Burn Down The Mission by Elton John
Minstrel In The Gallery by Jethro Tull
I don’t know if that’s necessarily true–from the FAQ on that site,
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It seems like the OP is asking about songs that change more in the type or feel of the song, not a mere key change.
Back to Franz Ferdinand. Their leading track “Jacqueline” starts off like a gentle ballad accompanied by acoustic guitar and transitions into their more typical sound.
As said earlier, “Happiness is a Warm Gun” is a classic example. That’s more like 5 songs. Does “Hey Jude” count?
Rilo Kiley does this a lot. “A Better Son/Daughter” has Jenny Lewis singing in a very soft and childish sort of way and transitions to a big anthem. I’d say their song “The Good that Won’t Come Out” would also count.
“Put Me On” by Styx has two distinct sections, timed so that you can have a smoke when you start it and be knocked over by its changes:
from Put me on, I’m your brand new record album… through the part about turning your stereo up all the way and the killer Tommy Shaw guitar solo, by which time your smoke is over, just in time for And now you’re in the mood, let the melody just drift your cares away…. Then the main theme comes back.
I like it, with or without the aforementioned accoutrements.
I would say “Master of Puppets” does too, because of the interlude between the end of the second chorus and “Master, master, where’s the dreams that I’ve been after…”
There’s probably others, too, but I don’t feel like combing through my albums right now.
Pink Floyd’s Animals album has three songs that change gears significantly. Dogs switches back and forth between what feels like three very different movements, and Pigs has that crazy pig-snorting melody in the middle. Sheep doesn’t shift as much, but goes from a very calm, relaxed, mellow opener into a hectic, crazy, frantic feeling.
I’m really the first to mention Guns N’ Roses’ November Rain? Man, did I love that song in middle school.
It’s a bit embarassing now, ain’t it.
How about Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd or Heroin by Lou Reed?
What an odd two songs to put in a single sentence.
I would say it goes to hard rock, but not metal. But that’s hardly the point. It’s a great, great song. ;j
Of bands that haven’t been mentioned yet, I’d say Black Sabbath has done a fair share - for example, N.I.B., War Pigs, Fairies Wear Boots, and Wheels of Confusion…in fact, they had a habit of giving the different snippets their own names.
N.I.B.? I don’t see where that changes gears dramatically. Unless you mean the bass solo at the start?
A lot of the older Faith No More songs change up too - The Crab Song, Zombie Eaters, Smaller & Smaller, Theres probably more than that.
Suppose you could count One by Metallica too.
Yes, that’s what I meant - same with “War Pigs”, if you recall.
Definitely. Also, many of their other songs have sudden and/or drastic changes, like “Battery”, “Creeping Death” (similar to Master of Puppets), “Fight Fire With Fire”, “Seek and Destroy”, “The Call of Ktulu”, “The Frayed Ends of Sanity” (which begins with the soldier march from The Wizard of Oz, heh)…I’m sure there are others, too.
Drunk In the Morning by Kid Rock
I’d say its more of a bass solo stuck on the front rather than a major gear change up - the main tune itself is consistent to the same riff.
4st 7lb by Manic Street Preachers goes from punk style rock to lilting sloed down reverb at the end.
One thing as an aside, theres apparenly a 120 minute version of Leonard Cohens ‘Tower of Song’ by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds they did, which according to Cave goes through every conceivable style of music the Bad Seeds could feasibly play. Now that i’d like to play in the Office. Anybody know if it’s actually available?
No, it’s not embarassing. November Rain is a fantastic song! The epitome of the power-ballad. And Slash’s guitar solo is one of the best of all-time.
Oh, and good choice!
One of the first songs in the semi-modern (rock-and-roll and beyond) era to do this actually got a fair amount of attention at the time for doing so, because it was unusual: Buffalo Springfield’s “Bluebird”, which retained the melody line but suddenly paused as if the song was over, does some strums, then comes back with a banjo and resumes the song, yet with the timing and rhythm stretched out (opposite of double-time… half-timing?), practically sounding like an Appalachian/country song for the last half-verse.
At about half the distance from then to now, Yes did a somewhat similar thing with “And You and I” — although the tempo isn’t really modified, the instruments have changed and the same melody comes back with the phrasing and beats broken up differently (shorter, more rapid phrases, more acoustic) for a rather different feel than the long sweeping first-verse section.
Led Zeppelin’s Bring It On Home. The first 1:45 is a laid back bluesy melody. The next 2:07 kicks into a standard hard rocking Zep song. The final 0:30 goes back to the bluesy stuff from the beginning. It’s like they stuck a Zep song in the middle of a traditional blues song.
Early metal, not anything modern.
N.I.B. is questionable–you could argue that the bass solo is its own song, as both were included in a medley on Black Sabbath’s first album.
There’s a Nine Inch Nails song I thought of when I saw this thread. I think it’s called “March of the Pigs.”
Come Sail Away starts off slow, with light instrumental, and then changes to power chords… Styx did that a lot, actually.
Yep, like with “Renegade”. “Hey Jude” was mentioned, but also “Hello Goodbye” has a similar pattern.
And how about “I’m Your Captain”? And maybe “Fairytale of New York” a little bit.
“Crown of Creation” - Jefferson Airplane (finale is distinctly slower and moodier than the basis of the song)
“That’s it for the Other One” - Grateful Dead (“Anthem of the Sun” version)
“Carry On” - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
“Good Vibrations” - the Beach Boys