“Oh Comely” by Neutral Milk Hotel has a “holy shit” heard at the very end. It’s an 8+ minute song that Jeff Magnum nailed on what was supposed to just be a sound test before recording.
My favorite is “Stephen’s Last Night in Town” by Ben Folds Five. There’s a rising clarinet part that climbs to a climax with a brief pause at the peak and a phone rings in time and in key in the background during that pause.
When recording Honeysuckle Rose for the album “Ella & Basie”, Ella Fitzgerald started the song in the wrong key, instantly corrected to another wrong key, and then found her spot on the third line. Supposedly, everyone loved it, and that take/session made it onto the album.
I’ll rephrase — they weren’t the notes she was planning 😊
But yes, fair point 👍
It’s funny, thou. I played a bit back in days. And studying music theory does get kinda funky when you realize that pretty much every note goes into every scale. it’s just a matter of taking it far enough.
The first track to the Type O Negative album October Rust is titled “Bad Ground” which sounds relatively gothic and expected from a gothic rock band. The song itself is 30 seconds of just electrical noise caused by a badly grounded cable. I don’t know if it’s a mistake, but I always found it funny.
There is also Electric Light Orchestra’s Don’t Bring Me Down, where the mistake is that the lyrics “Don’t bring me down, groos” was misheard so much as “Don’t bring me down, Bruce” that they just started performing it with the misheard lyric.
Last but not least, there’s Green Day’s Good Riddance, where they start off keeping time, messing up and saying “fuck” before starting over and getting it right.
Bob Dylan’s 151st Dream and its false start will never not make me laugh.
Not a favorite per se but in Hey Jude, around the 3 minute mark depending on which one you listen to, you might be able to hear Paul with a “Fucking Hell” because apparently he made a mistake.
