10 Rock Stars That Went Country (And Nailed It)

9. Social Distortion

For as far away as they seem, there's a lot of common threads between the worlds of country and punk rock. Even though one is definitely more aggressive than the other, both genres are made up of average joes who are just looking to write songs celebrating the lifestyle that they're a part of. And while the punk/country sounds have been a lot more prevalent these days, Social Distortion was making it looked cool almost 40 years ago.

Though Mike Ness may have started out as part of the hardcore scene, you can already see his knack for country tinged songwriting showing up as far back as their second album. If you were to listen to something like Prison Bound, it almost sounds like a Johnny Cash song if the Man in Black had been born a few years too late and had grown up listening to the Misfits. For Ness, it's more than just a love affair...it's a little bit of an obsession.

When you go back and listen to some of the deep cuts on albums like the self titled, songs like Sick Boys have that same bounce that you would find in a traditional saloon song, down to the "o-ay-o" hook line. This was just another sign of how the genre was going to evolve in the next few years. Punk had definitely changed in the '80s, and the modern outlaw was more likely to wear a leather jacket than a cowboy hat.