4 Times Famous Rock Stars Decided To Do Something Wildly Different

If you want to make it big in the music industry, you have to do something really different. These four famous rock bands were already pretty well-established before they decided to put out some wildly different work… and some of them made less-than-ideal choices. Let’s look at four times famous rock stars decided to do something radically different with their music!

1. ‘Roll The Bones’ by Rush

Rush is a hard band to define. Rock is at their core, but they’ve never shied away from experimenting with various genres of music. If anything, that’s been their strong suit.

However, the band took things just slightly too far for the album Roll The Bones in 1991. It’s full of excellent rock breakdowns that Rush is very much known for. However, implementing Geddy Lee’s not-so-refined rap skills into this album was not it. The messages of this album are well-written, but Lee sounds more like someone’s dad trying to connect with the youngsters.

Fun fact: English comedian John Cleese was originally going to perform the rap vocals on the album as a joke, and we think that would have been a wildly better choice.

2. ‘Songs Of Innocence’ by U2

Rock stars occasionally try to be different through new and innovative ways of releasing or marketing their music. Unfortunately for U2, the decision to force every iTunes user to own Songs Of Innocence back in the 2010s backfired in a major way. If you were around during that debacle, you probably remember how hard it was to actually remove the album if you didn’t want it in your library.

Note for future musicians: If listeners want your music, they will buy it.

3. ‘Binaural’ by Pearl Jam

Plenty of rock bands aren’t afraid to get political nowadays, but the early 2000s was a weird time. Shortly after 9/11, the rock world was more or less quiet for a while, though that sentiment changed as blind patriotism fell out of favor and people started to get angry about the Iraq War.

Pearl Jam released Riot Act as a way to protest that very war. Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly refined. The message was certainly understandable and resonated with listeners, but the production was a mess. The songs had too-slow tempos, there were too many acoustic songs, and the album sorely misused the talents of all of Pearl Jam’s musicians at the time. Though, it’s worth noting that some listeners absolutely adorable the album.

4. ‘Cut The Crap’ by The Clash

Punk rock stars and bands were constantly shooting to do something different in the early era of the genre. However, few managed to do it like The Clash. They built up genre-specific walls only to tear them down through the years. 

In another act of doing things differently, Joe Strummer opted to fire Mick Jones in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, this wasn’t exactly a great idea. Without Jones’ influence, what remained of the band released Cut The Crap, which featured a wildly different version of The Clash. And it sounds more like a death knell than anything. 

It’s still a hard album to listen to for diehard Clash fans. It also ended up being the band’s very last album in 1985.

Photo by Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images for PSFF

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