The Most WTF Songs by 9 Grunge Artists

A lot of what Skin Yard did felt genuinely strange compared to their hardcore and punk-driven contemporaries. Instead of pure aggression, they leaned into psychedelia, often channeling a darker, Doors-like atmosphere.

“The Blind Leading the Blind,” from the band’s self-titled debut, even shares some sonic DNA with The Doors’ “The End.” So naturally, that was our pick for Skin Yard.

The track drifts with an eerie, hypnotic feel as Ben McMillan delivers the lyrics in a stream-of-consciousness style. It’s weird, unnerving but also mesmerizing — the sort of song that makes you stare at the wall for five minutes pondering on the meaning of life.

Be honest — did you even know this song existed? To be fair, it never got a proper release and Kurt Cobain never actually put out any solo material during his career. "Beans" was one of many strange tracks the frontman recorded by himself in 1988 on a four-track tape recorder that was later released as part of the soundtrack for the 2015 film Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.

It's not quite a full-fledged song, as Cobain basically strummed an acoustic guitar and squealed about beans and someone named Jessie being "happy, happy, happy." But it's too iconic not to include here. It's quite poetic, truly.

Cobain and Nirvana were up to some weird stuff in the late '80s, so alas here we are with another one, although it wasn't released until 1992 when they put out the Incesticide compilation following the success of Nevermind. 

"Hairspray Queen" was an early Nirvana composition that features Cobain once again delivering the vocals in an unusual manner. This one actually is a full song, though.

"Even at that time when we first started writing songs, I would come up with the basslines and everything. I would show everybody what to play 'cause I was still writing songs on my own time," Cobain told MTV in 1993.

"So that was probably one of the first songs that I had written at that time and we had started to practice as a band."

TAD were among the more primal groups of the Pacific Northwest scene so it's no surprise that they put out a song that sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack to a Rob Zombie film. It was also rejected by MTV for being so abrasive, according to Vice.

"I was looking at this book which was full of photographs of journals from before the Russian Revolution and one was called 'Wood Goblins.' It featured graphic illustrations of grim reapers scything down enormous crowds and it was full of subversive articles and stuff. So it seemed like a good basis for one of our songs," Tad Doyle told Melody Maker in 1990.

Right... It is a good song though!

Honestly, this might be the absolute weirdest track on this list. The members of Alice In Chains have always had quite a sense of humor off the stage and they injected that into a hidden track on their 1992 EP Sap with a song titled "Love Song" that has absolutely nothing to do with love.

It sounds like the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World if the ride were a song, but with various tempo changes, chaotic frenzies, fart noises and megaphone vocals.

The song was all drummer Sean Kinney's idea (as was recording an EP called Sap), according to an interview Jerry Cantrell did with Guitar World in 1992. The members all switched instruments while recording it, adding to its... unique character.

"It's the most bizarre song we've ever recorded," the guitarist said. "It's so noisy and horrible, it's great. I play bass. Sean plays piano and sings lead vocals. Mike [Starr] plays guitar and Layne [Staley] plays drums. Basically, Sean's subconscious had a lot to do with this whole project."

Stone Temple Pilots’ debut album Core features what might be the weirdest track of their entire career, though “Wet My Bed” acts more like a deranged interlude that bridges the mega-hit “Plush” and the upbeat “Crackerman.” Similar to Skin Yard’s “The Blind Leading the Blind,” the song features a hazy, eccentric atmosphere as Scott Weiland delivers the "lyrics" in a rambling, Jim Morrison kind of style.

The result sounds less like a proper grunge song and more like being the fly on the wall during someone's nervous breakdown in a motel room. It’s creepy, funny and completely out of place on an album packed with rock anthems — which is exactly why it stands out so much.

Soundgarden's musical output truly was a garden of sounds as they experimented with punk, psychedelic rock, odd time signatures and some of the strangest guitar riffs ever played. Their 1994 magnum opus Superunknown is home to an outlandish track penned by bassist Ben Shepherd titled "Half" that adds a special Middle Eastern-influenced flavor to an already unique set of songs — especially because it features a viola and a cello.

"What makes it strange is production and performance. This is Ben singing lead vocals and not Chris [Cornell], which changes the dynamic in the sound," guitarist Kim Thayil explained during a Superunknown commentary.

"There's a manic energy to it, which gives a good dynamic to the whole album."

And here's the Pearl Jam pick we mentioned earlier. One thing is for sure: "Bugs" is the only song by the rockers that features an accordion. Eddie Vedder "performed" a little diddly on the instrument and spoke nonsense over it, then decided he wanted it to be a single.

"Before I went in the studio, I was walking around some little thrift shop, I found an accordion. And I went in with the accordion and played something and then spoke some gibberish over the top. I remember laughing and saying, 'That's the first single'," the vocalist told Spin in 1994 [via Five Horizons].

Fortunately, their label didn't go for that idea.

"For a long time after recording it, I was playing it for friends saying it was the best thing we'd ever done," Vedder continued. "We just decided to do something that was fun to listen to and wasn't bombastic and wasn't everything that the band had become."

The best part about the Melvins is that no matter how much time has gone by or how many albums they've released (over 25), they've remained consistently weird. So you can probably listen to any Melvins song and place it here, but we went with one that came out over a decade after grunge had reached its peak — "The Talking Horse," from their 2006 album (A) Senile Animal.

The video is just as messed up as the song is — believe us.