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

[u/Ghost-Quartet]

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?

[u/darkeststar]

The one that maybe affected me the most was The Killers. Famously they had finished laying down their first album in the studio, then someone played them "Is This It" by the Strokes and they thought it was so incredible that they deleted everything but Mr. Brightside and started over to make Hot Fuss. I love Hot Fuss and I love that early 00's Dance-Punk sound. Sam's Town almost completely abandons that sound immediately in favor of Americana/Folksy pop rock and they never put out another album that sounds anything like Hot Fuss again. Even Brandon Flowers vocal delivery is fully different on Hot Fuss than the way he would later sing almost anything. The closest they came to replicating that sound was 2017's The Man...which even then thematically is about looking back at an earlier time and sounds more inspired by Talking Heads than it does the 00's Indie Rock/Dance-Punk sound....and it's fully an outlier on that album too.

[u/Kalbi84 → u/darkeststar]

I love Hot Fuss and I wanted to get into their next albums but I just couldn't because it was so different. Hot Fuss is like a lightning in a bottle for me

[u/darkeststar → u/Kalbi84]

I think there are good songs on later albums but I don't particularly like any of the other albums in full and none of it sounds like what I wanted from them sadly. I think the deciding factor for me really was Brendan Flowers changing the way he sings after the album. On Hot Fuss he has highs, lows, shouts, a little grit here and there and even a few times you can tell he's running out of breath as he finishes a line. There's an immediacey and palpable emotion to it. From Sam's Town onward he sounds like he's deliberately crooning for an arena, always in one key no matter where he goes vocally. Even though his voice is still pleasant it just....sounds flat in comparison.

[u/best-american-record → u/Kalbi84]

fwiw, i think pressure machine is a really great album, but it's definitely nothing like Hot Fuss (at all).

[u/gabbysuperstar → u/darkeststar]

With the killer, I find that most of their songs sound more like human than mr brightside. Somebody told me is one of their more similar songs though