3 Rock Stars Who Failed at Going Country

Venturing into a new genre when you’re already well-established in one particular sound is not easy to do. I can’t really fault the following three rock stars who failed (more or less) to go country. They ran the risk of disappointing established fans and failing to pique the interest of new fans with their genre switches. Thankfully, they eventually went back to what they did best: Good ol’ rock music. Let’s dive in, shall we?

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1. Van Morrison

Van Morrison released Pay The Devil back in 2006. It was (wait for it) his 32nd album of his career. Naturally, the man known for his singer/songwriter stylings likely ran out of inspiration in his established genre, so he made a move toward country music. It actually did pretty well, debuting at no. 7 on the Top Country Albums chart. 

However, some fans were disappointed by the lack of original material. Pay The Devil is made up of mostly country cover songs, with only three original tunes on the record. Morrison’s follow-up album, Keep It Simple, has some light country elements, but it’s mainly a jazz and folk record. The album after that follow-up has no country elements at all. Morrison’s dip into the country sound was quite good, but he did ultimately fail at going country permanently.

2. Bret Michaels

While some might know him as a reality TV star, Bret Michaels was a pretty big rock star back in the 1980s with his band Poison. Are one point, he attempted to take on a country music career and left the world of hard rock and glam metal behind. The compilation record True Grit was his 2015 country-rock release, and it features a wealth of already released country-rock tunes from Michaels’ previous albums, guest collaborations, and just a handful of at-the-time-new songs. “Girls On Bars”, however, was dunked on by fans of both country and rock music due to its lyrics.

Michaels has since released a few one-off singles since True Grit was released, but his music career as a whole has more or less stopped since that record came out.

3. Steven Tyler

Like most famous members of rock bands, Steven Tyler decided to release a solo record back in the day. That solo record was his first and last (as of 2025), and that whole era of Tyler being on his own is a pretty well-known example of rock stars who failed to go country.

Tyler released We’re All Somebody From Somewhere back in 2016. Aerosmith fans were expecting a rock album, naturally. However, what they got was a country-rock record with a lot of blues elements. Unfortunately for Tyler, the reviews were very mixed. While the album did debut at no. 1 on the Top Country Albums, the critical and fan reception of the album was not exactly great. Tyler went right back to rockin’ out with Aerosmith, and he hasn’t released another solo album since.

Photo by Mike Slaughter/Toronto Star via Getty Images

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