10 Rock Bands That Had Alter Egos

The term rock and roll tends to put most people in a little bit of a box. For a genre that's all about breaking down what you can do with a couple of chords, it gets a little frustrating when you find yourself playing the exact same song over and over again. If you decide to go in a different direction though, it doesn't hurt to make a completely different moniker as well.

While none of these bands technically have any problems with their old sounds, these were the different personas that they decided to take on when it came time to play something a little bit different. Then again, there are a few ways you can go about doing this. On one hand, you can go the way of the concept record and make an album that's very much in a similar style.

Other times though, people end up creating another band entirely, with everything switched up and the band playing to strengths that most of us didn't even know they had at the time. For all of the great music they gave us already, this was where these acts stepped up to much different territory. We weren't just dealing with a fun band anymore. No...these were now artists of our generation, and they were about to be treated accordingly.

The start of the millennium wasn't necessarily all that kind to the former Britpop rockers of the '90s. You had most of the bands that had either broken up around this time, or there were the giants like Oasis that were trying their best to work their way through some rough patches in their career. Though Damon Albarn may have had some tension in Blur, his turn as a cartoon worked just as well with the new crowd.

Going down the rabbit hole of more experimental music, Gorillaz was always looked at as a side project in the early days before becoming one of the biggest highlights of Damon's career. Working with famed cartoonist Jamie Hewlett, everything that comes out of 2-D's mouth is Damon, bringing with him elements of trip hop, rap, and whatever other genres that he's thinking of doing at the time.

For any other artist, this would have been a recipe for disaster, and yet Damon has seemed to make a second career out of it, with most music fans knowing him more for Gorillaz these days than anything he did with Blur. Hell, the band ended up being so successful it may have single handedly ended the Battle of Britpop, with Noel Gallagher eventually guesting on the Gorillaz track We Got the Power. If anything, this offers another lane for musicians like Albarn in the future. Just because you grow up doesn't mean you lose your creativity, so it's best to embrace the digital every now and again.