I’m talking about artists who completely changed genre or otherwise became unrecognisable. Share some that you know of!
…Remember Snoop Lion?
Serj Tankian has been all over the place! Since System of a Down disbanded (essentially), he’s done a couple rock albums, a classical album, a jazz album, has written a few movie scores, even featured in a Tech N9ne song. He’s done it all relatively well too! Guy’s super impressive and a big inspiration to me musically.
Taylor swift went from super country in “Our Song” to super pop in things like “Blank Space”, " Call It What You Want", and “End Game”
Bring Me The Horizon went from deathcore in their early career to bubblegum pop.
WOW i’ve only ever listened to that’s the spirit and a few songs off of sempiternal, just gave some of their oldest music an ear and i never realized they sounded like that at all in the beginning!! that’s crazy
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have been changing their sound constantly since they began as a a band, to the point where this variety is one of the defining attributes of the band.
First album they released was garage/surf rock. To prevent being typecast as a garage rock band their next album was a narrated, spaghetti-western style story album. Since then, they have done psychedelic and progressive rock, thrash metal, acoustic folk, synthpop/dream pop, jazz fusion, microtonal/Turkish rock, two Beastie Boys style tracks, sludge/doom metal, boogie rock, krautrock, and more.
Once you’ve explored enough of their music and get a sense of their sound you start to notice common styles and characteristics, but it can still be hard sometimes to believe their entire discography is one band.
Anyone ever listen to the Bee Gees earlier stuff, before the disco days? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0QTQdAKUZmA
The Beatles changed in the very short amount of time they existed. They put out about ten albums in 7 or 8 years and comparing the first with the last they’re almost unrecognizable. Listening with modern ears it’s clear they’re all The Beatles but that’s mostly because of the ubiquitousness of their music.
I’d also like to think that it wasn’t just a shift from A to B, it was more of a shift from A (Love Me Do / R&B Rock and Roll) to B (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds / Psych Rock) to C (Abbey Road)
David Bowie. The man has had a handful of completely different musical careers, essentially.
Katy Perry was a riot-grrl indie-rocker before she became a pop diva.
Childish Gambino had his Prince phase
Dir En Grey started as J Pop, then one day appeared on a talk show and were from then on Gothic Death Metal.
Ulver started as a Norwegian black metal band with folk and acoustic influences and starting from the fourth album they’ve been a high-qualiry electronic music project
Elvis Costello has taken so many radical departures from his musical style that that’s kind of his musical style.
Born and raised in British Pub Rock, Costello’s Almost Blue album turned country… or perhaps more accurately, in the words of a songwriter he covers on this album… “Cosmic American Music.” I have always admired this Brit’s admiration for, and understanding of, what American Music means, as a genre.
He did an album of old school pop with Burt Bacharach.
He did an album of chamber music with the Brodsky Quartet.
He did an album of… it’s not exactly jazz, in all honesty I say it’s just more cosmic American music… with Allen Toussaint.
He did Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz.
The guy digs all kinds music, and lets it show.
deleted by creator
for some reason my comment showed up in another post so I had to delete it.
deadmau5 didn’t quite do a change of genre but he sort of just adapted with the times to the point that his older music is kind of unrecognizable. His first album “Get Scraped” is much closer in tone to “big beat” and would definitely fit if it were made by artists like The Prodigy or the Qemists, but even then has a few songs that are fairly instrumental and you would likely hear more of on “Where’s the Beat” and “There’s the Beat” like “Careless,” “I Forget,” and “Waking Up From the American Dream.” He pretty quickly switched styles to sort of dark, deep House and Techno with “Random Album Title”. Nowadays he sort of plays a mix of both, and even his modern songs like “Pomegranate” sound closer to a pop song and probably would’ve got him thrown out of the underground scene 10 years ago
Being a casual deadmau5 listener (although he does have some excellent music - “Take care of the proper paperwork” is a production masterpiece), I just want to thank you for your comment, I’m currently listening to Get Scraped and it’s incredible, very reminiscent of the big beat bands of the 90’s. Such a shame it’s not on spotify