Though an album where every song is pretty much the same won't be very good (unless you're the Ramones), the songs on an album should at least feel like it they all came from the same place. These nine songs, however, sound like they were placed on the wrong album entirely. Here are nine great songs that sound out of place on their albums.
1. Portishead - "Deep Water" (2008)
While Portishead stuck to a great trip-hop formula for its first two albums, by its third album the band had more or less abandoned trip-hop in favor of industrial and psychedelic music. However, one track from Third sounds unlike any other Portishead song: the brief ukulele ballad "Deep Water," which sounds like Zooey Deschanel snuck into the studio during a lunch break and recorded one of her own songs for the album.
2. Beirut - "Scenic World" (2006)
After a visit to Eastern Europe when he was 17, Zach Condon began writing Balkan-inspired folk music under the name Beirut, whose debut album Gulag Orkestar is a masterpiece. While most of the album was recorded with horns, accordions, and ukuleles, one song, "Scenic World," sounds like a holdover from Condon's early electronic MIDI-pop recordings. Condon would go on to record an entirely acoustic version of the song for his Lon Gisland EP.
3. Belle & Sebastian - "Electronic Renaissance" (1996)
Belle & Sebastian's first three albums sound like a cross between Simon & Garfunkel and the Smiths, which doesn't exactly leave much room for synth-pop, but the band still found five minutes for the self-explanatory "Electronic Renaissance" on its debut album Tigermilk.
4. Dinosaur Jr. - "Poledo" (1987)
The tracklisting for Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All Over Me is an excellent representation of the tensions within the band at the time. Guitarist J. Mascis wrote tracks one through seven, leaving the last two tracks for songs written by bassist Lou Barlow, making it seem like they were tacked on at the end of the "actual" album. "Lose" is similar enough to the other songs on the album, but "Poledo" seems more like one of Barlow's weird, folky Sebadoh songs than a Dinosaur Jr. song.
5. LCD Soundsystem - "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down" (2007)
Nearly every single one of LCD Soundsystem's songs is a propulsive dance-rock classic, but the Sound of Silver album brings the party down for a couple of minutes with its final track, the bitter ballad, "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down." This is probably the only LCD Soundsystem song you can't dance to.
6. Nirvana - "About A Girl" (1989)
Nirvana was basically a sludge metal band when it started out, but the only real hint towards Kurt Cobain's pop instincts on Nirvana's first album Bleach was the sweetly melodic "About A Girl," the only song from the album they were able to translate to MTV Unplugged.
7. PJ Harvey - "Man-Size Sextet" (1993)
The inclusion of "Man-Size Sextet" on PJ Harvey's Rid of Me is a little bizarre. Not only does it sound nothing like the rest of the album (there's a string section replacing Harvey's fuzz-guitar), it's not even an original song: it's another rendition of "Man-Size," which appears just four tracks later.
8. Primal Scream - "Damaged" (1991)
In 1991, Primal Scream reinvented itself as the acid house version of the Rolling Stones with its album Screamadelica, but the only track on the album that's neither danceable nor psychedelic is the ballad "Damaged," which sounds like a deep cut from Exile On Main St.
9. The Velvet Underground - "Here She Comes Now" (1968)
The Velvet Underground's second album White Light/White Heat was the harshest and most experimental the band ever made, but for just two of its forty minutes, Lou Reed steps off his fuzz box to give us the dreamy "Here She Comes Now," which sounds like it belong on the band's gentle 1969 album instead of this one.
© 2024 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
