(Credits: Far Out / Bruce Baker / Frank Schwichtenberg / Virgin Records)
I am a big proponent of musical evolution because greatness has certainly never been achieved by repeating the same format, and all of the musicians we herald as the true greats have consistently worked their way through genres with every new record.
The Beatles famously turned their back on their pop foundations to become psychedelic rock pioneers in the late 1960s, while Bob Dylan ‘abandoned’ the folk community to move forward and go electric. Plenty more have since prioritised evolution, with David Bowie becoming the poster boy for it, and so with all of these names combined, it proves it’s a move worth considering.
But these upcoming examples prove that it must be done with some caution, as awful ideas can’t be pursued under the guise of evolution and have us expect to buy it. Music fans can quickly identify when a foray into a new world has gone drastically wrong, and the artist in question has failed to land an ambitious musical somersault.
However, despite the heralding of icons that took place in my opening paragraph, those mishaps aren’t reserved just for lesser-known artists, where, in fact, the very artists I heralded, the ones who have built a career off the back of a legacy that marks them as chief innovators, have each taken the wrong sonic turn on their path to greatness.
Drum and bass, classical, and reggae all feature in these upcoming lists, from artists who quite frankly had no right trying their hand in any of it. High on their own supply, they took a sonic step that left them with egg on their face and subsequently acted as small blemishes on their otherwise triumphant careers, so here are five such instances to ground their fame.
Five artists who failed at crossing genres:
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