10 Perfect Albums That Blended Different Music Genres

When it comes to the greatest albums of all time, it’s easy to put some of them in their own distinct musical style. You wouldn’t really argue that Nirvana were a grunge band at the start of their career, and there’s hardly going to be anyone arguing that Black Sabbath were a jazz band or anything like that. Genres are much easier to navigate, but they can also be very confining, and the best artists know to throw those labels out the window right when they start.

As much as you could call these records rock, pop, or hip hop if you wanted to, that’s only a basic level of describing the music on these records. Across every one of these songs, the artists in question seem to look at the track as a new creative endeavor, looking to upend their sound at every turn and create something that no one had ever heard before. While it’s a pretty big gamble to just throw all of your hangups out the window though, fans were more than willing to take the trip, and have more often than not worn these records out for as long as they’ve been released.

Although it does take a second to adjust for some of these records, you can still hear bits and pieces of everything under the sun in here, from taking sounds from jazz music to a rock song that suddenly is interrupted by a hip hop flow. It’s eclectic and weird, and can sometimes sound like a damn mess when you listen to it, but that only adds to the character that these records are trying to bring across.

Given all of the effort that went into the production, we're lucky that we even got an album from Queens of the Stone Age after Era Vulgaris. Just before the sessions started, Josh Homme had a devastating operation which left him dead for a few minutes, as well as limiting his ability to hear music in his head the way he used to. Part of him was left on that operating table, but that wasn't going to get in the way of him pushing forward as hard as he could.

Going through every track on Like Clockwork, the whole project feels like a celebration of every single brand of music that has gotten Josh to this point in his career, with the stoner rock classics like My God is the Sun having much more fire in its belly. The real interesting parts though come in the deep cuts, where Josh combs through other layers of his musical psyche, like the mellow sounds of Kalopsia or bringing in people like Elton John and Alex Turner to add their unique spin on songs like Fairweather Friends and Smooth Sailing.

Coming to terms with his own mortality, this feels like the record that Josh wanted to make that would last long after he's gone from this Earth, with all of the ugliness that comes with facing your death. It might not be the easiest pill to swallow all of the time, but just like a good shot of tequila, this record goes down a lot smoother once you really soak it in.