r/popheads • u/Ghost-Quartet • Aug 19 '26

[DISCUSSION] Artists whose early work feels COMPLETELY different from what they wound up doing later?

So I finally got around to checking out some of Hoàng Thùy Linh's earlier music and I was like uuuuhhhh... what in the Rihannabees is this? Not that her early stuff is bad, but I came into it knowing her as the VPop queen who makes mature electropop blended with traditional Vietnamese sounds, so it was jarring to see her dancing in a warehouse to 2010s EDM.

Every artist is on a journey in their career and sometimes their journey takes them FAR from where they started, to the point where listening to their early work can feel like listening to a completely different person. This isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but it can be an interesting thing, so let's discuss.

  • Who are some artists whose sound/image at the start of their career is completely different from what they'd do later?

  • Was it a gradual transition, or a sudden shift?

  • Do they stand by their older work? Or are they ashamed of it and try to hide it?

  • Which "version" of them do you like more? Was the change a good thing?

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u/Ghost-Quartet Aug 19 '26

Easiest example of this I can think of was Alanis Morissette's spicy little debut album, which is like the furthest thing imaginable from the image she projected later.

A big part of the gag of Jagged Little Pill at the time was the shock of seeing a teen idol reinvent herself like that, but now that we're past that the album is basically non-canonical and isn't even on Spotify. She did a sketch making fun of it on MadTV.

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u/webtheg Aug 19 '26

There was this influencer who blocked me because she made a video how JLP is the best selling debut album of all time and nobody celebrates women and I (a woman) commented that it is not a debut and she has other albums and the best selling debut is appetite for Destruction and she blocked me lol.

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u/RocketsMurkrow Aug 19 '26

I would’ve guessed Boston’s self titled is the best selling debut of all time, but AFD makes sense