Watching the NPR Tiny Desk concert with Wu Tang, specifically hearing the beginning of Triumph made me think back on how off the wall that single was.

A 6? 7? minute song with no hook and no jiggyness kicked off a multi-platinum double-disc album. There's no way that song should have worked as a single, but it did.

Same for Radiohead's Paranoid Android. A song that stuck out for radio and MTV at that time. But it was the first big song on a landmark album.

An underrated leftfield single was Stressed Out by A Tribe Called Quest. Granted there weren't many upbeat songs on that album, but The Jam might have worked as a lead single in retrospect.

Maybe Jeremy by Pearl Jam. A song based around an in school suicide that was a big hit for them.

I'm not into Prince but I'd imagine he'd have a couple of songs released that must have made record execs stay up late at night wondering what they would do for work in case the single flopped hard enough.

Any others?