10 Musicians That Saved Their Careers By Changing Genres

When bands decide to change their sound, it normally comes after years of deciding what to do. No matter how much you might feel stagnant playing the same thing over and over again, the idea of changing up your style has to take time to gestate before becoming the norm. Or if you're Radiohead, just dive head first into the new genre and come out with a hit anyways.

Despite being pegged as one hit wonders at the beginning of the decade, Radiohead's '90s run yielded them as the saviors of rock and roll, with Thom Yorke being the next rock god. After OK Computer left fans speechless though, Yorke's vision for the future was to erase everything that they had been working towards for the past decade. Going into the recording of Kid A, almost everything changed, from the replacement of guitars with synthesizers and an overall more icy approach to songcrafting.

While sounding absolutely dreadful from a marketing standpoint, Kid A turned into the colossal second wind by planting a line in the sand for their fans. From the opening strains of Everything In Its Right Place, Radiohead gave a worthy send off to their old work all while reinventing what they would sound like down the road like on In Rainbows and A Moon Shaped Pool. Thom Yorke probably could have made a thousand more OK Computers at this point, but we would probably be worse off for it if it meant abandoning these gems.