When an artist is struggling to find an audience, or if it wants to keep the audience it already has, there's always the temptation to "sell out" and soften its sound in order to maximize mainstream accessibility. However, these five artists did just the opposite by remaining popular even as their music became more bizarre.
1. Radiohead
Apart from some lackluster songwriting, the reason why Radiohead's debut album Pablo Honey is held in such low regard is because it sounds like it could have come from any alternative rock band in 1993: moody lyrics, noisy guitars, loud/quiet/loud structures, all of the '90s trademarks can be found. However, it wasn't until Radiohead abandoned traditional guitar rock in favor of more electronic, psychedelic textures that it became one of the world's biggest bands. In fact, Radiohead's first album to top the Billboard charts was Kid A, one of the most experimental albums to ever come from a major label act.
2. The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips was always a weird band, as its early album covers can attest, but the band remains relevant to this day because of its constant exploration of new sounds and experiments, and has become even stranger in the process. While the Flaming Lips early albums were very psychedelic, this psychedelia came in the form of the standard alternative rock style of the time. As the band signed to a major label and developed musically throughout the '90s, it began pursuing more experimental styles of songwriting and production, such as the four-disc Zaireeka, or the synth-based dream pop of The Soft Bulletin, or the doomy electronics of The Terror.
3. Of Montreal
One of the great things about Of Montreal's early music is its embrace of classic, early 20th century pop styles through the perspective of a lo-fi indie band. The songs were weird and vaguely psychedelic, but they had the kind of chord progressions and melodies that your grandparents would probably enjoy (and I don't mean that in a bad way). Then, in the mid-2000s, Of Montreal completely flipped: Instead of wanting to be Paul McCartney, frontman Kevin Barnes wanted to be Prince, and left behind the band's early twee sound to become a psychedelic electro-funk star. The music became dense, the concepts became abstract, and the song titles became unpronounceable, and yet Of Montreal is infinitely more popular now than is was in the '90s.
4. Kanye West
Kanye West first rose to prominence as Jay-Z's producer, and his debut album The College Dropout stuck to the same soul-based, radio-friendly sound as his work on Jay-Z's The Blueprint. Kanye remained innovative yet accessible for his next two albums Late Registration and Graduation, but for his next three, things got a little weird. 808s & Heartbreak was icy electropop, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was a lush, maximalist monster, and Yeezus was a harsh, industrial terror. Though his earliest albums are his most commercially successful, Kanye remains more famous (and notorious) than ever.
5. The Beatles
When you're already the world's most popular band by a considerable margin, you can pretty much make whatever kind of music you want, and luckily for everyone, The Beatles quickly realized this. Instead of continuing with the kind of brilliant but artistically inconsequential songs that brought about Beatlemania, the band gave us psychedelic nonsense like "I Am The Walrus" and sophisticated orchestral pop like "She's Leaving Home," all while remaining the world's biggest band.
What other artists remained popular even as they made strange music? Let us know in the comments section!
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