20 recording artists who reinvented themselves early in their career

The Canadian musician started out as a child actor on the popular sketch show, “You Can’t Do That on Television.” In 1991, she released her first album, which had the mall pop vibe of Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Then she hooked up with producer Glen Ballard in 1995 and turned her heartbreak over Dave Coulier into “You Oughta Know”. With the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea and John Frusciante backing her up, the track reintroduced her to the world as a hard-edged singer-songwriter.

Long before “Elephunk” turned them into pop superstars, The Black Eyed Peas were a Los Angeles-based alternative hip-hop act reminiscent of New York City’s Native Tongues (A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, etc.). Their lyrics were socially conscious and provocative at a time when gangsta rap was all the rage. Their 1998 LP, “Behind the Front”, didn’t catch on commercially, but it was well received critically. When their second album, “Bridging the Gap,” failed to connect, will.i.am changed up their sound and brought in Fergie. What they lost in critical acclaim they more than gained in record sales.

Al Jourgensen’s hard-driving industrial rock band started as a synthpop outfit in the early 1980s. Their debut 1983 LP, “With Sympathy,” is an homage to the British New Wave movement; the Chicago-raised Jourgensen even affected an English accent for authenticity’s sake. The album sold well in the U.S. college market, but Jourgensen wasn’t comfortable with the approach. In 1988, Ministry adopted the industrial sound that became their signature.

The Detroit-native Kid Rock was first sold as a hip-hop act by Jive Records in 1990 with the album “Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast”. Despite the producing efforts of major rap artists like Too Short and D-Nice, the LP flopped, forcing Kid Rock to an independent label for his next album, “The Polyfuze Method”. After that failure, Kid Rock decided to go in a rap-rock direction with “Devil Without a Cause” in 1998, and his career was transformed.

Before they were a hip-hop sensation, the Beastie Boys tried their hand at punk rock. After struggling to break through in the early 1980s, they started recording rap tracks like “Cooky Puss,” which led to them hiring a young DJ named Rick Rubin. This combination resulted in the LP “Licensed to Ill”, which, along with Run DMC’s “Walk This Way,” brought hip-hop to the mainstream. The Beasties subsequently revisited their punk proclivities on “Check Your Head.”

Hip-hop was in a male posturing rut when De La Soul surprised the world with the irreverent “Me Myself and I” in 1989. It was a nerdy, philosophical track built on the spine of a killer George Clinton sample, and it kicked opened the door for conscious-raising bands like A Tribe Called Quest and Arrested Development. But De La Soul didn’t want to be pigeonholed as an alternative act, so they burned down the “Daisy Age” with the more urban-skewing “De La Soul Is Dead”. Their mainstream audience didn’t follow, but the record was a full-blown masterpiece.

The Scottish singer-songwriter infamously challenged Bob Dylan’s nascent stardom in 1965 with the folky sound-alike “Catch the Wind.” The tension between the two artists was palpable, leading to Dylan embarrassing Donovan in D.A. Pennebaker’s classic documentary, “Don’t Look Back”. A year later, Donovan reinvented himself as a psychedelic pop act, and had a huge hit with “Sunshine Superman.”

Ever heard of Katy Hudson? Probably not, but that’s Katy Perry’s real name and the title of her debut LP released in 2001. Raised by born-again Christians, Perry started off as a gospel artist, but she couldn’t gain significant traction in that world. Seven years later, she reemerged with the salacious “I Kissed a Girl”, and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Goodbye, gospel music.

The hugely popular “Queen of Christian Pop” didn’t need to cross over to the mainstream, but she did it anyway in 1991 with the hit single “Baby Baby.” She never entirely abandoned her Christian pop roots, but the segue to secular music was treated as a betrayal by many of her hardcore fans. She might’ve lost a little support, but her new approach won her many new fans.

This Pacific Northwest band was initially a straight-up heavy metal act before trying on the conceptual ambitions of Pink Floyd with “Operation: Mindcrime.” No one expected something this heady from Queensryche, but the single “Silent Lucidity” was a massive hit, and they were taken seriously by critics for the first time in their career. They never matched the artistic heights of “Operation: Mindcrime," but their maturation as a band is still impressive.

The country music superstar (and restaurateur) began his career in the early 1960s as part of a jazz trio called The Bobby Doyle Three. When they broke up in 1965, Rogers was adrift until he hooked up with The First Edition. They hit the Billboard pop charts with “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” in 1967 (which would later be prominently featured in “The Big Lebowski”), but they also dabbled in country music with songs like “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” Rogers eventually left the band and crossed over permanently to country in the 1970s.

Bob Dylan’s songwriting style has never changed a great deal over the last six decades, but he did cause a stir early in his career when he transitioned from the traditional acoustic sound favored in folk music to a more rock-and-roll electric aesthetic. Die-hard folkies were enraged (Pete Seeger allegedly cut Dylan’s power cords with an axe at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival), but the change-up quickly earned him a larger audience.

Who? Only music geeks have heard of The Prime Movers, and only then because of their amazing contribution to the “Manhunter” soundtrack, “Strong As I Am.” But perhaps you’ve heard of a band called Dread Zeppelin? The Led Zeppelin cover group fronted by an Elvis impersonator that reinterpreted the songs in a reggae style? If you have, that band used to be The Prime Movers, and it’s one of the most drastic reinventions in music history.

This isn’t about their concept-album conversion with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” but rather their start as an underground band in the early 1960s. The Beatles were formed as a “skiffle” group, and quickly transitioned to rock-and-roll when they hit the West German club scene. They were mostly performing covers of songs like “My Bonnie Lass” when manager Brian Epstein discovered them, but it didn’t take long for John Lennon and Paul McCartney to realize their songwriting potential.

Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb spent most of the 1960s and recording pop music in the British Invasion style. They had hits like “I Started a Joke” and “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” but when the disco sensation hit the U.S., they dove headlong into it. Their music was the pulse to John Badham’s 1977 smash “Saturday Night Fever,” and from that point forward, they were inextricably linked to the disco genre.

Rod Stewart bounced around from band to band in the 1960s. He was a tremendously talented vocalist, but he couldn’t quite find his niche during the British Invasion craze. Ultimately, he went solo and recorded “Every Picture Tells a Story,” which is classic, bar-band rock-and-roll. But when disco got popular in the 1970s, he put out “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy”; the critics didn’t like it, but it launched him to superstardom.

There are two distinct periods for Genesis. They started as a prog rock band in the 1970s fronted by Peter Gabriel, but were eventually commandeered by drummer Phil Collins, who pushed the group in a more pop-rock direction. They broke through in 1979 with the hit “Misunderstanding,” and never flirted with a return to their prog rock roots. It turns out shorter, radio-friendly songs sell better than twelve-minute jams.

Amos was a piano prodigy, and her father, recognizing her unique talent, recorded demos and pushed them to record companies. In 1986, she formed a synthpop band called Y Kant Tori Read, and signed a contract with Atlantic Records. Their debut album flopped, and Amos went back to being a solo artist. Her piano-based sound was perfected on 1992’s “Little Earthquakes.”

Pantera has done its best to disown their early work, but there’s no denying that these notorious hard rockers started off as a glam metal band. They released their first album, “Metal Magic,” in 1983; Phil Anselmo had yet to join the band, and guitarist Dimebag Darrell was then known as “Diamond” Darrell. In their defense, Darrell was sixteen years old, so, as bad as the album may sound today, it’s a pretty impressive achievement for a high school kid.

Or should we say “Prince Rakeem”? That was RZA’s early moniker before he formed the Staten Island-based Wu-Tang Clan in 1992. There is a hint of the kung-fu obsessed RZA on the EP “Ooh, I Love You, Rakeem”, but he was generally indistinguishable from the hip-hop stars of the day. He hadn’t yet figured out his trademark sound, and his lyrics were mostly juvenile. That all changed after he beat an attempted murder charge in 1992. Once he became the RZA, he was older, wiser and flyer than the competition.