There once was a time in music where the record industry demanded its most popular artists to put out three-minute, radio-friendly tunes.
Some artists gleefully adhered to this standard, while others lamented it. Eventually, acts from across the genre spectrum began to chip away at this, and from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, a wealth of extended (and often side-length) epics saturated the music scene. Even today, despite the overwhelming success of artists conforming to the status quo, some artists elect to produce longer compositions. This played well to the vinyl format, as tracks got longer, track lists got shorter, and new forms of musical experimentation began to take shape. Here are five particularly long tracks, and here's why they're worth adding to your music collection.
1. Led Zeppelin, "In My Time of Dying" (11 min 8 sec)
Off of their 1975 double album Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin's "In My Time of Dying" twists, turns, and soars through bluesy hard rock riffs and swampy jam sections. It stands as the longest song in the rock pioneers' repertoire, and it showcases each band member's immense talent: Robert Plant's infamous caterwaul; Jimmy Page's loose, tidy slide guitar solos; John Paul Jones's catchy bass licks; and John Bonham's legendary thunderous drumming. What more could you want?
2. The Doors, "When the Music's Over" (10 min 55 sec)
Almost everybody knows "The End", an extended poetic statement off of the Doors' 1967 eponymous debut, but many tend to overlook "When the Music's Over", the closer from their second album (Strange Days, released later that year). Most notable for its declaration "We want the world and we want it now!", it captivates listeners with drastic dynamic contrast and trademark spoken word sections.
3. The Beatles, "You Never Give Me Your Money/Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came In Through the Bathroom Window/Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End" (16 min 19 sec)
Okay, this is kind of cheating, but hear me out! The Beatles were pioneers of a distinct musical concept: songs flowing into each other without breaks. This section of their 1969 album Abbey Road, the last album the Fab Four recorded, flows like one whole work, despite the occasional breaks in the music. Bands thereafter began to create entire albums with a central theme or plot, and this album is part of the reason why.
4. Pink Floyd, "Dogs" (17 min 6 sec)
Yeah, you should have been expecting Pink Floyd to crop up on this one. They practically wrote the book on extended rock epics. Two of their songs, "Atom Heart Mother Suite" and "Echoes", take up an entire side of the album, and another work, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", had to be split in two because it was too long to fit on one side of the album. "Dogs", off of the 1977 Orwell-inspired album Animals, paints law enforcement as hungry, yet subservient dogs charged with doing the bidding of the wealthy overlords - called "pigs". Yup, there's a song called "Pigs (Three Different Ones"), and one called "Sheep" to fulfill the common people's portion of the metaphor - and yes, those songs are each longer than 10 minutes, too! With David Gilmour's piercing guitar and Roger Water's bleak, vitriolic lyrics, this album as a whole (and "Dogs" in particular) stands out as some of the best progressive rock ever produced.
5. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, "The River" (10 min 10 sec)
This one is sort of a bonus: this Australian band released their 2015 Quarters! with four songs on it, each of which is exactly 10 minutes and 10 seconds in length. The four songs are called "The River", "Infinite Rise", "God Is In the Rhythm", and "Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer"; to be honest, you can't really go wrong with either of them. Heck, if you like psychedelic alt-rock, listen to all four of them. You won't regret it!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/playlist/five-songs-longer-than-10-minutes/idpl.u-KVXBBaPto6glvg
