Inspired by this thread. Okay, I don’t mean the exact opposite in every sense, nor just a radical change in direction, but a change to almost an exact opposite in one very important direction.
Pink Floyd. It started as a pretty loose band, fronted by a singer who was philosophically opposed to more than one take and who sang happy if a bit scary sometimes songs about little hippie girls and gnomes. It morphed into a hyper-produced band singing songs about war and dads dying. (I like both incarnations, btw.)
U2. they became big witht their “message songs”, and then became a meta-shallow band like Devo (we’re shallow cause we’re deep, man.) I don’t particularly like U2 so I don’t know if they are still in that phase or not.
The Promise Ring. 30° Everywhere was as hardcore an album you can make if your singer has a lisp. Wood/Water was 70’s influenced soft rock. But their transformation was not linear, because their second studio album, Nothing Feels Good, was Weezer-influenced, slightly sophiticatedly-produced, intentionally overly-piteous emo, while the album after that, Very Emergency, was intentionally sloppy and more grungy, if still pretty much pop. So much so that usually I forget that Nothing Feels Good came before Very Emergency.
The Beastie Boys went from a hardcore punk band to a rap group. They did come back to it for a bit, though. Maybe that’s not an exact opposite though, since their message didn’t change much. There initial popular phase was party-oriented, then they brought in the hippie stuff too.
Pretentious indie and punk fans might argue that such-and-such a band changed, man when they sold out.
Genesis: Originally based around Peter Gabriel’s theatricality and Tony Banks’ classical piano-based songwriting, they wrote fantasy-based epics and shunned the singles market. Twenty years later and they were based around Phil Collins’ radio-friendly love song soul/pop instincts with epics relegated to album tracks.
Fleetwood Mac - Started out as a British-based, blues band that played back-to-roots ‘die-hard’ blues songs. Less than ten years later, a move to the U.S.'s left coast and a near complete changeover in group roster, and they come to epitomize the sound of laid back, lushly produced mainstream pop music.
Not a ‘band’, but Ozzy Osbourne - When I was a kid (early 80s), he was to many people (including my parents) the anti-Christ. He was the living embodiment of anarchic, blasphemous, tasteless, violent heavy metal rock & roll. Nowadays, he’s better known as a middle-aged basket case, a henpecked husband, and a poster child for clean living.
I’d nominate The Clash. Three-chord, shouty, “no future” songs… to reggae, dub, gospel, jazz-form, funk, and hip-hop. Those guys pretty much could play anything by 1983. And few albums have the diversity of styles found on London Calling and Sandinista!
In an interview Phil Collins said that in the early days Genesis would write three to four minute songs to get air play, but they never caught on until the 80’s.
The Goo Goo Dolls. The fucking Goo Goo Dolls! They used to be on Metal Blade Records, they played venues like CBGB’s, they shared the stage with hardcore bands like the Cro-Mags and Uniform Choice…then came “Iris.”
Electric Light Orchestra started out as an attempt to create rock music using orchestral instruments, inspired by some of the experimental stuff that the Beatles were doing. By the early 80s, they had abandoned orchestral instruments entirely, and were a synth-and-guitar based pop band.
Deep Purple put out three albums of half-baked psychedelia in the late sixties before going full proto-metal once Ian Gillan and Roger Glover came on board.
I was going to say David Bowie but with different time periods. His earliest music in the 60’s was cutesy music hall stuff. Try to find “Rubber Band” or “When I’m Five”.
Then he got a bit more serious and his career took off. Then he changed image, and changed again and so on.
The Beatles are a great example. They started out as the ultimate teeny boppers, perhaps the first boy band, playing R&B standards to screaming little girls, and 3-4 years later were composing sophisticated music using experimental studio recording techniques and borrowing from the avante garde classical world.
Prince was one of the first musical acts to sing blatantly about sex- he used dirty words and was extremely explicit. Nowadays, he sings gospel, is extremely religious (Jehova’s Witness), and refuses to say any “four-letter words except love”.
