Well, Blondie’s song “Rapture” is practically the poster child for songs that take a dramatic turn in an unexpected direction. One moment you’re listening to this almost ethereal torch song sort of thing and two minutes later it’s a rap song about creatures from Mars that eat cars.
Harry Chapin’s “Taxi” has that falsetto part in the middle (“Baby’s so high, that she’s skying: Yes she’s flying, afraid to fall”)
Nights. Nights nights nights nights. It’s about bedsheets, not broadswords.
Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” I feel, has a weird middle. The song has one beat and it’s repetitive and you can dance to it, then there’s some sort of change. It’s right at 2 minutes.
Abso-friggin-lutely!
Sweet’s “Love is Like Oxygen” has that mandolin-sounding interlude in the middle.
Whitesnake’s “Still of the Night” features a violin-sounding keyboard solo sandwiched by classic 80s hard rock.
Beatles’ I Call Your Name has a Ska instrumental break.
Rick Wakeman’s Merlin from Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table completely changes character and style in the middle (and again at the very end):
One of the reasons I said “certain versions of…” in the OP is that I couldn’t find a youtube version of the one I mean. It’s on the version on The Immaculate Collection though.
BYOB by System of a Down, which is a wild song in the first place, has that “blast off it’s party time” part in the middle that sounds different from the rest of the song.
(This isn’t quite what the OP wants, because it’s not the middle of the song that changes, just the ending: )
Layla by Eric Clapton. It’s really 2 separate songs…the piano ending is a total disconnect from the guitar beginning.
Led Zeppelin’s Fool in the Rain
“Question” by the Moody Blues.
How about “Say You Say Me” by Lionel Ritchie? In the middle part is suddenly changes, picks up pace and sounds as if something fell out the sky.
Some of the ones mentioned are good examples. Been busy but still trying to think of some others, but Ritchie is the one I can think of now.
I don’t know about the middle, but several Guns n Roses songs seem to change into a completely different song at the end.
I Think I Love You by (ahem) the Partridge Family.
After the rarely heard harpsichord break, you have what appears to be the first draft of a middle eighth that feels more like that distinct clunking sound you get when you grind the gears by shifting wrong. It lasts only a few seconds before turning back to the more upbeat chorus but leaves the listener with the “What the hell was that about?”
Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but the most awesome bridges are:
Moonlight Seems Right, by Starbuck
Pancho and Lefty by Nelson and Haggard.
And, the first appearance of an orchestral string section in a rock song, in There Goes My Baby by the Drifters.
This is extremely common in progressive rock. One of the more bizarre examples would be Jethro Tull’s 45-minute “A Passion Play”, which in the middle segues into “The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles”.
Cool. Thanks.
I didn’t know what a bridge was until, as a middle-aged matron, I was rewatching Who Framed Roger Rabbit with a friend who laughed where I wasn’t expecting it. She had to explain that they’d made a joke about a bridge and then she had to explain what a music bridge was.
It wasn’t funny then, but it was amusing the next time I watched, years later.
You know, when I typed it I first wrote “Nights”. Then as I was about to hit ‘submit’ I looked at it and thought “oops, typo” and changed it to Knights. I’m really not sure why.
Agreed. I’ve always thought that bridge didn’t work in the song. I can’t listen to the link at work, but I assume we’re referring to the same section.