10 Rock Music Bands That Replaced Their Singer

There’s no denying the power behind having a frontman in hard rock. In the grand tradition of people like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin, the singer was normally thought of as the de facto mouthpiece of the band, belting their heart out night after night and becoming the go-to personality whenever they left the stage. So…where do you go when that guy walks out the door?

Whereas the loss of a lead singer would normally mean death for any aspiring rock stars, these bands just kept on doing their thing and hired a new singer in their place. And by all accounts, it actually worked. Going through every single one of these acts, each of them were able to find success with the new voice at the front, integrating them into the band in a natural way and shifting their style around to fit with the new guy’s voice.

Hell, in some cases, there have been arguments that replacing the singer in each of these acts was actually an improvement, enhancing their musicianship in the process and even managing to get heavier with age in some cases. The singer may be considered the center of the entire operation, but if you have a sturdy enough foundation, you can make it work with anyone behind the mic.

The entire legacy of the Misfits almost seems to go hand in hand with what Glenn Danzig was doing. Becoming known as the metal version of Elvis Presley, the magnetic stage presence that he brought to the horror punk gods became one of their main calling cards in the early days, from the straight up crooning happening in parts of Hybrid Moments to the screams of Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?. So when the Dark King of Rock and Roll walks out the door, it felt like the Misfits were pretty much going to die with him.

From day one, Glenn was never just the singer of the band, always writing most of the songs and bringing them in for the band to play and arrange into classic Misfits tunes. Since his later projects like Samhain seemed to be him mining the same kind of dark aesthetic, it was time for someone else to take the reins, and Jerry Only ended up becoming the de facto leader of the band, drafting in Michale Graves to sing behind the mic.

While you can definitely tell Graves is trying his best Danzig impression on a majority of his songs, the quality was still there across every single track, like the sticky hook of Dig Up Her Bones. Glenn was now MIA, but the Misfits were getting their sound down to a science now, with loud guitars and sounding like the best hard rock joint to come rising out of the crypt.