Great artists rarely adhere strictly to formulas.
And sometimes, a true icon veers so wildly off-course that the result is shocking, bizarre, or utterly brilliant. These are the tracks that sound nothing like the albums they belong to, providing a fascinating –and sometimes frustrating – glimpse into the chaotic edges of genius.
1. Led Zeppelin: 'The Crunge' (1973)
1973's Houses of the Holy saw Led Zeppelin embracing a more eclectic soundworld than the more straight-up classic rock sounds of its monumental predecessor, IV. And things reached a peak of adventurousness with 'The Crunge', Zep's odd, and often misunderstood, attempt at a funk workout. The track is deliberately built around a confusing, shifting time signature and a clumsy groove, seemingly intended to mock the slickness of contemporary funk.
Robert Plant’s shout-outs to James Brown are explicit, but the delivery is awkward and rhythmically off-kilter, punctuated by John Bonham's complex but disjointed drumming. 'The Crunge' is Led Zep's outlier because it sounds purposefully amateurish and musically difficult, contrasting sharply with their usual mythological, blues-rock bombast.
2. Guns N' Roses: 'My World' (1991)
'My World' is the startling, bizarre closing track on Use Your Illusion II. It is a jarring, industrial, and synthesizer-heavy noise collage primarily led by Axl Rose. It features a throbbing electronic beat, dense layers of sampled noise, and distorted, almost whispered vocals that sound like a relic from a Nine Inch Nails album, not a G N’ R record.
The band’s signature blues-rock guitar work is completely absent. It's an aggressive, confusing industrial detour that baffled fans and critics, and remains the band’s most sonically isolated and uncharacteristic track.
3. Gentle Giant: 'Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It' (1977)
Gentle Giant were at the vanguard of complex, intricate progressive rock for a few glorious years in the early 1970s. But when 1977, the Year of Punk, comes around, what do we find them doing? This jarring anomaly, that's what. Taken from their ninth album, 'Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It' (see what they've done there?) sees the Gents having a go at the genre that was sweeping all before it that year.
A concise, aggressive punk/new wave pastiche, it's a witty riposte to all the punks and critics who, at the time of this musical Ground Zero, were labelling the likes of Gentle Giant, Yes and Pink Floyd 'dinosaurs'. While some band members later viewed it as embarrassing, its raw energy proves Gentle Giant's musicianship could nail any style. It's more of a self-aware pastiche than a serious conversion, and its quality remains a divisive point among fans.
4. Bob Dylan: 'Wiggle Wiggle' (1990)
Appearing on the confusingly uneven album Under the Red Sky, 'Wiggle Wiggle' stands out in Bob Dylan’s vast catalogue for its sheer, baffling simplicity. It is an intentionally child-like nursery rhyme/blues shuffle featuring completely nonsensical and deliberately simplistic lyrics.
In a career defined by poetic depth, dense imagery, and profound seriousness, 'Wiggle Wiggle' is a head-scratching outlier. It sounds like a joke – a musical 'whatever' shrug of the shoulders. And it baffled critics and fans who couldn't reconcile the whimsical, throwaway nature of the song with the monumental talent of its creator.
5. The Who: 'Boris the Spider' (1966)
The second track from their second album A Quick One (or Happy Jack in the US), 'Boris the Spider' is a delightful, but jarring anomaly in The Who's early work. The song was both written and sung by bassist John Entwistle (a rare event, as Pete Townshend handled most writing and Roger Daltrey most vocals).
It’s a dark, mock-horror, growling novelty track, delivered in a deep, exaggerated voice, complete with spooky sound effects and an intentionally lumbering bass rhythm. As such, 'Boris the Spider' stands out dramatically from The Who’s typical mod-rock anthems and later rock-opera narratives, existing as a singular, macabre piece of bassist-driven fun.
6. Paul McCartney: 'Darkroom' (1980)
From the highly experimental album McCartney II, 'Darkroom' is a testament to Paul McCartney's post-Wings, DIY weirdness. The track is built on a bizarre, synthetic, and repetitive electronic drone that sounds deeply alien within his catalogue of melodic pop. McCartney manipulates his vocals into a distorted, minimalist mutter, repeating phrases over a machine-like beat.
It’s an unusual, largely instrumental piece that shows him shedding the melodic sheen of his past to explore the burgeoning sounds of synthpop, industrial repetition and the New Wave. It remains a baffling and fascinating curio, far removed from Macca's more mainstream work.
7. Eagles: 'The Disco Strangler'
Eagles go disco!
Known for their country-rock and melodic soft-rock, the band took some sharp left turns with 1979's The Long Run, the last studio album from the band's original incarnation. There was 'I Can't Tell You Why', which dipped into smooth R&B and blue-eyed soul.
Stranger than that, though, was 'The Disco Strangler', in which the 1970s' ultimate soft-rock band dove into the pulsating disco beat that was dominating the decade's end. The track’s driving bassline and prominent keyboard syncopation are a shocking departure, revealing an unexpected, and brief, flirtation with the era's dance-floor sound.
8. Pink Floyd: 'Corporal Clegg' (1968)
Pink Floyd's sophomore LP A Saucerful of Secrets sees them forsaking much of the three-minute psychedelic whimsy of their Syd Barrett-dominated debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and plunging deeper into longform psychedelia and space rock. The anomaly here (and to be frank, the outright anomaly in the band’s entire catalogue) is the strange, daft 'Corporal Clegg'.
The track, dealing with a soldier who loses his leg in the war, has a surreal, music-hall/vaudeville tone that owes little to the expansive psychedelia that preceded it or the epic progressive rock that followed. It features a jaunty, almost cartoonish brass band arrangement and is one of the very few tracks where drummer Nick Mason takes lead vocals (a novelty in itself).
A whimsical detour into the absurd, famously crowned with a David Gilmour solo on the kazoo, 'Corporal Clegg' feels dramatically out of place on Saucerful, and yet is something of a leftfield treasure in the Floyd discography. Here it is in all its live glory:
9. David Bowie: 'Fame' (1975)
Arguably the strangest outlier in David Bowie's imperial 1970s run, 'Fame' represents a radical sonic departure forged through spontaneous collaboration, not his usual complex, self-directed concepts. The track is a highly minimalist, abrasive funk groove – a stark contrast to both the melodic glam of Bowie's recent past, and the atmospheric European electronic sounds that would soon follow.
Crucially, it was built not by Bowie alone, but primarily from a spontaneous guitar riff by Carlos Alomar and the vocal input of John Lennon. This resulted in a raw, aggressive sound defined by repetitive rhythm and cynical lyrics that directly attacked the machinery of stardom. It was a massive hit, yet its stripped-down, groove-centric style makes it an anomaly that Bowie rarely, if ever, revisited.
10. The Velvet Underground: 'The Gift' (1968)
The Velvet Underground’s second LP White Light/White Heat is a strange but gripping masterpiece, whose distortion and dark atmospheres had a huge impact on punk rock, shoegaze, and noise rock. Its strangest moment is the nigh-eight-minute track 'The Gift', which is not really a song at all but a brilliant, strange piece of conceptual art. It consists of a darkly comic short story about a man trying to send himself to his distant girlfriend inside a shipping box.
The narrative is read aloud in deadpan voice by John Cale in one speaker channel, while the other channel plays a chaotic, searingly abrasive instrumental jam that acts as the sound of the world outside the box. It’s a pure narrative experiment and a bizarre, dual-channel listening experience.
11. The Rolling Stones: 'Far Away Eyes' (1978)
From 1978's funk- and disco-tinged Some Girls, 'Far Away Eyes' is a baffling outlier in the Stones’ gritty, urban blues catalogue. It’s a straight-up country gospel pastiche featuring Mick Jagger delivering the entire vocal in a high, intentionally exaggerated Southern Baptist preacher drawl. The song's instrumentation – steel guitar, simple piano – is pure Bakersfield country, complete with references to truck stops and religious radio.
This complete stylistic and vocal shift into Americana kitsch makes it a surprisingly tender and deeply strange detour from the disco-influenced rock that defined much of the rest of the album. The video is features Jagger in exuberant form, showing off his best Tennessee drawl.
12. Fleetwood Mac: 'Sisters of the Moon' (1979)
While Stevie Nicks contributed many gothic, ethereal tracks to the Fleetwood Mac discography, 'Sisters of the Moon' from 1978's Tusk stands out for its sheer, unbridled, aggressive rock intensity. It is a rare, raw, and dark Nicks-led hard-rock track that completely departs from the smooth pop structures of the Rumours era.
Driven by a relentless, heavy Lindsey Buckingham riff and Nicks’ snarled, almost frantic vocal delivery, the track borders at times on heavy metal – not a genre the band flirted with elsewhere! Its unexpected aggression and lack of any pop polish make it a glaring, exhilarating anomaly on an album known for its experimental, yet generally lighter, tone.
13. Steely Dan: 'East St. Louis Toodle-Oo' (1974)
Steely Dan are famous for their meticulous, complex jazz-rock compositions and sardonic lyrics. However, 'East St. Louis Toodle-Oo' from Pretzel Logic is a complete outlier: an instrumental cover of a Duke Ellington classic from 1927. The track features no lyrics and none of that typical, barbed Steely Dan wit.
Instead, what we have here is a pretty faithful, if slightly skewed, recreation of the original jazz arrangement, showcasing their technical skill but diverting entirely from their primary identity as subversive songwriters. It stands as a unique tribute and a strangely pure, retro exercise in a catalogue defined by forward-thinking studio techniques.
14. U2: 'The Wanderer' (1993)
U2 have sent out a few stylistic curveballs across their 47+-year-career, but even among them 'The Wanderer', from 1993's Zooropa album, stands out. For one thing, those near-ever-present Bono vocals are sacrificed for a guest slot from iconic country musician Johnny Cash, who delivers a stark, spoken-word narrative over a minimalist, industrial electronic soundscape.
This jarring juxtaposition – the 'Man in Black' preaching apocalypse and doubt against a futuristic, synthesized backdrop – perfectly encapsulates the album's chaotic, media-saturated themes. It functions less as a traditional song and more as an ominous, final broadcast, leaving listeners with a sense of desolate, uncertain strangeness.
15. The Beatles: 'Revolution 9' (1968)
'Revolution 9' is arguably the most famous and baffling outlier in rock history. An eight-minute-plus avant-garde musique concrète piece, it is a sound collage assembled primarily by John Lennon and Yoko Ono using tape loops, effects, and sampled orchestral pieces.
Even amongst the none-more-eclectic soundscapes of The White Album, it is a total and deliberate rejection of pop structure, melody, and rock instrumentation, featuring jarring, repeated vocal phrases and chaotic noise. Its purpose was purely experimental, serving as a jarring detour that challenged listeners and alienated many, but solidified The Beatles' willingness to embrace the furthest fringes of modern art.
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