wish I could play the keyboards like that… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-that-change-gears-drastically/285379.md?page=2)