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Songs with big changups

The New Neo Posted on by

I saw the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” recently—more about that in another post—which started me thinking about the phenomenon of rock songs that start one way and then go off in a very different direction. I don’t just mean a traditional bridge. I mean a change that’s much longer and more complex.

The song “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a classic of the genre. It’s long—as such songs tend to be—to make room for all the changes. It’s actually three songs in one: a mournful and tormented ballad by a killer, a kind of nonsense operetta-style middle, a more typical rock third part, and then a return to the first section for the finale. I assume you’re familiar with it, but if you’re not (or just to refresh your memory), here it is:

Off the top of my head I can only think of three more songs in that category, although I’m pretty certain there are more, perhaps even many more. Here’s my next one, “Layla.” It has only two parts, and I have to say that I only like the first part. The second part seems insipid to me, but the first is great. Your mileage may differ:

Then we have “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead. I like its first part well enough, although the whinyness of singer Thom Yorke’s voice gets to me after a while. The second part is dreadful to me, like fingernails on a blackboard. The third—or “rain down”—part is quite lovely and even at times moving, despite that whinyness again, and in the end we come back to what amounts to a reprise of something like the off-putting part two:

I had never looked that song up before, but when I did, I found that it was in part inspired by Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide books (minus their light and amusing tone, I’d say).

And the song’s third part of which I’m so fond? This is its genesis:

The harmonies form a looped chord progression resembling a Baroque passacaglia, with the tonality split between C minor and D minor. This section uses multi-tracked, choral vocal arrangement…

Hmmm, maybe it’s that Bach strain I’m responding to, without even realizing it.

Lastly we have “A Day In the Life” by the Beatles. I’m not at all sure it qualifies, though. It’s really just a first part that’s slow, a second part that’s different, and a third part that’s just the first part sung peppier, plus some complex transition sounds with ascending pitch:

Maybe you can suggest more of them.

Comments

Songs with big changups — 115 Comments

  1. A couple more that come to mind:

    ‘Band On The Run’ by Paul McCartney. He also did a cool thing on that album where the first song is the title track ‘Band On The Run’ and the last is ‘Nineteen Hundred Eight Four’ (a really cool song also) and it closes out with a snippet of ‘Band On The Run’ like it’s closing the loop of the album. Great album. The best post Beatles album of any of them in my opinion.

    ‘Closer To Home’ by Grand Funk Railroad that some call ‘I’m Your Captain’. It’s ten minutes long and can be taken literally or or as much deeper meditation.

  2. And then there’s that little-known, practically forgotten gem called, um, “Stairway to Heaven”….

  4. OlderandWheezier,

    Yes on that album they also had ‘Picasso’s Last Words’ which is all over the place and intersperses a bit of ‘Jet’ in the middle along with the ‘ho hey ho’ bit from ‘Mrs. Vanderbilt’

  7. I believe I once read that the middle section in “A Day in the Life” was Harrison, and the first part/last part was Lennon/McCartney (though it sounds like pure Lennon to me now).

    BTW, I second all the raves about Band on the Run, both the album and the song.

  9. I think the beginning newspaper headlines were Lennon and the last part where McCartney sings about running a comb through his hair was him. It might have been a combination of a couple of different songs into one. Also think they got the big piano sound by bringing four pianos into studio and all of them hitting key at once then looping it to last longer than it would really last.

  10. There’s the song Reba by the band Phish which has three or four parts depending on whether or not they do the reprise with the whistling. I’d be shocked if any readers here have heard the song although I imagine some have at least heard of the band. They’re not exactly mainstream although one of the biggest concert draws.

  13. An offshoot of this is slow/fast/slow tempo changes. Bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who did a lot of this and it became one of the defining features of a lot of grunge rock best personified by ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana.

  14. Neat.

    Was a big Clapton fan. Always hated Layla, though I had the relevant album. And anything by Queen sucked. I’d just as soon be tied to a chair and forced to listen to Elton John, or have my motorcycle knocked over in the parking lot.

    So “A Day in The Life” is the only one I can think of that I have listened to enough to affirm it as both THE perfect paradigm case and a personally appreciated performance.

    You are talking about virtually two or more songs being melded in one performance. And that is pretty unusual in rock. More usual deviations from formula are performances with tempo change ups, or extended build ups, and the extended bridges you have mentioned; sometimes with relatively distinct music lines.

    In the “sort of” category, although the difference in some may be mainly in drive and tempo:

    CSN, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMJug2iz3NA

    Moody Blues, “Tuesday Afternoon”, almost qualifies, as does “Question”.

    Home and Away, by Humble Pie … mostly consisting of an extended run about two thirds of the way through. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG8VhDzP_LE

    Griffin is right that Grand Funk almost qualifies. Meislin’s example is closer to mine as a kind of “almost there”.

    And then, Green Grass and High Tides … actually, just a slowish build up to an extended, manic blow-it-all-out Southern-Rock-crescendo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R82OM5tzcrk It doesn’t really qualify but I like it. Ha.

  17. Outside of experimental music — and it could be argued “A Day in the Life” is experimental — I can’t think of any other big changeup songs and I’m not sure of the ones suggested.

    From the first “Layla” sounded to me like two different songs stapled together. If vinyl record had had a band between them, who would have known? Over time I came to appreciate the combination, but it still didn’t seem like the second part was essential to the first part of”Layla.”

    How about the Beatles’ “Medley” from “Abbey Road”? That’s eight distinct short songs flowing from one to the next and packaged together as a unit.

    “Bohemian Rhapsody” distills a sort of opera into six minutes, so naturally it has changeups. But that would be true of any of the ambitious rock symphony attempts (Moody Blues, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, the Who, and even Cat Stevens’ “Foreigner Suite”) from those progressive days.

    “Paranoid Android” has sections but are they that distinct they are big changeups? What about Yes’s “Roundabout”?

    I’d certainly debate “Stairway to Heaven.” “Stairway” moves through amazing changes: starts folk, stays folk, picks up speed, builds to a guitar god climax of dazzling arpeggios, then fades back to the folk, but it’s still basically the same song throughout.

  20. I am a big fan of tempo-change/bridge type songs. The mixed types are best examples of those. The ballad types (American Pie, Stairway) all tell a tale. Frampton’s ‘Do You Feel’ is just a variation. Harder to do with JUST music… Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s ‘Piano Concerto #1’ and Pablo Cruise’s ‘Zero to 60 in 5’ is a good change-up. https://youtu.be/NP-VN8V7rjg

  21. On the Doors Absolutely Live album, “The Celebration of the Lizard” actually does include 3 min. portions that are “separate songs” on their Waiting for the Sun album.

    Similarly, the “Mr. Mojo Risin” extended bridge (in LA Woman) is almost a different song (Jim did like anagrams).

    Band on the Run – great album. Better than Ram. Which had Paul’s first gold record post-John, and a good example of this genre:
    Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

    I remember being at Boy Scout camp and hearing it and singing it, or trying to (no internet lyrics!)

  22. An example of the slow/fast/slow tempo changes I mentioned earlier is ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ from the the ‘Who’s Next’ album by The Who. It starts out all slow and contemplative with ‘no one knows what’s like to be the bad man, the sad man’ for about two minutes then the band kicks in with anger only to slow back down at the end. Great song. Unbelievably great album. At that point in time maybe the perfect rock band. Great songwriting, one of the best frontmen at his vocal peak, one of the best bassists, and the perfect drummer for their style.

  23. Stairway to Heaven is an obvious choice, and predates Bohemian R.

    I really liked In the Presence of the Lord by Blind Faith <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=294&v=98XqT4kBWT4"here. That’s a live version, that I don’t like as well as the album from 1969. The changeup is faster in the original. It’s Eric Clapton again.

    I ran into a guy that had some of the original old 78 rpm record player hardware, and he claimed that the standard playing time on a side was maybe 5 min., and that became the standard max. playing length for a song on top-40 AM radio long after 78’s died out. These songs we’re talking about are generally longer songs done by artists interested in doing something interesting and innovative.

    The Court of the Crimson King. It doesn’t have big tempo change, but that extended flute solo in the middle is quite different than the rest.

    huxley’s got my vibe. Roundabout for sure. I believe the title song Aqualung by Jethro Tull is one too.

    Here’s one that stays under 5 min. It’s The Trees by Rush. The lyrics are about political unrest leading to radical egalitarianism. Who’d a thunk it? The tempo doesn’t change greatly in that one either.

  24. Yes (the band)–the Your Move/Seen All Good People track. Only two parts, but if Layla qualifies.

    There must be a good many other examples in the ’70s prog genre but I can’t think of any offhand.

    The Incredible String Band, a sort of psychedelic folk group with a small but extremely devoted following, did a lot of this kind of thing. I’m one of that small following, along with former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. They’re a little too weird for most people though.

  25. And You And I by Yes.
    The live video that u can get on iTunes is 10 times better than the original from the mid 70’s.

  28. Many of Bob Weir’s songs with the Grateful Dead are like that. Popular favorite “ Sugar Magnolia” and powerhouse live song “Throwing Stones.”

  29. Barry Meislin beat me to “Stairway to Heaven”, which was the first one I thought of as soon as you explained the theme.

  30. There’s likely a bunch from Yes. Freebird is a huge hit.

    I stumbled across this other King Crimson song, 21st Century Schizoid Man. The progression is: slow intro, frenetic fast, breaks down into jazz solos, back to frenetic fast, and the slow finale. It’s interesting the original slow beat is really maintained throughout, if you can detect it.

    I’m sure most people will hate that song, and you couldn’t make money with it then or now. I miss that level of originality.

  31. Many old Genesis songs (up til 1974)……….Suppers Ready and Firth of Fifth are 2 good ones to start off with.

    Tull had a few too. My favorites would be Baker St. Muse and Minstrel in the Gallery. Thick as a Brick is a whole album of one song with many changes, as is Passion Play.

    and then theres 2112 by Rush.

    But start off with the Genesis………..those are 2 obscure (for many) classics. And then check out the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway Album……….Their best.

    Genesis was a band that apparently I didnt appreciate when younger. I’m glad I didnt, as most of it was new to me and it has aged well and now its like they just came out.

    Now it feels like trivia night, and I want to come up with more.

  33. “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” and several other Billy Joel songs involve shifts of music and narrator.

  34. “The Soft Parade” by the Doors. They produced others, as Tom Grey mentions above.

    How about “Thick as a Brick” by Jethro Tull? Way more than three changes, but there is a repeating theme.

    These all come from the 60’s and 70’s. Lots of examples from the Prog Rock bands.

  37. “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” – a number one song by Paul McCartney

    “Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In” – a number one song by The Fifth Dimension

    “Batdance” – a number one song by Prince

    “Take Me Out” – Franz Ferdinand

    “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” – Billy Joel

    “Knights of Cydonia” – Muse

  39. McCartney’s big on that: Band on the Run, Venus and Mars, Uncle Albert. Lennon too: Happiness is a Warm Gun, Bungalo Bill, Walrus.

    The prog-rock bands are the ones who really took it to the nth degree, polyphony, strainge chord progressions, hocketing, frequent key change, ELP (Karn Evil 9), Yes (everything, but Relayer is a good choice, Gates of Delirium), Pink Floyd (Money) Gentle Giant (complex even by progrock standards, try Octopus, Proclamation), Patto, Genesis (The Cinema Show, Supper’s Ready), Rush (2112), Kansas, Crack the Sky (Surf City), Queen (Prophet’s Song, Its Late, Innuendo!, March of the Black Queen, Father to Son), 10cc (One Night in Paris), Rundgren, Jethro Tull (Aqualung and the LP length Thick as a Brick and Passion Play) – there are dozens of songs in their respective repertoires that veer all over the place. Hocus Pocus by Focus!

    Pop has fewer examples, but Beach Boys Good Vibrations is notable, Meatloaf (Paradise by the Dashboard Light 2 Out of Three Ain’t Bad) and many other of Jim Steinman’s opuses.

    Heavy metal got pretty progressive in turn, with Dream Theatre (Octavarium, Dance of Eternity), Queensryche, Extreme, Helloween, even Judas Priest (Sinner, Victim of Changes etc) Maiden’s 10 minute extravaganzas (Rime of the Ancient Mariner, To Tame a Land (based on Dune), Phantom of the Opera, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Hallowed be thy Name) Black Sabbath (mostly on Sabotage & SBS: The Writ, The Thrill of it All, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Killing Yourself to Live, Sabbra Cadabra, and later with Dio: Heaven and Hell, Die Young), Slayer’s Raining Blood.

    However, the king of totally switching tempo, feel, key, even genre has to be Zappa, who wrote many mini-symphonies like Mo ‘N Herb’s Vacation, the Nanook suite, The Black Page, And his buddy, Capt. Beefheart’s nearly incomprehensible work, like Frownland

    I think he’s to blame for the spawning of “math rock”, which the entire point is to change tempo and feel constantly, bands like Tricot or Chon are barely coherent as ‘tunes’. Faraquet is one of the better ones.

    But hell, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” changes meter every bar, so this stuff has been going on for a long time.

    But for noteriety, appeal, influence and just iconic greatness, you have to look to Stairway to Heaven and Bohemian Rhapsody.

  40. Proud Mary – Tina and Ike version, of course;
    Let’s Go Crazy-Prince;
    This Beat Goes On-The Kings (how obscure!);
    Funeral for a Friend-Elton John;
    Kiss and Say Goodbye (The Manhattans) and Have You Seen Her (The Chi-Lites) – the talking intro songs;
    Feeling That Way-Journey;
    Let Me Take You Home Tonight-Boston.

  42. Kind of a blurry line between beat change songs and changeovers. Also between songs which are basically 2 songs mashed together and changeovers.

  43. Zeppelins “Over the Hills and Far Away”, “Down by the Seaside”
    Lynyrd Synyrds “Freebird”

  45. rock songs that start one way and then go off in a very different direction. I don’t just mean a traditional bridge. I mean a change that’s much longer and more complex.
    I’m imagining a river with streams joining it, and possibly a waterfall.
    Stairway to Heaven “changes”, but more like a big river going thru rapids before a waterfall, rather than such a “very different direction”.

    In a similar way, Crimson and Clover contains various changes to the basic song; then at the end a fitting yet surprising “delta” of splitting into many channels before emptying into the ocean.

    Bohemian Rhapsody (wife and I saw the film last week!) is like a few connecting rivers that join but then split, going in different directions.

    Lots of good memories in the above comments: Yes, Genesis (esp. Lamb), Jethro Tull, Doobies, Billy Joel. (Too late to be first with Good Vibrations)

    An early one with an extended drum solo, which could fit it many rock songs, was the first big “heavy metal” hit – “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” from Iron Butterfly (’68). (Actually played a lot on the radio, in a less than 17 min reduced version). Like many solos, it makes the song take a musical detour, like a looping branch in a river, and while it’s in a different direction for awhile, it then comes back. It’s a bigger direction change than the crescendo buildup of Stairway. (Last year? there was a music post on crescendos that included Stairway).

    For a huge change, listen to the beginning of ELO Eldorado, where the words spoken softly with some music lets you anticipate some kind of change, but only after you hear the change do you know what it will be. First minute is an into to the intro, second minute a huge change, then it goes into a normal rock song — which I’ll listen to now. Thanks again!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKfEU6xerEY

    (YouTube remains best way to go directly to the song I want to hear — is there any alternative good for music? Often don’t need or want the video.)

    Also, while I like this progressive / symphonic rock, including lots of changes and longer solos, it was a reaction against it that led to extremely basic rock – punk rock. Much of which I also like, tho very different.

  47. And yet, you left out one of the biggest sources of what your talking about
    looking at the surface and not the substance and behind scene

    It’s also one of the wittiest films I have seen in ages, with the deadpan Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) getting most of the best lines. Mike Myers also has a hysterical cameo as a foul-mouthed record company executive, although he is almost unrecognisable under a Jeff Lynne-style wig and sunglasses.

    from a post discussing queen

    1) Jeff “produced” John Lennon (and the other Beatles) on “Free As A
    Bird.”
    2) John performed with Elton John on several songs, including “Whatever
    Gets You Through The Night.”
    3) Elton teamed up with George Michael on the remake of “Don’t Let The
    Sun Go Down On Me.”
    4) George Michael performed “Somebody to Love” with the surviving
    members of Queen.
    5) And Queen, of course, is forever linked to Freddie Mercury.

    “Layla” was written about George Harrison’s wife.
    True: In her memoir, Pattie Boyd says Clapton told her the heart-wrenching Derek and the Dominoes love song was written for her. Boyd was Harrison’s wife at the time but later married Clapton.

    The “unplugged” version of “Layla” was a bigger hit than the original.
    True: The original, from 1970?s “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” didn’t do well on the charts until it was rereleased on a Clapton compilation album. In 1972, it hit No. 10 on the Billboard charts. The acoustic version from 1992?s “Unplugged” album, made it to No. 4 and won a Grammy for Best Rock Song (beating out Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”).

    Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ Was Lifted from a 1972 Song by The Hollies

    the air i breath by the hollies
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=MxMuR5Ly4x8
    Creep
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=XFkzRNyygfk

    songs written by jeff lynde
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Songs_written_by_Jeff_Lynne

    he is one of the most influential musicians EVER…
    so much that is timeless, so much that later was derivative
    and so much he did studio work, and his long production list..

    and other than his ELO work, most dont realize what things would not have been, without him.

  48. Another one I like a lot is “Morning Birds 1” by the Throwing Muses, which is sort of two songs for the price of one.

  49. “Stairway to Heaven” isn’t quite as abrupt as “Bohemian Rhapsody” but it uses a very effective technique – starting off kind of slow and romantic and then ending as a real stomper. Other examples are “Free Bird” (many mentions here) and “Try a Little Tenderness” by Otis Redding. “Layla” actually goes the other way.

  50. By my criteria, mere tempo changes don’t count. A great many groups and a great many songs use tempo changes, sometimes extreme ones, in songs that are basically unitary. I’m talking about a much bigger change that amounts to nearly a different song for a fairly large part of the song.

    For example, Dire Staits often uses the technique of extreme tempo changes in very long songs, with long guitar solos in-between. I really like Dire Straits, but that type of song doesn’t fit the sort of thing I’m describing here.

    Not that it matters. You don’t have to stick to my particular criteria.

  51. A lot of songs on the list I’ve never heard of, although I’m reluctant to confess my relative ignorance.

  52. There goes the day – I was going to trim the hedge! Instead I’ll be on itunes downloading forgotten old favorites. Jethro Tull, Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, Uncle Albert. I’m a teenager again!
    Larry Carlton has a great version of Layla – worth listening to.
    But Stairway to Heaven has to be the greatest rock song ever – and I say this as a Beatles fan – I listen to it every week when I lift weights – gets me through!
    I can’t help thinking if we could play it for Beethoven and Mozart they would instantly ‘get it’.

  53. neo on February 24, 2019 at 3:19 pm at 3:19 pm said:

    By my criteria, mere tempo changes don’t count. A great many groups and a great many songs use tempo changes, sometimes extreme ones, in songs that are basically unitary. I’m talking about a much bigger change that amounts to nearly a different song for a fairly large part of the song.
    For example, Dire Staits often uses the technique of extreme tempo changes in very long songs, with long guitar solos in-between. I really like Dire Straits, but that type of song doesn’t fit the sort of thing I’m describing here.
    Not that it matters. You don’t have to stick to my particular criteria.

    Glad I checked back to leave that mea culpa I planned.

    After posting as I did, I had to admit that even given the provisos I’d repeatedly inserted, my examples were, even by my relaxed standards, not really in the same category.

    Did a couple of them glance along the side making at least tangential contact?

    Uhhhh …

    The trouble is that I’m not well enough musically educated to have mastered the concepts, much less the precise vocabulary of musical composition and construction.

    Frankly, you, Neo, could do a dozen blog posts on musical theory and songwriting and not cover half of what we could probably profitably know.

    As I mentioned recently the importance of the circle of 5ths only lately came to my attention. Watching the bonus features of an old movie even more recently, I came across a reference to popular songs of the 1930s being written in an A-B-A or A-B-A-B format or something like that. Never heard of it.

    Then there are the Verse and Refrain distinctions once extremely common in popular tunes. I recall my Dad and Uncle playing couple of songs and my asking him, “What was that first part before the song?” It didn’t sound like the rest of it, and I had no idea what it was.

    Think, “Stardust” in that regard.

    Then I read recently that Begin the Beguine was big trouble for many bands in the old days because of its unconventional structure.

    Unconventional? I never noticed …

  54. A great thing about neo’s post is it favors prog-rock, so dear to my heart.

    You want wildly different stuff jammed together? You got it!

  55. …and other than his ELO work, most dont realize what things would not have been, without [Jeff Lynne].

    artfldgr: Not to mention the Traveling Wilburys, which came out of Lynne and George Harrison working together on Harrison’s “Cloud Nine.”

    Love the Wilburys. Sadly, they don’t provide any big changeup songs however.

  56. A fun fact about Patti Boyd, of Layla/Harrison/Clapton fame, is she was the blond schoolgirl you see Paul McCartney flirting with on the train less than ten minutes into “A Hard Day’s Night.”

    Which, indeed, is where Boyd and Harrison met.

  57. There are a few Led Zeppelin tunes that do this, with Stairway to Heaven being the most obvious. ….It was a thing in the late 60’s to late 70’s rock songs that were over 4 minutes in length. There’s probably a few Smashing Pumpkins songs that do this off of Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, although none pop into my head right now. You may like Rick Beatto’s What Makes this Song so Great series on YouTube.

  58. I can’t hear the second part of Layla without thinking about some kids finding a couple of dead bodies in a pink cadillac, some more bodies in a trash dumpster and another body frozen stiff in a meat truck. Oh, yeah and someone else getting wacked for his overreaction to a little friendly ribbing about a shine box.

  59. I’m with huxley and loved prog-rock, and also jazz fusion (Return to Forever, Weather Report). docweasel makes the point that Frank Zappa, or is it Capt. Beefheart, that created the dead-end of math-rock.

    I was thinking about some of the early prog-rockers that crossed over into mass-market ballads and pop music. Neil Schon picked up Steve Perry and became Journey; Tommy Shaw became Styx; Genesis lost Peter Gabriele and became Phil Collins the crooner.

    These people all started with a love of music and finally figured out to become extremely wealthy. I’m sure many of their younger successors said to themselves, let’s just cut directly to the wealthy phase. I recall there was a point where a couple of Phil Collins songs were being beaten to death on the radio and he actually did an interview and apologized to the radio listening public for destroying the enjoyability of radio.

  60. It occurs to me that there was a time when an album was really one long song with several tempo and melody changes. Thick As A Brick is an easy example because there are not pauses between pieces. Aqualung is a better example of what I’m suggesting. The Eagles Desperado album is another, it is thematically consistent and linear. The songs tell a story and are musically sympathetic.

  64. Molly Brown,

    I often wonder what it would be like to bring Mozart or Beethoven (but mostly Mozart) through time and learn what he thought of the music that has been created since. I’m pretty sure something like, “Stairway to Heaven” would be almost unrecognizable to him. I think he would equate to noise, rather than music.

  65. DNW,

    I think you mean, “vamp,” not “verse and refrain.”
    Verse refrain is basically the same as A-A-B-A.

    Many songs written in the 1890s, 1900s, 10s, 20s, 30s and 40s had intros, or vamps and very few of them are sung now, or even known.

    “Night and Day” by Cole Porter is one of few songs I can think of that is always sung with the intro.

  66. I think you all nailed it. In the early days of album rock many bands set out to connect an album side to take advantage of the creativity the format allowed. They were no longer limited to one side of a 45. I think that’s why most of these examples come from that era.

    As someone mentioned, if you read the liner notes to “Thick as a Brick” you’ll see that Ian Anderson and his mates were doing exactly that. Todd Rundgren’s, “Something/Anything” is another example. Reading the liner notes for it one could almost argue all 4 sides are one, continuous idea that is many, very different songs. Hard to say where something like that differs specifically from something like the Beatles, “Day in the Life,” or a group like Yes or Rush, as already pointed out by others.

    Count me in the camp that finds both parts of “Layla” akin to nails on a chalkboard, along with the interminable coda of “Hey Jude.”

    I agree that the Doors’, “Soft Parade” fits Neo’s definition.

  70. The Who’s “Baba O’Riley?”
    Not really two, separate songs, but the last few minutes are akin to an Irish reel talked on to a slow, rock song about teen-age apathy.

    And, to my previous point about album rock, doesn’t the Who’s, “Quadrophenia” qualify? The only real way it differs from, “Day in the Life” is it’s longer and has more changes, which we think of as unique songs, but there all a continuation of the protagonist’s day.

    And, speaking of the Who, “Tommy” also mainly differs from, “Bohemian Rhapsody” in length, but not concept (or changing melodies and themes). “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a mini-opera, “Tommy” is an actual opera.

  71. … and Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears did that around the same time.

    Read this description from wikipedia. Chicago considered it one song, and even once recorded it as a single track. (all of the below is an excerpt from wikipedia and not my words)

    “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon” (sic), also known as “The Ballet” and “Make Me Smile Medley”, is a nearly thirteen-minute song cycle/suite from Chicago’s 1970 album Chicago (also called Chicago II), was the group’s first attempt at a long-format multi-part work.

    It was composed by James Pankow, who got the inspiration to write the “Ballet” from his love of long classical music song cycles. According to a May 2018 interview with the Charleston Gazette-Mail, the songs were written in attempt to win back his ex-fiance, Terry Heisler, who was at the time attending West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, West Virginia.[1]

    “Ballet” takes up three-quarters of side two of Chicago and consists of seven tracks, three of which are instrumentals:

    “Make Me Smile” (Lead vocals by Terry Kath)
    “So Much to Say, So Much to Give” (Lead vocals by Robert Lamm)
    “Anxiety’s Moment” (Instrumental)
    “West Virginia Fantasies” (Instrumental)
    “Colour My World” (Vocals by Terry Kath)
    “To Be Free” (Instrumental)
    “Now More Than Ever” (Lead vocals by Terry Kath)
    The final track, “Now More Than Ever,” is a single-verse reprise of the suite’s opening song, “Make Me Smile.” The vocal songs within the suite can be viewed as telling the story of a man searching for a far away lost love and attempting to rekindle the love they had shared. Two of these songs reached the top ten on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100: a single edit of “Make Me Smile (/Now More Than Ever)” (#9, 1970) and “Colour My World” (#7, 1971).

    The instrumental movement “West Virginia Fantasies” incorporates instrumental counterpoint extensively between the horns, guitar, and keyboards, exemplifying Chicago’s skill at composing and arranging complex pieces.

    The suite was recorded as a single track, titled “The Ballet,” on their album Chicago XXVI: Live in Concert in 1999. The version on the 2005 DVD Chicago & Earth, Wind & Fire — Live at the Greek Theatre is called “Make Me Smile Medley,” named after the suite’s opening song.

  72. And what about situations like Z.Z. Top’s, Tres Hombres where “Waitin’ for the Bus” and “Jesus Just Left Chicago” have no gap, but are often played as separate songs by radio djs?

    Are (is?) Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” and “Gypsy Queen” two separate songs. That doesn’t seem to be what he intended.

  74. And, to my previous point about album rock, doesn’t the Who’s, “Quadrophenia” qualify? The only real way it differs from, “Day in the Life” is it’s longer and has more changes, which we think of as unique songs, but there all a continuation of the protagonist’s day.

    Rufus T. Firefly: Album rock. Exactly.

    Aside from the punk and disco regressions to the mean, I think the CD killed off album rock. The CD format was 74+ minutes long — about twice the length of an vinyl album. Who besides Frank Zappa or Prince could fill that much time with quality material on a regular basis?

    Springsteen once spoke lovingly of the “four corners” of the vinyl album — the first song, the last song on the first side, the first song on the second side and the last song. Which made sense, given the mechanics of playing a vinyl album.

    With CDs the four corners disappeared and because hardly anyone could put out over an hour of strong music each outing, it made little sense to think of a CD as a coherent whole. So musicians would salt their best songs into the first three or four slots then let the CD trail off into second-rate filler.

    BTW, good call on Chicago II. Their first album, “Chicago Transit Authority,” was similarly ambitious. Geez, that chant, “The whole world is watching” (from the 1968 Democratic Convention) merge into their jazzy horns still chills me.

  75. huxley,

    I agree with all you wrote and good call out with Springsteen. All of his pre-CD era albums had multi-song themes that carried through several, often very different songs.

    The physical size and nature of albums allowed for an element of creativity that no other form has surpassed. Not only could artists explore a theme across multiple songs, or an entire album; the album sleeve, liner notes and cover added a prose and visual art palette to the medium. Some of the sleeves and liner notes were as interesting as the music and some album covers were stand alone works of art, unto themselves. And some performers blended all the elements, songs, sides, sleeves, liner notes and cover; into one, complete thematic work of art.

    Has almost nothing to do with this topic, but it’s a good point to praise comedian Phil Hartman. Besides being an incredibly talented comedian, voice over artist and comedy writer, he designed over 40 album covers, including Steely Dan’s, “Aja.”

  77. And, if anyone is still reading or paying attention at this point, I think what we’ve learned is Queen’s feat as described by neo has been done many, many times by many, many bands; especially around the same time, early to mid-1970s.

    Perhaps where Queen differed was they did it shorter than most. Neo’s correct that it’s a long song (for radio), but it’s not so long as to have DJ’s break it up, as many of our other examples. And, moreso than most of our examples, except for Billy Joel’s, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”; Queen and Joel stuck with one title throughout the changes.

    By the way, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a bit more than 6 minutes long, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” is about 7 and a half. Until the 1960s a band had no hope of getting any air play on anything longer than about 4 minutes (unless it was a jazz station), and even in the ’70s when FM would play album rock and whole sides of albums, it was hard to have a huge hit if there wasn’t also a shortened, AM version.

  78. Huh, Dream Theater and Extreme getting a mention here! I was a DT fan for a good long while. From their oeuvre, “Metropolis Part II” and “A Change of Seasons”, but also the relatively shorter instances of the type under discussion like “Learning to Live” and “Trial of Tears” (and then Myung pretty much stopped writing songs… argh). I particularly liked the last two.

    I like a lot of _III Sides_, but the title track seemed eventually to me to be trying just too hard somehow. Sad to me, though, that the only song of theirs that anyone remembers is “More Than Words”.

  79. Has almost nothing to do with this topic, but it’s a good point to praise comedian Phil Hartman. Besides being an incredibly talented comedian, voice over artist and comedy writer, he designed over 40 album covers, including Steely Dan’s, “Aja.”

    Rufus T. Firefly: Not really! How great.

    Reminds me of the moment when I realized Les Paul, the guitar designer, and Les Paul, the guitarist, were the same guy. A tiny brain explosion.

  81. Eli’s Coming by Laura Nyro. The slow thing at the end is completely unexpected and stunning.

    Glen H: Certainement!

    In fact the entire album is a whole, as we’ve been discussing. “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession” is a forgotten masterpiece of album rock. Also, if you listen closely, of psychedelia and second-wave feminism.

    People remember “Eli’s Coming” and “Stoned Soul Picnic” as great pop songs, and they were, but the whole album was breathtaking. It even included a perfumed lyric sheet — to extend Rufus’s point on the possibilities of the vinyl album package. (Though I don’t remember my lyric sheet having a scent — possibly only in the first runs.)

    Individual songs like “Eli’s Coming” and “Stoned Soul Picnic” are rightfully remembered, but that album was something else and I don’t think it gets proper credit.

  82. “The CD format was 74+ minutes long — about twice the length of an vinyl album.” – huxley

    Philips corp. invented the compact cassette, later used in the Walkman, and when they came up with the concept of the CD, they wanted the clout (or lack of competition) of Sony corp. as a collaborator. But, the most popular piece of music in Japan at the time was Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Hence the format had to play at least 74 min. or so, to fit all main versions of the 9th.

    That was probably a downside for non-classical music. One upside is the price of a CD jumped up by at least 50% for that exotic technology, and probably in a couple years the actual manufacturing cost was next to nil, but the retail price stayed high. So, more cash for labels and artists.

  83. I’ve been trying to think of pre-rock songs that fit neo’s definition.

    I think Glenn Miller’s, “String of Pearls” fits.
    Maybe Gershwin’s, “American in Paris?” His “Rhapsody in Blue” also changes several times, but it’s never too far from the main theme, but, then again, neither is Queen’s, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

    I’m trying to think of anything that changes from waltz to march, or samba to polka… Except for the aforementioned Frank Zappa, or maybe Spike Jones I can’t think of any.

  84. TommyJay, that is nearly unbelievable! All of those CDs artists struggled to fill in the 80s and 90s were based on Japan’s love of Beethoven. Amazing!

    Although I can’t think of any artists who limited their song length based on the unavoidable pause and kerchunk of the 8 track medium.

  85. Huh, Dream Theater and Extreme getting a mention here!

    Philip: Recently I done bought myself a couple synths (Behringer DeepMind 12 and Model-D) to fart around with, so I’m paying attention to synths lately. The jungle drums say Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater is the Keyboard God these days and he’s sure impressive on Youtube.

    I’ll check your recommendations. Haven’t heard of Extreme.

  86. But, the most popular piece of music in Japan at the time was Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Hence the format had to play at least 74 min. or so, to fit all main versions of the 9th.

    TommyJay: Another thing I Did Not Know. Hilarious!

  87. Now that I think of it, there are quite a few songs that tack gospel on to the front, middle or back end of swing, pop, rock or blues.

    Songs like, “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” “Accentuate the Positive.”
    Rundgren’s, “I Love my Life.”
    Isn’t there a Yes or Genesis or Phil Collins song with a full, Gospel chorus?
    The Rolling Stones’ theme for Donald Trump, “You Can’t Always Get What you Want.”

  88. Rufus: Leonard Cohen’s “Dress Rehearsal Rag” includes a children’s choir’s singing the refrain:

    And wasn’t it a long way down.
    Wasn’t it a way a strange way down.

    Not gospel, but a jarring effect, given the song is about a suicide attempt.

    Cohen later disavowed the album as more of the same depressing stuff. But it includes two of his strongest songs, “Joan of Arc” and “Famous Blue Raincoat,” so it can never be dismissed. At least not by me.

    In interviews Cohen said when he re-listened to the song, he waited to hear the children singing.

  92. Jerry Lewis’ version of, “Get Happy.”

    Rufus: That Jerry Lewis?!

    I thought you meant the other guy who invented the solid-body electric guitar.

  93. Check out the original blues oriented Fleetwood Mac (with Peter Green) and “Oh Well.” The first part of the tune is pretty straight “rockin’ blues,” then the 2nd part turns into a slow acoustic sounding guitar part, sounds sort of Spanish.

    Also, check out the 1969 cut of “Matty Groves” by Fairport Convention (from their “Leige & Lief” LP). It has a great rendition of the old English folk-ballad sung by Sandy Denny, then it turns into a fiddle jam for the 2nd part.

    For big bands, there was the Benny Goodman version of “Sing Sing Sing” that also had the tune “Christopher Columbus” encapsulated inside. Although, one could say that is actually two different tunes (although were usually only listed as “Sing Sing Sing”), and they are sort of similar in their treatment in this case.

    Goose Creek Symphony has a great tune “Guitars Pickin’, Fiddles Playin'” that starts out as a sort of slow country tune, then segues into the Orange Blossom Special (without actually listing the Orange Blossom Special by name as a part of the tune). They even throw a few riffs from the Beatles “Day Tripper” into the mix.

    And of course my favorite, “Savoy Brown Boogie” which is an entire album side from Savoy Brown (1969) that changes tempo and style a few times.

    And there are many more examples, in various genres.

  94. Musicians are a crafty lot. Neo’s Big Changeup is a tough bar to leap when limited to a single song.

    “Layla,” I think, is a freak of two different pieces of music conjoined siamese-twins style. Almost no one before or since has bothered. I would argue any two consecutive songs in a vinyl recording of album rock or a musical soundtrack accomplishes much the same.

    “Bohemian Rhapsody” is basically another rock-classical synthesis only boiled down to under six minutes instead of one side or two sides of a vinyl album. I salute it for virtuosity but I don’t think it’s anything special for form.

    I’m vaguely sorry “Bohemian Rhapsody” lost to “Green Book” tonight in the Oscars, since Freddie Mercury is someone people actually cared about as opposed to Don Shirley, a black pianist, talented but obscure by today’s standards (I thought he was supposed to be Andre Watts) in a reverse “Driving Miss Daisy.”

  95. I saw Bohemian Rhapsody today. really good. Played a little loose with the order of some events, but pretty good overall.

  96. Journey: Just a small-town girl living in a lonely world … Don’t stop believing …

    The Beatles, again from Sgt. Pepper: waltz, march, waltz, march:

    waltz: PICture yourSELF on a BOAT on a RIVer with

    march: LU-cy in the SKI-es with DI-a-monds

  97. Already mentioned by a few posters, but Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys is like a pocket symphony.

  100. Not a rock or pop song, so apologies for that, but the first great “change up” which came to mind is the inversion and key change of Paganini’s theme in Rachmaninoff’s Variation 18: a whole new world.

  101. Rufus T. Firefly on February 24, 2019 at 9:20 pm at 9:20 pm said:
    DNW,
    I think you mean, “vamp,” not “verse and refrain.”
    Verse refrain is basically the same as A-A-B-A.
    Many songs written in the 1890s, 1900s, 10s, 20s, 30s and 40s had intros, or vamps and very few of them are sung now, or even known.
    “Night and Day” by Cole Porter is one of few songs I can think of that is always sung with the intro.

    Thanks. Yes you are right; especially given the way I wrote that, and the example of an intro to Stardust which I used … the jargon name of “vamp” which I would not have known, or have remembered that I had once known it, anyway..

    Wiki would have been my friend if I had just availed myself of it before opening my yap, and gotten the idea of a “verse” clear. It now informs me that you had the thirty-two bar formula right as well: AABA.

    Having said all that, in reading the Wiki entry for “Refrain”, I see that a certain amount of confusion to an outsider might be understandable.:

    Beginning in the rock music of the 1950s, another form became more common in commercial pop music, which was based in an open-ended cycle of verses instead of a fixed 32-bar form. In this form (which is more common than thirty-two bar form in later-twentieth century pop music), “choruses” with fixed lyrics are alternated with “verses” in which the lyrics are different with each repetition. In this use of the word, chorus contrasts with the verse, which usually has a sense of leading up to the chorus. “Many popular songs, particularly from early in this century, are in a verse and a chorus (refrain) form. Most popular songs from the middle of the century consist only of a chorus.

    Yeah …. Okay

    In any event, I was incorrectly imagining that the Intro, (the boring odd set-up part) was a “verse” as well.

  102. Inspired by Rufus’ correct description of “tin pan Alley” and “American Songbook” song forms, to go rummaging through the back bins of Wikipedia, I see this under the “Thirty-two-bar” heading.

    “Sectional verse
    Some Tin Pan Alley songs composed as numbers for musicals precede the main tune with what was called a “sectional verse” or “introductory verse” in the terminology of the early 20th century. This introductory section is usually sixteen bars long and establishes the background and mood of the number, and is musically undistinguished in order to highlight the attractions of the main tune. The sectional verse is often omitted from modern performances. It is not assigned a letter in the “AABA” naming scheme.

    The introductory verse from “What’ll I Do” by Irving Berlin is as follows:

    Gone is the romance that was so divine,
    ’tis broken and cannot be mended
    You must go your way, and I must go mine,
    but now that our love dreams have ended…”

    At least I now have a somewhat plausible explanation as to how I came to think of the introduction to one of those old songs as a “verse” too.

    So now we have three: Stardust (by my reckoning), Night and Day, and What’ll I do?

    Well, you learn, or relearn, something nearly every day here.

  105. DNW,

    I’ve heard them called, “vamps,” but “introductory verse” makes more sense. Many, many old songs have them. Mark Steyn has committed a bunch to memory (as he’s also seem to have done with the whole of human, literature) and does some great writing about songs and their origins.

    Here’s Irving Berlin’s intro to, “White Christmas:”

    “The sun is shining, the grass is green,
    The orange and palm trees sway.
    There’s never been such a day,
    In Beverly Hills, L.A.
    But it’s December the 24th,
    And I am longing to be up north.
    I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, etc. etc…”

    “Take me out to the Ballgame” has two verses that almost no one knows, and is an example of what I think you meant about verses being forgotten in favor of a refrain, or chorus. This article gives the verses and some fun history behind the song: https://jugssports.com/blog/the-true-story-behind-take-me-out-to-the-ballgame/

  106. Billy Padre, good call on, “Freedom Rider.” That fits. Supertramp’s, “Bloody well Right” is similar to Boston’s, “Foreplay/Long Time” (which I think has been mentioned) and Steve Miller did similar, unrelated musical instrumentals to some of his songs too.

    Billy Thorpe’s, “Children of the Sun” is also similar.

  107. I considered “Foreplay/Long Time” as well but it’s too close to really being two songs with two different titles with some (very cool) filler in the middle.

    “Shout” by the Isley Brothers. Not the “a little bit softer now” part; the “Now, wait a minute” part.

  108. I’ll have to find some time today to work, or just decide to let my business go to hell.

    But in the meantime this one last item I dredged up with the aid of Google.

    From, Credit to: http://www.songstuff.com/song-writing/article/aaba-song-form/

    Some might find it interesting:

    “The Changing Meaning Of “Verse” and “Chorus”
    It should be noted that the meaning of some terms, such as “verse”, has not always meant the same as it’s current commonly understood meaning. During the period from the 1920s to the 1940s, many songs used lengthy introductions that wandered around before leading into 32-Bar, AABA structured songs. Just to confuse everyone, these long introductions are called “the verse”.

    To add to the confusion, the complete 32-bar AABA form is known as “the chorus”. For those interested in historic changes in meaning of songwriting terminology, please read ” 200 Years Of Song Writing Terminology” by Songstuff author, Colin Lazzerini.

    For the purpose of this article we will use modern terminology, where each A section is a verse in the modern understanding of “verse”.

    AABA Song Form / American Popular Song Form / Ballad Form
    This is one of the most commonly used forms in both jazz and early to mid-twentieth cetury popular music. The AABA format was song form of choice for Tin Pan Alley songwriters of American popular music, an East Coast USA songwriter scene based in New York City, in the first half of the 20th century. Tin Pan Alley included songwriting greats like Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, George and Ira Gershwin.

    The dominance of the AABA format faded out during the 1960s with the rise in popularity of rock ‘n’ roll and the rise of groups like The Beatles. Before The Beatles broke off into other songwriting formats, they heavily utilized the AABA format in many songs.

    This song form is used in a number of music genres including pop, jazz and gospel.

    Structure Of AABA Song Form
    In modern terminology the A section is repeated as the main section of the song and is known as “the verse”.

    The A sections are similar in melody but different in lyrical content. The phrases of the A sections often comes to harmonic closure.

    This is followed by the bridge (B) which is musically and lyrically different than the A sections. The bridge gives the song contrast before transitioning to the final A section. The B section often provides melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, or contrast in texture. The B section is known as “the Bridge”, “Middle Eight” or “the Release”. It presents the listener with a change in mood in the song, often using contrasting melody, lyrics and chords.

  109. Thanks, DNW. I did not know the terms had changed over time. I only knew them by their modern usage.

    AABAB is also common as is ABAB.

    Someone here brought up Genesis earlier. They’re song, “Abacab” plays off of this notation. The song’s structure was, ABACAB and so Genesis gave it that title, although the final version they recorded ended up more like, ACCAABBAAC.

    I suppose Layla would be, ABABABBCCCCCCCCCC…

  110. Keep me hangin’ on. Vanilla Fudge.(Ain’t nothing I can do about it). Albert King doing ‘I’ll play the Blues For You’., with the big bridge featuring the Memphis horns. Can you take it to the bridge? I said. CAN YOU TAKE IT TO THE BRIDGE. Whoo! Let’s take it to the bridge! James Brown and the Memphis Horns could take it to the bridge, but Albert King and the New Horns can take it better!

  111. The Who’s Behind Blue Eyes has a rather dramatic change-up. Judging from my High School days, in went from perfect make out song to a breakup one.

    And I don’t mean “breakup song” as in “Kiss and Say Goodbye” which one can make-out to. I mean, its more like “Whole Lotta Love” which, for the kids out there, should not be played on dates until you really know what you are doing.

    Come to think of it, that one has a change-up too. What the hell it changes into, I haven’t the slightest, but I’m sure Potter Stewart knows it when he hears it.

  112. “Jungleland” from Bruce Springsteen’s (1975) “Born to Run” album.

    In ’75 when “Born to Run” came out, “Jungleland” was not only considered “rock opera”, so to speak, but urban rock opera, a lengthy cut that realistically captured the dangers, lusts, hard cold edges and inevitable doom supposedly part and parcel of our urban streets, as well as the hopes, dreams, and romanticism of those who went out on those same streets looking for something that transcended those hard edges.

    That said, the song seems not to have aged all that well. In 2019, given our present disunion and chaos, it seems almost cartoonish at times. Cartoon rock.

    Did I get all that (cluelessly) wrong? Probably.

    But what does remain utterly transcendent, at least in Jungleland’s original studio recording– is the sudden unexpected appearance of a long, slow, soaring, haunting, undaunted Clarence Clemons sax solo.

    (I’m not bashing Springsteen at all. The “Born to Run” follow-up “Darkness on the Edge of Town” will always be excuse enough for any young man 16 to 99 years old to venture outside after nightfall, get in the car and take a long drive on the Interstate, speakers cranked all the way up, windows rolled all the way down).

  115. I’m been an avid music collector since I was a kid and have a pretty extensive music collection. The song that I would nominate for having lots of changes would have to be Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready”, which runs the whole gamut of symphonic rock music in about 8 movements. I consider it to be one of the best songs ever recorded (to me it’s tied with “Close to the Edge” by Yes as my all-time favorite song). “Close to the Edge” has 4 movements, 3 of which are stylistically similar, so it’s not as diverse as other songs mentioned here. For the record, “Supper’s Ready” is almost 23 minutes long, and “Close to the Edge” is a little over 18, but neither song has a second of padding. (Coincidentally, both songs came out in 1972, but if I were to round out my 10 favroite songs of all time, about half of them would be from the last 20 years.)

    But for doing this kind of thing in a pop song, I’d have to nominate “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, which I consider to be the best pop song ever recorded.

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