10 Rock Songs Too Weird To Get Big

10. Xanadu - Rush

Most rock bands would kill to say they had the creative golden ticket that Rush had after 2112. Even though an album with a 20 minute opening track was a hard pill for most rock audiences to swallow, the massive influx of fans surging towards these Canadian icons bought the group their freedom going forward. So for the next album, they used that creative freedom to stretch a lot further on Xanadu.

Being massive fans of science fiction and fantasy novels, most of the lyrics of this song center around a long journey our narrator takes for the lost Xanadu. Running over 10 minutes, most of this song feels like it should be playing over the opening credits of some elaborate Tolkien-inspired film. While you can still hear the guitars in full force in some spots, it gets a bit hard to navigate when you start hearing Geddy Lee sing about drinking the milk of paradise after dining on honeydew.

This proved to be only the beginning of Rush's weird period though, with the next album Hemispheres expanding their sound even more and making gigantic epics like La Villa Strangiato and the Cygnus suite. For as much as Rush might be a more accessible prog act than something like Dream Theater, by no means should you start with this song as your intro to the more complex side of rock.