Overlooked mainstream: why you should buy the album, not the single.

There are a lot of really great albums out there, even mainstream music albums, made popular in the public by one or two really great singles. But all too often, I find other really great songs that are easily overlooked.

1. Neighbors - Gnarls Barkley (from The Odd Couple)

2. Pink & Blue - OutKast (from The Love Below)

3. November Has Come - Gorillaz (from Demon Days)

4. She Looks to Me - Red Hot Chili Peppers (from Stadium Arcadium)

5. Holla Holla - Akon ft. T-Pain (from Freedom)

First up: Gnarls. Their second album had two singles: "Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)" and "Going On". These are pretty good songs in and of themselves, but if you only heard these two songs, you would probably have a very different idea of Gnarls' style than if you heard the whole album. There's the side that these singles exemplify - a sort of heavier, neo-Beatles sound, thick with extra instruments and backing vocals. The lyrics are interesting, catchy, so who cares what they say. Right? No. Listen to "Neighbors," and you find a melancholy, hurting side of Gnarls, that feels exposed and vulnerable, not the monster in "Run" or the runner in "Going On."

Next, Pink & Blue, from one of the biggest albums of recent times: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Roses, Hey Ya, The Way You Move, Prototype, and Ghetto Musick were the singles; but there are many, many, MANY more songs on this double album. It's hard to narrow down just ONE easily overlooked song, but this one may do it. It's fun, funky, dark, and pretty cool. Crazy falsetto vocals, an interesting beat, and pretty, minimalist instrumentation, and not-too-racy lyrics make it a pretty applicable hip-hop song for any situation.

November, November. November has come, and gone away. November is a popular month to write songs about. Not popular enough, evidently, to find its way to a singles chart. No, Demon Day's glory came and went in the form of "Feel Good Inc." and "Dare," two songs which I initially loved but quickly grew to hate after they were blared out of every car and radio within a mile. However, this song goes alongside "Pink & Blue" in the idea of bleak, washed-out, but with more rap and even less instruments.

She Looks to Me. Fairly much every RHCP fan will tell you this song is AWSEOME. It's a step back, sort of, towards RHCP's older style, circa Californication and Blood Sugar Sex Majik. Light guitar riffs, gorgeous vocals, a love-song theme, but still somehow never made a single.

And finally, Holla Holla. accident is going to kill me for this, but I really like Akon, and T-Pain for that matter. Holla Holla is no different. T-Pain does a great job with harmonies and melodies, emulating, if you will, the barbershop quartet of oldern days with a vocoder and synthesizer. Growly harmonies and screeching, grinding vocoder sounds fill this R&B masterpiece. The lyrics are straight up modern, but if you can get past that, unless you hate Vocoders, this track is sure to please.

Picture courtesy of http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/4/MUSIC/index-02.html