10 Amazing Pop Songs By Rock Artists
9. So Long and Thanks For All the Fish - A Perfect Circle
On the long sliding scale of rock and roll, prog and pop don't really get along all that well. For the average rock fan who's more about getting to the chorus, it's not exactly a walk in the park getting them to jam to a song that has three different movements and goes between time signature changes. When A Perfect Circle returned after decades past though, they seemed to bring a surprising amount of hooks to So Long and Thanks For All the Fish.
Granted, this is still not the most likely song to get played on the radio or anything, especially with these lyrics. As much as this might be a celebration of what brought the band where they are, hearing them namecheck recently deceased celebrities like David Bowie and Carrie Fisher wasn't necessarily going to stick in your head the way most pop songs would. What we haven't seen before with this version of the band is this kind of melodic framework, with Maynard James Keenan having a lot more swagger in his delivery than before.
This isn't even the same kind of swagger that you would expect from the band that recorded songs like Judith back in the day. From skin to core, this song is a much more tame beast than what had come before, and makes for a nice change of pace for a band settling into their new sound. The dolphins may have been a bit strange, but us fans will take what we can get at this point.