My vote goes to Ian Moore. First came to attention as a Texas-style blues rocker. Had two pretty successful songs on rock radio, “How Does It Feel” off his self titled debut and “Jesus Crossed The Rio Grande” off “Modernday Folklore”. He had the guitar chops and a great singing voice and could have followed that path but apparently got sick of SRV comparisons and took a totally different track with subsequent albums ( that I’ve not heard ) and disappeared. I saw him live twice in the blues rock mode and he was great.
Might be debatable, but The Clash following London Calling with Sandinista was a bad move. They actually went on to greater commercial success with Combat Rock, but it really wasn’t very good, either, and the band was falling apart, anyway… I won’t even mention Cut The Crap…oops, I just did.
The Stooges get honorable mention for following *Raw Power * with The Weirdness…but since it was 30-something years later, I don’t think that counts.
I don’t buy this. The Lips have always been aggressively weird and experimental so I don’t see Zaireeka as anything more than a fascinating diversion. And it certainly didn’t derail their careers. They followed up Zaireeka with The Soft Bulletin which is a freaking pop masterpiece and then scored a major international hit with Do You Realize? from the CD Yoshimii Battles The Pink Robots.
Gwen Stefani went from indie to pop. And sold out hardcore, man. And sold records hardcore, too.
I don’t know, but I can say that I saw them (The Spin Doctors) at a 4th of July fair only two years ago, so either they got a new guy or he got better.
“Cold Life” was actually just Ministry’s first released song. The synthpop album they released was called “With Sympathy” and was followed up by the “12” Singles Collection" (which included “Cold Life” and the dance club hit “Everyday is Halloween”). The next album (“Twitch”) was a further step toward the harder industrial edge which then led somewhat nicely into “The Land of Rape and Honey”. So I wouldn’t say it was an overnight change, they had several years, some singles and at least one album inbetween that made the shift in sound pretty gradual.
Kate Bush (no relation) had numerous hit singles, three chart-topping albums and was world famous (everywhere except America, where her second and third albums weren’t even released), when she released the baffling and brilliant experimental album The Dreaming. People (everywhere except America) were perplexed and confused and the album bombed big time. Strangely enough, while most of the reviews in the UK were utterly scathing, The Dreaming finally got her noticed in America, where the reveiws were quite positive and very respectful of her odd song and stylistic choices.
The Dreaming is, IMHO, not only her best album, but the best album ever released.
According to the band’s Wikipedia entry, his vocal problems occurred years later, on the tour supporting their fourth album.
The Dreaming reached #3 on the British charts, and peaked at #153 in the U.S. (Billboard says #153, Wikipedia quotes #157 from its cite).
Weezer. Followed up their poppy blue album with the darker Pinkerton, which tanked (despite being quite good imo). Years later created the copycat green album and made it back into the limelight.
I’d say Smashing Pumpkins, following Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness with Adore. It didn’t derail their career, but the shift to synth (especially on drums-replacing Jimmy Chamberlain with a drum machine?) was off-putting. It signaled a change in direction that, coupled with the ensuing lack of success, probably killed the band. (I’m curious to see how the “reunion” will work…)
Moby is a great example.
Moby’s early work was acid / warehouse, heavily influenced by belgian techno.
Everything is Wrong continued the techno vibe, but in 1996 he released a thrash metal album (Animal Rights) which utterly tanked.
Play was different again - but at least stuck with techno production styles, and was v. successful.
Mercury Rev’s first two albums were awesome pieces of psychedelic rock, popular with about 6 people in the UK and probably less in the US. Yerself is Steam, their first album, is really special. They then ditched David Baker, who made the whole band interesting, canned the jazz influences and nausea-inducing guitars, and developed a much more mellow, harmonious sound that got them mainstream success with ‘deserter’s songs’. I wouldn’t cross the street to see them now, but plenty would.
If you’d like to come by Bristol and debate this idea with some of the residents, I can point you in the right direction - but you can make your own introductions…
Okay I admit Tricky’s West Country twang does sound too yokel for gangster at times…
Before that, she went from ska to indie. I already had her pegged for a sellout by the time of Tragic Kingdom.
Thanks for setting me straight. I missed Twitch the first time around, and I still forget about it. In my case, I went from hearing the “Cold Life/Everyday is Halloween” single (was that 1983 or so?) to hearing The Land of Rape and Honey a few years later, and was obviously shocked - all of the sudden they sounded like Foetus or Cabaret Voltaire, but with a slick, metal edge. I loved that album.
Wasn’t Whip-Smart the follow-up to Exile? It wasn’t half bad, it just “droned” a little. That was when she was still with Matador Records.
It was when she moved to Capitol Recrods and teamed up with The Matrix post-2000 that the true vaccuum of utter suckage began. The Matrix is the writing team that created the “hits” for Britney Spears, Hillary Duff and Avril Lavigne… the anti-Lizzies!
Gwen Stefani was indie at one point? I’ve never heard that (obviously subjective) label applied to her.
The Kinks made a whole career out of this kind of thing. After a short string of raucous, proto hard rockers including “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” Ray Davies switched to a mellower, more idiosyncratic style and the band’s popularity steadily declined (though songs like “Sunny Afternoon” and “Waterloo Sunset” are some of their best-known today). Then, “Lola” suddenly thrust them back into the spotlight. They signed to a new label expecting more hits in the same vein, but instead, the band delivered an utterly unique country-jazz-musichall concept album which sounded nothing like Lola vs. Powerman. Then they followed that up with a series of increasingly bizarre rock-theater pieces. Then, they reinvented themselves as a gritty hard rock band and won a whole new American audience. As that began to wane, they took another abrupt turn into slick, adult-contempo pop.
So we’re going to ignore all the massive success that album brought her and all of the interviews where she’s telling people “This is exactly what I wanted to do”?
No but she lost a LOT of her original core audience.
Now she has a different core audience and she’s happy enough, so fine and dandy. But it did derail her as the “anti-pop queen of edginess” and she lost the primary demographic that she’d cultivated with Exile.
Exile and Whip-Smart were both reached gold in album sales. Her Capitol recordings, SpaceEgg and Liz Phair did NOT reach gold status even though the latter charted as well as Whip-Smart.
Her 2005 album with Capitol records disappointed her label and got only luke-warm reviews with her single just barely making it to #99. She hasn’t worked effectivley with Capital’s stable since then.
So… anyone got any opinions on the weirdness of the “Chris Gaines” album by Garth Brooks? I thought that was an interesting experiment at the time. He did a huge departure from his usual line of work, but did it as an alter-ego “the mysterious and brooding Australian pop-singer Chris Gaines” who walked around barefoot in his videos dressed like Mike Meyers as Dieter (“Touch my monkey.”)
I was expecting it to totally derail his career. It certainly left his fans scratching their heads, but he seems to be relatively unscathed.