10 Rock Bands That Wrote Songs In Different Genres

In the waning days of classic rock, we needed something like punk to pick us up off our ass. Rock had been starting to get stale, and hearing these blown out amplifiers with songs that were being played from the heart was a lot more inspiring than the likes of Emerson, Lake and Palmer could ever hope to be. Then again, not every punk song has to be all about the loud guitars, and the Clash were already ready to experiment on their first project.

Halfway through the record, the band strips away all of the balls to the wall sounds of songs like Janie Jones for Police and Thieves, which is a straight up reggae cover song that works surprisingly well for them. While these two genres might feel like they're on two separate ends of the musical spectrum, the subject matter is the common thread here, with a message about police stirring up havoc in town gelling perfectly with the same guy who wrote the song White Riot.

The next few years proved that this wasn't just a one off for the band either, taking the sounds of reggae and interpolating it in different ways, from the different rhythms behind the experimental tracks on London Calling to eventually making dub sounds on their massive three disc experience Sandinista. Whereas most of their contemporaries burnt out way too quickly, it's this kind of genre switching that sustained the Clash up until their final days.