This struck me upon listening to KISS’s I Was Made for Lovin’ You recently. Either I’m crazy, or that song is a straight DISCO track! Strange …
I also remember reading that Rod Stewart got a lot of grief from rock critcs in the late 70s for his #1 hit Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?, which was dismissed as a fluffy disco track.
The last instance that comes to mind is Lionel Richie’s easy-listening staple Sail On. That song sounds to me like a straight country song. I wonder if any country artist has ever covered it?
Although he certainly made the songs his own, I’d say Willie Nelson’s Stardust was a pretty big leap. One of the country greats performing pop standards from the 30’s and 40’s!
You’d have to consider Elvis Costello a singer-songwriter rock-n-roll artist, no??
Then how do you explain:
A. His release of chamber music in the early 1990’s with the Brodsky Quartet - the “Juliet Letters”
B. His release of syrupy sweet ballads with Burt Bacharach in the late 1990’s - “Painted from Memory”
I guess you gotta give the great ones a little leeway. My wife and I listened to “Painted from Memory” over dinner tonite. Highly recommened for those with a taste for very listenable, highly arranged pop melodies!
The classic example would be the Bee Gees. They made a name for themselves with rock ballads like “I Started a Joke” and “New York Mining Disaster.” Then they vanished and came back big with disco. Reports had it that when “Jive Talking” was released, it was played to DJs as a “guess the group” and no one could even come close.
The Four Seasons did something similar with “Late September 1963,” which didn’t sound much like their earlier hits.
Another good example is Donovan. On his first album, “Catch the Wind,” he was an obvious Bob Dylan wannabe. Then he reinvented himself as Mr. Flower Power (“Atlantis,” “Sunshine Superman,” etc.).
Joe Jackson started out New Wave, but then recorded an album of 40s and 50s jive music.
Linda Ronstadt did an album of Mexican music. Some people attended concerts at the time and demanded their money back.
And Bob Dylan is pretty much the champion of this sort of thing – starting out pure folk, moving to electric folk, then to country, then to Christian, and probably to several more genres I missed.
Speaking of Bob Dylan, one of the best examples of his crossover style is “If Dogs Run Free” — he jives jazz with a scat-singing woman while he recites psychedelic Beat poetry and the whole thing sounds like some smoky Greenwich village dive. This is one of the Dylan songs that makes hearers go “What the…?” and scratch their heads.
Sting doing country/western? “I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying”… Catchy song. Video featuring step-dancing aliens and a mohawked Sting riding a quicksilver horse. Freaky. Recently re-made by some mainstream country singer.
Danzig’s album Black Aria is a pretty big departure from his usual crap. The album is almost classical and entirely instrumental.
And while he didn’t actaully record the song, Dee Snider of Twisted Sister fame wrote a song for Celine Dion’s Christmas album called The Magic of Chrismas Day (God Bless Us Everyone).
– The “hidden track” on purple by STP…a joke song to be sure, but still…
– “Digging in the dirt” by Peter Gabriel. One sees the heavy influence of industrial there.
– ditto for the entire “99.9” album by suzanne vega. Does anyone else know of any other singer-songwriters of that time frame who were also experimenting with this sound?
Yeah, but he didn’t do them like they were originally done. He did them all in a pure Willie Nelson style, just like he’d written them himself. On the other hand, at the time this record came out, he was at the peak of his ‘outlaw’ country phase and had a big hit with Waylon Jennings on the song Mamas don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys at almost the same time ‘Stardust’ came out. It was a lot more mellow than what he was doing at the time.
Oh yes he does. In “Whitey Ford’s Revenge” he showed Eminem that he is still up to the challenge. His feud with Eminem is musically one of the best ever.
Tom Jones does Prince’s “Kiss” in his unique way. Hmm, wasn’t that far.
Beck does some very moody, soft and slow ballads in Mutations between his harder eclectic CDs. For it, he won a Grammy for best alternative album. It seems obvious that whatever he does, the PTB will do its best to hype him. Not that he doesn’t dexerve to be more hyped.
Duran Duran does “White Lines”, a famous rap song, as a straight up rock song, without their usual flair.
The beginning of “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney and Wings feature what sounds like a factory in operation.
Speaking of Eminem, he actually sings a song with D-12 dissing Everlast. Then at the end he raps for a minute.
