Musicians that shifted radically in style/genre (for better or for worse)

[Scritti Politti]

The band Japan

They started off as the New York Dolls

Then they evolved into Roxy Music

Then they evolved into Yellow Magic Orchestra

 

[Poppavalyim Andropoff]

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When I read this thread title I immediately thought of Nicke going from Entombed drummer to Hellacopters guitarist ..

another one I think of is Everlast. He was a white frat boy party guy with Ice T on the west coast then he heads back east to become a Celtics superfan & jump around all day then he’s a blues guy then he’s a fuck I dunno now

Silverchair is gay that singer cunt is an insufferable faggot

Bad Brains. From quite possibly the best punk band ever, to rastafarian garbage. Did not end well for them.

To be fair Bad Brains can do what they want but they were playing that Rasta shit from the jump in 77. The just stopped playing Right Brigade so much and went to whatever shit they did instead I dunno I honestly stopped listening when quickness came out

 

[WSPWSPWSPWSP]

Daft Punk comes to mind. Went from French House to 70s Disco. Pretty sure one of them is now doing orchestral music?

 

[Calandrino]

Was that just a Swedish death metal thing? Like Therion went from being an excellent example of the old school Swedish sound and really pushing it forward on their first three albums to being all light and mellow and a bunch of choirs and symphonic metal stuff. Or Nocturnal Rites who put out a cool death metal demo before doing power metal and eventually a really catchy hard rock album.

The Gothenburg melodeath bands too. The first At the Gates album is prog death metal, then they got the typical "Iron Maiden with heavier guitars and growls." Dark Tranquillity started as death metal too, did the "Gothenburg sound", but have been doing goth metal stuff since the late 90s with lots of keys. And In Flames is the Metallica of extreme metal and hopped on every trend from mallcore to metalcore to limp-dicked alternative rock.

It's a whole 90s Europe thing where you play black/death metal as a teenager, then some kind of poppier-ish or goth metal and win Grammies, then some kind of attempt at going totally mainstream that utterly bombs, then maybe "back to the old sound". Or something along those lines. I guess even Metallica kinda followed that trajectory, roughly. Ulver from Norway is one of the few that got out and stayed out while being successful. Judging from Spotify/Youtube playcounts, some of these bands were way more popular playing death metal than they were making literal pop music, at least in the long run. I wish it would happen the other way around, like The Weeknd has a schizo breakdown and starts putting out black metal 8 track demos.

 

[The Token Ethnic]

AFI went from horror punk (good) to basically every 2007 generic emo band at the time (bad)

They were a generic punk band before going horror, too. Three changes to their sound, but I never got into their Miss Murder stuff.

Liz Phair, arguably one of the more infamous ones. She went from rock in the 90s to a pop girl around 2003. No idea what she was thinking.

She was on Matador, an indie label and that doesn't pay the bills, so she was smart enough to sell out and fizzle. She released a newer album 4 years ago but I haven't heard much about it outside of her Exile in Guyville anniversary tour in 2023.

As for bands, Fucked Up has had an interesting change in sound. They started off as a hardcore band, then released a concept album with some prog rock influences and the band still continues to change and play with their sound, despite the growls of the vocalist. Some of it works, some doesn't.

 

[lichen]

It's a whole 90s Europe thing where you play black/death metal as a teenager, then some kind of poppier-ish or goth metal and win Grammies, then some kind of attempt at going totally mainstream that utterly bombs, then maybe "back to the old sound". Or something along those lines. I guess even Metallica kinda followed that trajectory, roughly. Ulver from Norway is one of the few that got out and stayed out while being successful. Judging from Spotify/Youtube playcounts, some of these bands were way more popular playing death metal than they were making literal pop music, at least in the long run. I wish it would happen the other way around, like The Weeknd has a schizo breakdown and starts putting out black metal 8 track demos.

I suppose Opeth is another success story here. Their change wasn't as significant as Ulver's but they're probably more successful now than they were as a death metal band.

I suppose The Beatles would fit into this thread quite well.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

The 90s band "Sugar Ray" began as a punk/nu-metal band. They had one song on their second album, "Fly" as a kind of one-off pop song. That song ended up being a smash hit in the summer of 1997, and the band decided to embrace the softer pop-rock genre, releasing their follow-up album, "14:59" in '99 (a joke on the idea that their 15 minutes of fame were almost over). They did music for the Scooby-Doo live action film and released a few more albums. Later on, lead singer Mark McGrath went on to be an anchor on "Entertainment Tonight," a celebrity gossip show. They still tour sometimes to cash in on that 90s nostalgia.

He does voiceover narration for the VICE channel documentaries too.

I was going to suggest Kate Bush but then she really hasn't changed much style wise, unless you count when she released The Dreaming in 1982 and everyone thought she lost her marbles. Technically it doesn't count but The Sensual World and The Red Shoes utilized that digital compressed sound that was all the rage in the late eighties and early nineties. Ironically she would release Director's Cut in 2012 whereupon she revisited those two albums for various reasons.

 

[DoomsdayElite]

Ketzer, a German band that released a post-rockish kind of album after their previous two were thrash-flavored black metal, though the harsh vocals were retained.

 

[Druish Space Lasers]

Bad Brains. From quite possibly the best punk band ever, to rastafarian garbage. Did not end well for them.

And on the same album! What a shame.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Someone already mentioned Celtic Frost's famous hair metal sellout album Cold Lake, but it's much less known that they also did a shitty industrial/nu metal album that sounds like an incredibly godawful version of Rammstein meets Static-X.

The album was so shitty the band totally disavowed it after every label presumably laughed them out of the room. We were all blissfully unaware it existed until like 15 years ago when it resurfaced on the internet. Fortunately by that time Celtic Frost had put out a proper album with their proper sound instead.

It's a whole 90s Europe thing where you play black/death metal as a teenager, then some kind of poppier-ish or goth metal and win Grammies, then some kind of attempt at going totally mainstream that utterly bombs, then maybe "back to the old sound". Or something along those lines. I guess even Metallica kinda followed that trajectory, roughly. Ulver from Norway is one of the few that got out and stayed out while being successful. Judging from Spotify/Youtube playcounts, some of these bands were way more popular playing death metal than they were making literal pop music, at least in the long run.

Or all the old death-doom bands like My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Katatonia, Anathema, etc. who stopped playing that sound and did goth stuff. Especially the latter two who are best known for their really melancholic alt-rock. I guess doing that was to 90s/early 00s European bands what doing pop albums was to classic 70s prog rock bands.

I suppose Opeth is another success story here. Their change wasn't as significant as Ulver's but they're probably more successful now than they were as a death metal band.

Their sound always pointed in that direction since half their songs have acoustic parts obviously inspired by 70s stuff. All they had to do was insert organs and shit and stop death growling.

 

[Lindy64]

Emotion Sickness is an excellent album opener and ending for the band.

I know my reply is late, but this reminded me, the version of Emotion Sickness off their 2003 live album is absolutely incredible, it goes on for 9 and a half minutes but not a second of it is wated, even if you don't like their later stuff.

 

[analrapist]

Mr. Bungle. Every one of their 3 albums in the 90s is wall-to-wall collage of a thousand styles and influences.