Which band/artist almost completely recreated themselves - and succeeded?

That just made me think of a couple more...


Aaron Lewis....From rocks Stained front man to country solo star

Everlast....from rapper and member of House of Pain, yes that's right, To acoustic alt rock Whitey Ford Sings the Blues.

 

A few bands come to mind :-

1. The Human League (Although I only liked their first line-up)
2. The Thompson Twins

 

Still going about 1960 and Mazeroski?

 

david sylvian

 

Can't believe I never thought of those two acts

 

What about Sparks? From rock group to Synthesiser Disco duo.

 

And then there's former Emperor bass player, Mortiis, who went from playing black metal to ambient synth albums to industrial edged rock. He did keep, however, the prosthetic nose and ears.

 

Everything but the Girl. They seemed to put on a new outfit with each record, most notably their final two electronic albums.

 

I was going to say this . . . had never heard of this band and pulled their debut album out of a 7 for $10 record sale a couple of weeks . . . pretty bland pop/rock:

I was surprised to learn they were later a successful country outfit.

 

There are 2 tracks or so on Achtung Baby that are Bowie-goes -to-Berlin-"edgy", like "The Fly" and the title track, but at its heart it's a fairly traditional, melodic U2 album.
I think its outreness has been wildly overplayed.
If "The Fly" had tanked, it would have made no difference as they followed that with two very commerical, melodic tunes, "Mysterious Ways" and especially "One".

 

From "Freakin at the Freakers Ball" to...

 

Using the odd augmented chord and stealing the intro from "Song for My Father" doesn't make you a jazz band. By that standard, the Byrds were a "jazz quartet" in 1966. Steely Dan were always a pop-rock band, sometimes with light jazz touches (like a lot of other pop-rock in the 70s, e.g. Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison: jazz-influenced pop-rock). Calling them a "jazz duo" exaggerates the influence considerably.

 

"One" is close to "older U2 sound", but not "Mysterious Ways", IMO. Yeah, it's commercial/melodic, but it's way more influenced by dance and world music than the "traditional U2".

The production of the album is what sets it apart from older work mainly - the core songs may not differ that much, but their sound was a big change.

U2 hinted at changes on "Rattle and Hum" with stuff like "God Part II" but didn't go too far in that direction until "Achtung".

BTW, by "title song", I think you mean "Zoo Station" - there's no title song on "AB"...

 

radiohead
blur
in a certain way the clash from the first one to sandinista( a wider panel of style)

 

Yeah

 

No. They turned up the suck a lot, but hardly reinvented themselves.

 

From 50s rockers to 60s rockers:

1960:

1969:

 

Yeah, I would agree. VH had already started to change their sound through "Diver Down" and "1984", so they didn't make a radical shift when Sammy joined.

Becoming a much crummier band isn't really a "reinvention"!

 

Heart. Though some might call it "selling out."

 

I don't think the Beatles "reinvented" themselves because they worked on a progression. If they'd been the band in photo 1 for years then suddenly turned into the band in photo 2, you'd have a point, but that wasn't the case. The Beatles changed gradually and never made a radical change from one year/album to the next...

 

Was their 80s sound a "reinvention", though, or was it just adapting to the production styles of the era?

 

Letting others write the tunes and losing the progressive edge to their music.

 

The jump from mid-1966 to mid-1967 is a pretty big leap for them, if we're talking single-year transformations. The Sgt. Pepper metamorphosis is as much of a reinvention as one can get in that short a period of time. They can probably take ample credit for Bob Dylan's 1964 to 1965 transformation as well.

 

Guess I still disagree - I don't see a gigantic leap from "Revolver" to "SPLHCB", especially given the "bridge" we got with "Strawberry Fields" and "Penny Lane"...

 

Agreed. You can hear the Beatles building up to Pepper on Rubber Soul, Revolver and the singles from the period. It wasn't like some kind of radical overnight transformation.