Only two examples come to mind, AC/DC and Van Halen. I don’t think a lot of people realized that AC/DC had two different lead singers, so that was nice and stealthy.
What other other well-known bands have successfully changed their lead singer?
Black Sabbath enjoyed some decent record sales after Ozzy left and they replaced him with Ronnie James Dio.
Pink Floyd has done it twice at least.
Fairport Convention started out with Judy Dyble doing vocals. She was soon replaced by Sandy Denny.
Jefferson Airplane recorded their first album with Signe Anderson on female lead. She was replaced by the much better known Grace Slick.
Genesis
I think Supertramp changed the lead singer, but I can’t really judge how successful or not that was.
No Doubt. Gwen Stefani had always been involved, but didn’t start as the lead singer.
The Doobie Brothers are another another act that comes to mind. They switched midstream from Tom Johnston to Michael McDonald.
Marillion surprisingly survived the exit of Fish.
King Crimson has gone through five lead singers: Greg Lake (1969), Gordon Haskell (1970), Boz Burrell (1971-72), John Wetton (1972-74) and Adrian Belew (1981-present).
That’s probably because Bon Scott died so long ago. He and Brian Johnson sure don’t sound anything alike.
Genesis falls into the twice category as well. Peter Gabriel to Phil Collins. Phil Collins to Ray Wilson.
Iron Maiden and Anthrax are two that immediately jump to mind for me.
Chicago had had at least three lead singers.
Judas Priest managed all right without Halford.
Cannibal Corpse changed from Chris Barnes to George Fisher and while there is some divide in the fan base, they’ve continued on as the worlds most popular death metal band.
Spider Stacy was the tin whistle player for the Pogues, but had to sing whenever Shane MacGowan was too drunk to do so, which was quite often. Eventually they got sick of McGowan’s shit and threw him out, leaving Spider to sing full time.
Fleetwood Mac had a stream of lead singers over the years. Usually the person who wrote the song did the lead vocals as well. Jefferson Airplane also did this. Grace Slick usually sang lead on her own songs, but Marty Balin sang lead on his and I believe Paul Kantner did most of his own leads. A number of groups have always operated this way.
The Beach Boys had several different leads. Brian Wilson did many leads in the early days (and so did Mike Love) but as he faded into studio work, Al Jardine took over.
Santana started with Gregg Rolie, shifted to Greg Walker and then to Alexander J. Ligertwood.
For Quicksilver Messenger Service Gary Duncan gave way to Dino Valenti.
IIRC, Gene Clark did a lot of the original leads for the Byrds, because he wrote most of the songs, until Jim (Roger) McGuinn took over, but David Crosby started insisting on doing his own songs before he left the group.
Blood Sweat and Tears. They had a critically acclaimed album out with Al Kooper as the lead singer, and when Kooper left, they hired David Clayton-Thomas to even bigger success. The group recorded an album after Clayton-Thomas quit, too, with a different lead singer, but it wasn’t particularly successful.
The Doors recorded a couple of decent albums after Jim Morrison’s death (the surviving members split the vocals). The aptly named “Other Voices” was particularly good and got to #31.
Yes. The album Drama features Trevor Horn on lead vocals (1980).
Supertramp had two lead singers, Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson. Hodgson left the group to go solo in the mid 80’s but I’m not sure that they ever replaced him.
And since the OP requested “successful” examples, I would argue with dalej42’s assertion that Genesis did it twice. The band was pretty much on life support by the time Collins left. But they were definitely more successful with Collins up front than they were with Gabriel.
True, but would you call the post-McGowan Pogues successful (as per the OP)?