The Steve Miller Band. Their first five albums are pretty damn good, but they fell off a cliff with Rock Love and, unfortunately, survived the fall.
I agrree with almost all these choices.
I was a massive Rush fan until the late 80’s, probably around Hold Your Fire, I just wasn’t interested in that sound at the time. I still bought the subsequent albums but even today I rearely listen to them, while the classic albums from their debut to Moving Pictures are all loaded onto my iPod.
I’ve seen the Doobie Brothers a couple of times there’s no mention of the McDonald era.
I’m not a fan of much Metallica has done since they “sold out” with the black album.
Other WTF were they thinking albums include:
Judas Priest - Turbo - The metal gods release this bubblegum synth-guitar pop turd.
The Cult - Ceremony - this one was a victim of bad-timing, bad band dynamics, and bad choices.
Iron Maiden - No Prayer for the Dying - Adrian Smith left, progressive sound from last couple albums abandoned, songs sound like an odd mix of final cuts from Somewhere in Time, *Seventh Son… *and Bruce’s Tattooed Millionaire.
Hey - what about vocalists? E.g, Rod Stewart going from Blues/Rock with Jeff Beck, to Folk/Pop/Rock, to Disco, to Standards?
(I kinda want to Duck & Run here, since I am sure folks will take shots at Stewart - but he has moved through more styles than most and still sold a ton of records…)
Hah… the real sea change with Metallica was the Black Album/Metallica (or whatever it’s called)- the one with “Unforgiven” and the other ballads on it.
Way, way out of line with their previous efforts, and damn near made me quit listening to them. Eventually I did, but more because I quit listening to that style of music than because I got aggravated with Metallica.
Everything since then has been varying degrees of ballad vs. somewhat milder rock songs vs. say… anything on “Ride the Lightning” or “Master of Puppets”.
I dumped the Flaming Lips after Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. I had been listening to them since they released Hit to Death in the Future Head. They actually really started to change an album or two before, but I was still enjoying the music (The Soft Bulletin was one of my favorite albums of that year). Their music was never very hard, but still had an edge to it which disappeared in the Soft Bulletin/Yoshimi era.
I have been conflicted in recent years as a couple of bands I really love, the Stooges and the New York Dolls, have resurrected themselves after about 35 years of non-existence. Members of both groups have gone on to other things, several have died. On the one hand, I give them credit for writing and recording new stuff, not just trying to wring a few dollars from their old stuff. On the other hand, for the most part I hate their new stuff.
Years ago, I would have felt betrayed by these guys stomping on my musical memories. Today, I just acknowledge that they are professional musicians working for a living. But I feel no obligation to either like or consume their current product.
Ditto Linda Ronstadt. Pop to Country-Rock to Standards to Tejano.
Maroon 5’s first album showed enough promise to make a fan of me but the subsequent music makes me dislike them and Adam Levin specifically.
I was a fan of The Killers but the latest stuff is making me rethink my options.
Yeah, I have little trouble dumping a band/artist if their sound goes in the direction I’m not willing to travel.
This is why I’m still a fan of The Police and The Smiths. Their sound never changes. 
I didn’t like the change either, but now I think No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark fit pretty nicely into their discography.
Another great band I grew up on, and Seventh Son was their best. I bought the next two as they were released, couldn’t get into them. I’ve not followed them since.
Someone else mentioned Metallica, and I agree there as well. That black album was horrible, I haven’t paid much attention to them since then.
When I first read the OP, I was tempted to ask whether any old-timers had to decide whether to stick with the Beatles after Revolver or Sgt Pepper, or the Beach Boys after Pet Sounds, or Dylan after he went electric…
If a band I like well enough to call them a “favorite” changes their sound, I’m at least going to give them a chance to win me over to that new sound. I’ve expanded my musical horizons that way. And with some of my favorite bands, they’ve released albums I love that are in radically different styles. Some artists have even made a career out of trying on different sounds (like David Bowie or the band Daniel Amos) while remaining consistently interesting.
Does it matter that, in many cases, I’ve discovered the artist after they’ve gone through at least one style change?
I’ve got an example of a band I’ve stuck with: Marillion. They’ve been going strong for more than 30 years now, and I’ve been a fan since 1985’s Misplaced Childhood. Their sound has evolved over the years, and while they have had a couple of albums on the weak side (Holidays in Eden, Somewhere Else), overall they have remained solid. They change with the times, but do their own thing. They’re still one of my favorites after all these years, when I’ve given up on other bands I listened to as a kid.
I gave up on the Smashing Pumpkins after Adore. Not Adore itself, though. I enjoyed it, even though it was quite a departure from the signature Pumpkins sound and didn’t have Jimmy Chamberlain on drums.
But after that record, something happened. When they tried to go back to their more usual sound with Machina, I felt like it was a pastiche of the Pumpkins, or “paint-by-numbers” Smashing Pumpkins. Everything about it, to me, sounded calculated and forced. I’m not exactly sure what it was, but that album, and every one I’ve heard since, didn’t have the magic of the first four LPs. (Although I did really enjoy their final song as the original band, “Untitled.”)
Rush for me was sort of a combination of these two positions, though push it back a few years. I got into Rush in my early teens, with the first music I heard from them being 1980’s Permanent Waves album. That prompted me to get into their back catalog, and I loved all of it. Moving Pictures in 1981 was also awesome, and 1982’s Signals wasn’t too bad. Then Geddy Lee started going nuts with the synthesizers. That happened right at the same time I was getting more into metal and other “heavy” rock. As far as I was concerned (as a 17-year-old), Rush had sold out and turned into a new wave band. I was pleased when I heard Roll the Bones in 1991, due to the much-reduced presence of synths, and I was absolutely ecstatic when Counterparts came out because the band was fcking rocking again*! I’ve enjoyed everything they’ve put out since.
After Counterparts I went back and relistened to their '80s synth-heavy material, and discovered it wasn’t nearly as bad I thought it would be. Geddy did some of his best bass playing on those albums, which, being a bass player myself, I really appreciated. A big part of my youthful problem with Rush’s '80s synth stuff was that I still focusing on guitar at the time, and Alex Lifeson’s heavy guitar work practically vanished on those synthy albums.
I was a big Rush fan in the late 70’s/early 80’s but quit listening to them around the time of “Grace Under Pressure”. They just started sounding a little too electronic for my tastes. Unfortunately, I never bothered to buy another Rush album until “Snakes and Arrows” which I really enjoyed. I’m sure I missed out on some good stuff in between.
Genesis - they lost me around “Abacab”. Part of that was that I was just sick of hearing Phil Collins every time I turned the radio on. Between Genesis and solo that guy was freakin’ everywhere for a couple of years.
Wilco is a band that has changed their sound quite a bit over the years but I still enjoy listening to them.
Voivod.
They had grown in every facet of their music, with each of their records, and Nothingface was a complete masterpiece, so totally and utterly unique and mesmerizing in every way.
Then came Angel Rat. My friend told me not to bother with it, and even the cover art was a clear indication this was a band who had taken an incredibly sharp turn, stylistically. I didn’t bother with it, and had I bought it back then, I would have hated it.
This was 20 years ago.
I’ve since matured and actually really like what they did, and where they went with those 2 records, Angel Rat and The Outer Limits, before returning to a more harsh and ugly kind of sound for a couple of records, then going in another altogether different direction again.
They’ve since lost their guitarist and main creative force to cancer, and replaced him, releasing a record just a few months ago which really harkens back to their late '80s sound, but with a very refined production.
When my favorite guitarist ever, Bob Mould, suddenly decided to dive headfirst into electronic dance music, I was kind of dismayed. If his releases had continued in the vein of Modulate, then yeah, I probably would have dumped him. (He released a totally electronic album under the LoudBomb pseudonym several years ago that I have yet to feel even the slightest interest in picking up.) Given that his last four releases have been guitar-based albums, I would like to think that he will keep delivering in that vein, but I just know that the second I get comfortable, he will toss his Strat into cold storage and get crazy with the sequencers again.
This happened to me recently, with an act no one’s heard of called The Gabe Dixon Band. Their self-titled 2008 album was awesome, and can still be found in semi-regular rotation in my car: piano-based pop/rock with gospel undertones, which at least one reviewer favorably compared to early Elton John. Great stuff.
The next album turned out to be Gabe Dixon’s 2011 solo debut, and it was crap: guitar-based pop that made him sound just like everyone else. Hardly a piano to be heard (and yes, he’s the pianist). I made myself listen to the full album three times, just to make sure I wasn’t having a knee-jerk reaction to it not being what I wanted it to be, and…yeah, I don’t like it.
Not quite what you’re talking about, but I loved Flyleaf’s first CD, so I bought the second one as soon as it came out.
I absolutely hated it because it sounded too much like the first album. And since I already had their first album, I didn’t like having it twice.
You need to check out Shot of Love ASAP. It’s a very underrated Dylan album.
Any band that doesn’t change their sound usually is Artistically dead.
That punk band you liked was playing punk 5 yrs before you like them and have grown up a little and matured some. They might write longer, slower songs with more melody or experimentation. 3 chords gets old after a decade.