Not quite- Jimmy Seals and Dash Crofts had a lot of mellow rock hits in the Seventies. Jimmy’s younger brother Daniel took the stage name “England Dan” and formed his own successful duo with John Ford Coley. Together, they had a few big hits like “Nights Are Forever” and “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight.”
“England Dan,” of course, had some big country hits under the simpler name Dan Seals.
Speaking of acts that switched to country, remember these guys?
They reinvented themselves as a successful country band.
Bill Haley and the Comets are known today for “Rock Around the Clock,” but Bill Haley originally called himself “The Ramblin’ Yodeller,” and recorded country songs like this one:
Roy Orbison started in rockabilly, but found success with some lonesomecrooning.
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Conway Twitty** started as a rocker before a very successful switch to county.
…which was a big change from their previous band, the Champs, of “Tequila” fame (although Seals and Crofts weren’t yet in the band when “Tequila” was recorded).
The Beastie Boys started out as a punk rock band before moving over into hip-hop. Here’s an example of their pre-Licensed to Ill work. As far as I know, they only have a handful of EPs from their punk era, but no LPs.
Depeche Mode started out as a peppy, upbeat dance synth-pop band (see: “Just Can’t Get Enough”) before really finding their niche in their barnd of dark, brooding industrial-influenced alternative music.
Ministry’s first album, With Sympathy, is early '80s New Wave synthpop dance music.
What came after, starting with Twitch, got progressively harder, with Ministry being a trend-setter in the late '80s-early '90s in the Industrial genre.
Seriously. Listen to With Sympathy and The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste (or anything later than Twitch) back to back and your head will explode. Compare and contrast:
Although he enjoyed a great measure of success, Darin missed out on every bandwagon he tried to jump on; he did Rat Pack music as Elvis got big, he did “Splish Splash” as hippie rock became the dominant style, and he did earnest Woodstock rock and protest ballads when Bowie was setting the new tone. Man, if he’d been born five years earlier…
The artist I thought of was Smash Mouth. Originally a punk act, he (They?) peaked with the poppy “All Star.” Not sure he’s done anything of note since, though.
It’s not that Darius Rucker wasn’t popular 15 years ago (as frontman of Hootie and the Blowfish), but the band died out as a pop music joke in the start of the 2000s (well, before then, but apparently, they kept releasing albums until 2003).
Fast forward to 2008-20099 or so, and witness Darius Rucker, the successful country music solo act (three Billboard Country #1s, and a #3, so far).
The Wiggles sort of qualify. Before becoming huge in the Kiddie Rock field, two of the members were in The Cockroaches a pop band in Sydney, Australia. The Wiggles - Wikipedia
Chicago was at one point a respectable blues-rock band. Then they got prosperous with the pop-rock sound most commonly associated with them, then syrupy love ballads. Have they broken up yet? Please tell me they’ve broken up.
**Billy Joel **started out in a band called **Attilla **(I think there was an umlaut in there somewhere), which may or may not have been as metal as their album cover’s semiotics would suggest. (I haven’t heard any of it; I’m sure very few people ever have!)
**Fleetwood Mac **(apologies if I’m not the first to post this) started out doing blues; after a personnel change or two and a shift to a more mainstream pop-rock style, they exploded in popularity.
