diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index c019230f1c..0036a4a762 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 ## unreleased
 
 * [FEATURE] OTLP receiver: Add new option `otlp.promote_resource_attributes`, for any OTel resource attributes that should be promoted to metric labels. #14200
+* [BUGFIX] tsdb/wlog.Watcher.readSegmentForGC: Only count unknown record types against record_decode_failures_total metric. #14042
 
 ## 2.54.0-rc.1 / 2024-08-05
 
diff --git a/tsdb/wlog/watcher.go b/tsdb/wlog/watcher.go
index 48a55a1048..c1eed78f6d 100644
--- a/tsdb/wlog/watcher.go
+++ b/tsdb/wlog/watcher.go
@@ -572,6 +572,7 @@ func (w *Watcher) readSegment(r *LiveReader, segmentNum int, tail bool) error {
 				w.writer.AppendHistograms(histogramsToSend)
 				histogramsToSend = histogramsToSend[:0]
 			}
+
 		case record.FloatHistogramSamples:
 			// Skip if experimental "histograms over remote write" is not enabled.
 			if !w.sendHistograms {
@@ -610,11 +611,13 @@ func (w *Watcher) readSegment(r *LiveReader, segmentNum int, tail bool) error {
 				return err
 			}
 			w.writer.StoreMetadata(meta)
-		case record.Tombstones:
 
-		default:
+		case record.Unknown:
 			// Could be corruption, or reading from a WAL from a newer Prometheus.
 			w.recordDecodeFailsMetric.Inc()
+
+		default:
+			// We're not interested in other types of records.
 		}
 	}
 	if err := r.Err(); err != nil {
@@ -643,14 +646,12 @@ func (w *Watcher) readSegmentForGC(r *LiveReader, segmentNum int, _ bool) error
 			}
 			w.writer.UpdateSeriesSegment(series, segmentNum)
 
-		// Ignore these; we're only interested in series.
-		case record.Samples:
-		case record.Exemplars:
-		case record.Tombstones:
-
-		default:
+		case record.Unknown:
 			// Could be corruption, or reading from a WAL from a newer Prometheus.
 			w.recordDecodeFailsMetric.Inc()
+
+		default:
+			// We're only interested in series.
 		}
 	}
 	if err := r.Err(); err != nil {