10 artists that went against their audience

Still, it’s hard to blame any of the artists in question for doing what they did. Everyone’s journey is about musical evolution, and even if it leaves a few mouths on the floor gawking at what they have heard, it’s important for people to test their audience in some respects to see what they can do. After all, people don’t know what you want until you give it to them, so why not be as original as possible?

While some artists never truly recovered from those massive switch-ups, the ones that stayed in it for the long haul created tunes that marked a definitive line in the sand for where music was going to go. They had spent their entire lives trying to reach the top of the heap, but once they saw how windy it was at the top, it didn’t take them long to start toying with the supposed superfans of their music.

10 acts that went against their audience:

10. Green Day

There’s an unspoken rule of punk that no major label band has ever been able to remain true to their roots. After all, the genre was born out of the underground, and if anyone tries to sell out for the big bucks of a major label, they are either only in it for the money or need to be stamped out by those who consider themselves the true connoisseurs of what punk rock should be. Although Green Day was already on the verge of sell-out territory by daring to have pop hooks in their music, they weren’t afraid of taking some jabs back at their audience as well.

Because listening to Dookie, all their local punk scene heard was their favourite band getting candified for the mainstream, even making the new version of ‘Welcome to Paradise’ sound somewhat listenable. When Green Day went back in the studio for Insomniac, though, they swore to make the kind of album that would leave their competition in the dust, crafting songs like ‘Geek Stink Breath’ to be even more aggressive than before and penning ‘86’ as a direct ‘fuck you’ letter to everyone who called them sell outs.

And that kind of creative road only continued going into the late 1990s, featuring them maturing by leaps and bounds until they finally hit on a rock opera with American Idiot. Billie Joe Armstrong hadn’t changed his writing style by any means, but there’s a good chance that he knew he was stirring the pot of the punk underground the minute that he recorded songs like ‘Good Riddance.’

9. Pete Townshend

According to Pete Townshend’s plan, The Who was never meant to last for more than a couple of months. Since most of the rock outfits of the time would have a few hits and then become quickly forgotten, it wasn’t out of the question for Townshend to quit the group and spend the rest of his life going to art college and becoming immersed in genres like theatre. Once he decided to bring the theatre to the rock and roll stage, though, he suddenly had fans who didn’t seem to pay attention to the irony of it all.

The whole basis behind Tommy might have been ambitious, but what Townshend was doing did have a serious undercurrent that went right over people’s heads. He wasn’t trying to be some kind of holy master of rock and roll, and since his need to reinvent himself fell apart on Lifehouse, he did manage to save one of the mission statements of that album on the song ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.

Compared to every other rock anthem around that time, Townshend is talking about how the heroes that people look up to, like him, shouldn’t be revered, knowing that the new boss is the same as the old boss but tweaked slightly. And yet the song is still heralded as one of the best songs of the 1970s and launched Townshend to the kind of heights reserved for only rock and roll heavyweights. Something tells me the irony isn’t lost on him over the years, either.

8. Kurt Cobain

It’s impossible to quantify the kind of massive rush that happened with Nirvana circa 1992. The entire idea of grunge hadn’t even become a popular term, and yet Kurt Cobain had turned into the voice of his generation, willing to scream out in anguish about the problems going on in his life. Once those cool indie kids in the crowd were replaced by the meatheaded jocks of the world, though, Cobain knew that he needed to put a dividing line between himself and the real fans on In Utero.

While it would be a gross generalisation to say that Cobain tried to destroy his goodwill on the third album, it’s not like this was his first rodeo. The band had already begun distancing themselves from Nevermind when ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ came out, and when putting together the CD booklet for Incesticide, Cobain made it abundantly clear that he wanted nothing to do with the kind of misogynistic wastes of space that he saw populating some of their concerts once they hit it big.

And revisiting In Utero, you can tell that Cobain was pissed, practically making art rock songs like ‘Milk It’ to make sure that no one who passively listened to them in the past ever listened to them again. While nothing could really dull their shine in the 1990s, Cobain knew that he could have control over his music over anything else. And as we will see, he wasn’t the only one in the Seattle scene needing to take control again.

7. Kid Cudi

There was a common belief for years that rap and rock simply did not mix. While there have been exceptions to every rule in music, the only cases where both genres managed to clash in a way that didn’t seem cringy tended to either be militant acts like Rage Against the Machine or bands that emphasised those differences like Linkin Park. Since most of nu-metal ended up looking incredibly embarrassing in retrospect, it was at least novel to see Kid Cudi go in the opposite direction on Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven.

Most rockstars are normally the ones willing to embrace both styles first, but Cudi’s attempt to make a grunge record had the semblance of something new to it when he first began. Unfortunately, the man had no business picking up a guitar in the studio on this record, making songs that sounded like someone spewing out their innermost feelings on tape in the worst way possible in a voice that was the equivalent of a drunk Eddie Vedder trying his best not to fall over on the floor.

That’s not to say that Cudi can’t make those kinds of introspective songs. Half of his Man on the Moon was about exploring the deep recesses of his mind, but when that kind of openhearted honesty is translated into rock without the proper window dressing, all we are left with is what rock and roll probably sounds like to all of those sheltered grandparents who have never listened to the genre in their lives.

6. David Bowie

The whole point behind David Bowie’s music was to never repeat the same album. There are certainly elements in his projects that are similar, but the core ethos behind every one of his greatest records came from how much of a departure it was from the one before. So while seeing him in all of his forms has been a delight, one of the starkest contrasts that he ever made came when he decided to embrace kraut rock.

Because when Bowie first started, he was the epitome of everything that androgynous rock and roll should be, complete with the flaming red hair and rock and roll posturing. And then, in one fell swoop, Station to Station came out with him sounding incredibly clinical, coming up with the persona of ‘The Thin White Duke’ in a freshly tailored suit talking about the occult and what can happen when giving into the side effects of cocaine.

While this would help get things started for Bowie’s famous Berlin trilogy of albums, that didn’t stop people from realising the massive contrast on display. Everyone had come to know Bowie as the consummate frontman who invented glam rock, but this was him reminding everyone that they should never get too attached to their heroes.

5. Radiohead

In the aftermath of Nirvana, no one really knew what to do anymore. The unbearable weight of fame was never going to work with the rest of the grunge scene, but as soon as Radiohead came out of the one-hit wonder shadows with albums like The Bends and Ok Computer, people realised that they were listening to the next version of U2 that would make rock far more exciting. But they already had their chance, and Thom Yorke was already multiple steps ahead of everyone.

Since he had burned himself out on all things rock and roll, Kid A was designed to remove all sense of melody from Radiohead’s music. Now everything that mattered was rhythm, and that meant songs that needed to take time to unfold and weren’t the most straightforward from one track to the next, like the massive horn section blaring out on ‘The National Anthem’ or the sample carrying most of ‘Idioteque.’

Even though Radiohead are far from the most inventive band when it comes to changing genres, going against the audience doesn’t get any more stark than this. Everyone expected them to release the 2000s answer to something like The Joshua Tree, but from the minute that ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ began, fans knew that they were in for a wild ride that rock and roll away.

4. Pearl Jam

Of all the grunge bands that rose to prominence, Pearl Jam is only second to Nirvana in terms of most uncomfortable ascent. Although Eddie Vedder was welcomed with open arms as the new kid in Seattle, seeing him suddenly look like the seasoned veteran never sat well with him, especially since the public didn’t understand the art they were making in videos like ‘Jeremy.’ No matter how many interviews they turned down or songs that became major hits, Vedder knew he needed some control back, and the late 1990s saw him tell everyone that fame wasn’t for him.

While Vitalogy remained one of the better releases in the fallout of Kurt Cobain’s tragic death, the next few years contained moments where Vedder started making songs to deliberately lose their audience. Compared to the hooks on ‘Better Man’, there weren’t nearly as many standout moments on No Code, which served as a moodier listen that had songs that catered to Vedder’s less personal side on tracks like ‘Present Tense’.

Even though Yield was a decent return to form, Pearl Jam has still learned to play with their audience from time to time, like making art-rock adventures on albums like Binaural or Riot Act. The whole point behind Pearl Jam was giving the alt-rock crowd some classic rock chops, but for everyone painting Vedder as the 1990s Jim Morrison, he was far more comfortable channelling that David Byrne sense of weirdness.

3. Fleetwood Mac

The late 1960s music scene always seemed to be split right down the middle. Most people were still riding the high of the Summer of Love, but plenty of artists were looking to follow the lead of The Rolling Stones and make songs that catered to the blues legends of days gone by. Although Fleetwood Mac didn’t need much of an introduction in terms of bluesy chops, the thought of them one day making an album like Rumours felt almost unthinkable at the time.

Despite having a modest following thanks to hits like ‘Oh Well’ and ‘Black Magic Woman,’ the loss of Peter Green led to them switching things up multiple times before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were brought in. Even though they may as well have been a different band, hearing them carry on with a rootsy approach to rock and roll is what helped turn them into superstars and no doubt enraged fans who had grown up listening to something like ‘Rattlesnake Shake’.

But it’s not like the band were committing musical heresy by any stretch. This was now simply a commercial take on what they had already been doing, and even if it was a far cry from the blues, it was hardly that much of a problem when songs like ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘Dreams’ became the soundtrack of the 1970s.

2. John Lennon

Considering his position in the greatest band on Earth, it’s still shocking how little John Lennon cared about what people thought of him. Outside of his ‘popular than Jesus’ that was taken out of context, Lennon was never shy about saying what might be considered offensive or go against what the popular opinion was. And right as The Beatles were fracturing, nothing was more opposite to their strengths than his experimental albums with Yoko Ono.

While Ono is far from the homewrecker who murdered the Beatles’ dream that so many people believe her to be, she’s also far from the best collaborator with Lennon. Their experiments trying to make avant-garde music are certainly interesting for what they are, but it’s not shocking why most people get through maybe two minutes of Life With the Lions before they realise it’s not going to get any better and rip their headphones out.

You can’t really blame them for wanting to chronicle their love on vinyl in some way, but this is the kind of experiment that should have been kept in the vaults the same way ‘Carnival of Light’ has been for the past half-century. The Beatles were no strangers to weird sounds, but this is the most audible thud to come out of the Fab Four’s solo ventures.

1. Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan has practically made a career out of being somewhat of a contrarian. Looking at every one of his interviews and hearing the way that he goes back and forth about what his songs mean, he’s more than happy to either put someone in their place or put up a smokescreen when they to figure out the true man behind songs like ‘Masters of War.’ But even when he was on top of the world, Dylan wasn’t about to stop ruffling feathers when he wanted to.

Because despite being a folk-rock hero, Dylan was attuned to rock and roll, and Bringing It All Back Home practically served as a warning shot of what was to come. And by the time he went electric, fans didn’t even realise what they seeing, looking at this foundational piece of music history as an example of Dylan prostituting himself for the masses and trying to water down his sound.

All of the lyrical wordplay was still here, though, and considering how much Dylan’s star power was about to grow, he wasn’t about to stop going against the grain, even releasing Self Portrait in an attempt to make something deliberately ramshackle. He may have been looking to shake off the shackles of fame, but once someone hits a generation right on their wound, the rest of the world was never going to let go.

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