Strike a Pose: Most Chameleon-Like Pop Stars Ever

Thought there'd be a thread on this--"chameleon" didn't turn up anything. I was thinking about the idea during the Bowie film. "Pose" shouldn't be taken as criticism--just needed a title.

Which pop stars have most regularly and drastically reinvented themselves? I mostly mean in terms of appearance, but appearance/music usually go together. Bowie and Madonna would be at the top of the list, I think. Dylan qualifies. For me, Neil Young--but if you don't care about Neil Young, he's probably always just Neil Young. I'm not especially attentive to Beyonce or Taylor Swift, but maybe both or one of them.

My nomination for the least chameleon-like pop star ever would be Paul McCartney. Except for the occasional moustache, he's pretty much been Paul through and through since day one.

Björk ... who is also always recognizably Björk

You could say the same of Madonna (and maybe everyone I mentioned): it's not like she ever stopped being Madonna. I thought of Prince, too, but I don't know--I think he went long stretches without changing too much.

Taylor Swift has done it like twice, yeah?

Scott Weiland was able to change his voice and appearance pretty dramatically. He would go from being a Rob Halford-like metal singer to a cross-dresser with apparent ease, and his voice would modulate accordingly.

Sparks?

beck

Robert Smith looks like an old woman neighborhood kids would tell stories about being a witch. He’s basically unrecognizable now.

Gary Numan used to change his image pretty much every year in the '80s.

Lou Reed in the '70s, but I think that stopped once he became regular-guy Lou.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-2-3JUim54

After Bowie and Madonna, you basically run into a long list of people who got different haircuts or started wearing nicer clothes. Going full chameleon happens less often than you think it does.

Those two stand apart, for sure. Neil Young in terms of his music, but in the way he presents himself, much less often.

Honestly, Madonna's chameleonic qualities are overstated. She works with different producers and tweaks her sound from year to year to keep current, but there are no wholesale shifts or shocking left turns in her catalog. You could play any Madonna song next to any other and nobody would say, "Wait — that's Madonna?" If she had ever made a country album, or pulled a Tin Machine, insisting, "No, no, I'm just the singer in the band now," that would be another matter. I mean, you wouldn't call Janet Jackson or Britney Spears chameleons for recording songs with hard rock guitars. It's just standard pop practice — give 'em something new, while sounding enough like yourself that you don't confuse anybody about who it actually is.

Or maybe it's because Bowie and Madonna are "respected" more that they get called chameleons, where someone like Tom Jones — who started out doing hammy pop-soul and gooey showbiz ballads, moved into country in the Seventies and Eighties, then went electropop and more recently has done a bunch of weird half-retro albums that sound like a cross between Keith Richards' solo material and Tom Waits' Island albums — just gets shrugged off as inconsequential.

Speaking of, how about Tom Waits? I wouldn’t call him a chameleon but he sure did reinvent himself from the 70s to the 80s.

Madonna did the “I’m Breathless” soundtrack stuff, which I guess was a left-field move, but Lady Gaga seems more genuinely chameleon-like in terms of her artistry.

"Sparks?"

that dude has had the same moustache for 100 years

On the Tom Jones tip, there's also Michael Bolton. He went from a Joe Cocker-esque rockin' r&b guy to a puffy-headed AOR guy in the early 80s to a smooth crooner guy in the late 80s and beyond. Forever unheralded, but he's tried some things on for size.

"Sparks?"

that dude has had the same moustache for 100 years

lol then maybe most changes in musical style while keeping more or less the same appearance

the thing with madonna is there are a lot of milder left turns in her catalogue rather than total 180s. she repeatedly reinvented her sound to stay current without ever really abandoning the idea of madonna.

gaga tried with joanne but that wasn't really a success

sparks are certainly musically so which is a more interesting question than that of personas

Gaga also does the Tony Bennett stuff, though (and does a reinvention need to be a commercial success to qualify?)

yeah gaga has range with that & a star is born but the bennett stuff is just like, a side project really. idk that feels like a different sort of thing to madonna/bowie etc.

i meant joanne was more of an artistic failure (though it also underperformed commercially) & then she just pivoted back to her usual persona for chromatica rather than another attempt at reinvention

one recent pop star who actually fits this quite well is miley cyrus, she's pivoted with her image & sound so many times now

chameleon-like isn’t quite the right word, but kanye . . . has done a lot of different things

there were some bigger shifts earlier on but he long ago settled into just being kanye

Rosalía is pretty much adhering to the one-sound one-look thing, just like Björk.

How about Roisin Murphy ?

Counter-examples: Autechre, Nick Cave.

murphy hasn't really made any such left-turns, she just tweaks the pop vs. arty dial each time

Tim Buckley's style changed quite a bit over time but I think he was never interested in clothing so didn't reflect in his own personal aesthetics. Which might be where the contrast lies, few people think in terms of package of both look and sound. Or if they do are dressed by outsiders so actually being autonomous on both fronts is pretty rare.
Bowie did magpie quite heavily from what he was seeing and hearing around him but did so in a way that kept him a bit ahead of the curve. I think a lot of people will change their looks a lot but that seems to be following trends or getting somebody else to do the dressing. I think when and where Bowie did that he was picking who the stylists were and probably learning from them in the process.
IT's one thing that kept him vital for all the time that he was. What he brought to things, even if it was something that one couldn't put a finger on it did mainly maintain some level of quality. Was his mutant power in managing to keep things apparently coherent and keep things apparently running smoothly or at least when he wasn't coked out of his head and even then he was creating some interesting work as well as presumably unintentional headlines.

So finding other artists that fit into an invented group of mighty mavericks that don't fit in but do create or at least channel trends is probably difficult. Since one factor is their uniqueness.
That magpie ability is really good if one can do it well. I think it ties in with an attention to detail which is what locks things together for however long theiy're used, like.

"Sparks?"

that dude has had the same moustache for 100 years

To be fair, he switched from the toothbrush moustache to a pencil moustache around the mid-80s. A true chameleon!

JUst gone back to reread the OP and thinking that I thought Paul was actually the Beatle most open to avant garde music at the time. Not sure to what degree his output reflected that and he did seem to be the guy with the best melodic sense didn't he?
But i think he was actually checking out more live and recorded avant stuff than the others which presumably wasn't something he would have been exposed to at the start. Though that could be a projection.

Three thoughts:

Remember, in the wild, real-life chameleons don't change colour to impress everybody, but to blend in with their surroundings. So a true pop chameleon might be the artist who changes to blend in with the zeitgeist and never gets called out on it. I'm reminded of my comment on the Paul Revere & the Raiders thread: "I was impressed by their shamelessness about copying whatever had been on the AM radio six months earlier."

My nomination for the least chameleon-like pop star ever would be Paul McCartney.

I see what you mean, especially when you figure that he's also the worst actor in the Beatles. But it's interesting to consider that this "stolidity" in his image wasn't read by the critics as "authenticity". And he made at least a couple of albums anonymously, so he didn't feel a need to rely on an ever-present image of Paul when presenting work to the public.

"Chameleonic" is usually applied in a positive light, but to what extent does it overlap with pandering? I remember Dave Marsh making a comparison that while Bowie "abandoned" his old audience every time he made a swerve, Springsteen "carried his audience" with him from change to change.

I don't think Springsteen is a true chameleon, though. He tries out different styles and influences and voices and so on, and every album is strikingly different, but there's something unchanging about his personality and preoccupations that comes through every time. I feel the same way about Taylor Swift - she reinvents her style but not herself, if that makes sense.

Todd Rundgren reinvented himself like every year in the 70s. then actually started calling himself "TR-i" when he was doing his rap albums (!!). that probably counts.

I feel like this thread (perhaps necessarily) is a bit unclear as to what is being asked for, in part because Bowie in particular embraces at least three different notions of “chameleon” - abrupt or at least considered stylistic shifts responding to external trends, albums with very strongly defined and unified visual and thematic as well as sonic characters which frequently seem singular within the context of the artist’s broader discography, and at times the unveiling of actual characters or personas into which the “real” David Bowie has been sublimated (or so we are supposed to think: obviously one can readily pull apart any handwaving distinctions between real and constructed here).

Lots of artists embrace some of these qualities but few embrace all three, or at least not with the frequency and deliberateness that Bowie did.

Despite the naysaying upthread I would say that Madonna fits relatively well here: there is a definite sense that, say, the Madonnas of Erotica and Ray of Light were deliberately constructed on the basis of all three of the strands above.

Perhaps the distinguishing feature (and this applies even more strongly to someone like Taylor Swift) is that Madonna’s characters are still all intended (or at least presented) to be facets of herself. If there is meta-narrative at work it is that the sexual libertine and the earth mother (and so on) are all different aspects of the complexity of Madonna the person.

It’s rare for an artist who continually reinvents not only their style but also the presentation of performative character to also maintain the implied internal distance from their own output in the way that Bowie did (put another way, those who do the latter rarely bother so much with the former).

Sometimes I start threads where I'm not 100% clear on what I'm looking for...I was, initially, thinking mostly in terms of how the person presents him or herself to the world, but with Bowie and Madonna, at least, drastic changes in appearance were usually accompanied by clear changes in musical direction. Some don't think Madonna belongs, but for me, she does: early-MTV Madonna is noticeably different than True Blue Madonna is noticeably different than "Justify My Love" Madonna is noticeably different than "Ray of Light" Madonna, etc. Past those two, I didn't have really have any clear idea as to who else belongs--I was interested in suggestions.

Neil Young did 180s with his music all the time, and sometimes there were accompanying changes in appearance, but...I don't know: take Tonight's the Night" Neil, get him to a barber, give him a change of clothes, and it's Rust Never Sleeps Neil--it's not all that drastic. Folksinger Dylan to 1966 rock-star Dylan to John Wesley Harding Dylan fits both criteria, I think, but changes are less frequent and less drastic after that.

I'd say St Vincent fits the bill. Especially with the clear differentiation between Annie Clark and the evolving St Vincent personas. It's all rather deliberate and not always successful (the Daddy's Home '70s rocker schtick is particularly bad).

xp I kinda agree w/unperson that most of Madonna's changes don't really seem all that drastic, but maybe that's b/c I grew up with her so it all fits under the "Madonna" rubric in my head.

I do think the question is a bit difficult as it’s very general, but how about the Isley Brothers? Over 50 years, they moved with the development of US black music and had chart success with a lot of different styles from the 1950s to the 2000s.

isley brothers is a good one

how about kelis?

don't know much about bowie but the didn't distance between his personas become part of his persona - at least eventually, at least in the minds of critics? also like madonna and others mentioned the voice provides continuity even when nothing else does

idk does this just mean versatile and eclectic and ever-changing or does it mean disappearing into different things that are almost unrecognisable as being the from same artist? it's much harder to think of people in the latter category

https://www.expressandstar.com/resizer/QflCxAOg3CvMNTjib-0v44UsT9M=/1200x0/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/mna/CTN4XZL5KFDJPCCBTTELAU5UMY.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IMcecKLllsU/hqdefault.jpg

"does this just mean versatile and eclectic"--I probably didn't communicate it that well, but I did mean more than that. Appearance has to be part of it; the main part, really. Also--and I didn't say this at all, although I probably implied it by my initial suggestions--a certain level of fame should be part of it, such that the reinvention draws a lot of attention. I like the Isley Brothers fine, but they wouldn't rise to that level of fame.

If the thread concept is still confusing, maybe it means Bowie stands alone.

I like the Isley Brothers fine, but they wouldn't rise to that level of fame among white people.

It seems a little ironic that a question that is too general and open only returns David Bowie as the answer. Sounds like a bug in the matrix ILM cartesian mind.

Madonna's chameleonic qualities are overstated. She works with different producers and tweaks her sound from year to year to keep current, but there are no wholesale shifts or shocking left turns in her catalog. You could play any Madonna song next to any other and nobody would say, "Wait — that's Madonna?"

Delve into pre-fame Madonna and you get a more complicated picture. Breakfast Club, Emmy, Emmy and the Emmys were things that happened. I know an old bandmate of hers from those days it it sounds like she was equal parts a. Protean and b. Ambitious.

who are those hippies/nerds?

musically, the first 4 mbv lps sound nothing alike (goth, indiepop, grunge, loveless), nor do the first 3 primal scream lps.

visually, eno in roxy vs eno now.

What the Isley Brothers accomplished over the last SIXTY FIVE YEARS in transformations and updates (they just had a No. 1 R&B hit with Beyoncé) is nothing short of remarkable and is completely without parallel

I had no idea about the new Beyoncé track - that is incredible. As you say, completely without parallel.
It’s like if George Formby was alive and charting with a Madonna collab in 1990.

I like the Isley Brothers fine, but they wouldn't rise to that level of fame among white people.

Is that really necessary? There's David Bowie/Madonna/Dylan/Beyonce/Neil Young/Taylor Swift/Lou Reed/Prince level of fame--all the people I've mentioned so far as maybe fitting my vague concept--and there are the Isley Brothers. The difference in fame is not self-evident?

I heard shout before I ever heard anything by those nobodies

Hey, Lou Reed was sampled by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, who, coincidentally, have have more hit singles than Lou Reed

I don't understand why "extreme fame" was brought up as a criterion in the first place. I understand that no-one cares if a nobody with no audience changes their image, but in a way it would be more risky for a mid-level performer, perhaps with a cozy genre niche, to take a left turn in terms of music and image (Dirty Mind is the first thing I think of).

I was thinking about this thread the other day and came up with a few ideas and then realized none of them were pop stars (Miles Davis, Brian Eno, PJ Harvey)

are you aware of confirmation bias?

Fair point, as is the point about sampling. But there's also the point I was trying to make, which was that--I believe, anyway--Neil Young and Lou Reed (especially as part of the Velvet Underground) are more influential than the Isley Brothers, and I was using tribute albums as an example. (Trying to stay clear of the fact that tribute albums are generally a bad idea.)

You've brought up other artists you want me to comment on, but the analogies I've thrown out--Brenda Lee vs. the Ronettes/Janis Joplin/Jimi Hendrix, Jean-Luc Godard vs. Next Marvel Director--those just glide by, and no one responds to them.

As I said above, I'm now sorry for ever having brought up fame in the first place. It was, in my mind, part of what made the drastic changes by Bowie and others I mentioned so interesting--that a lot of people were paying attention, that they made news--but I wish I hadn't mentioned it.

Dylan in this convo is funny cause a huge part of his deal is obv that he’s ~elusive~ ~mercurial~ and all this but the idea that he had major switch ups in sound & appearance is, I guess you had to be there. In 2022 it sounds like he went from folk to folk-rock and put on sunglasses

― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Wednesday, October 19, 2022 1:44 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Don't forget the face paint and hat!

― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, October 19, 2022

And this!

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/6b/6f/55/6b6f555c8fda42af7c17f556431fafc7--bob-dylan-twist.jpg

But there's also the point I was trying to make, which was that--I believe, anyway--Neil Young and Lou Reed (especially as part of the Velvet Underground) are more influential than the Isley Brothers

clemenza...I can't.

Beyonce just scored a #1 song with Beyonce. The Isleys kicked ass at Pitchfork three years ago (I was there). They're foundational R&B who've adapted to every trend in the last 70 years. They don't need tribute albums: the tributes are around us on Black radio stations.

and she scored one with the Isleys too!

They're not as influential as Neil Young or Lou Reed. I'm not convincing you, and you're not convincing me.

It's fair to conclude from your posts that you don't listen to much R&B, funk, or hip-hop, right?

Did the Beyonce song hit #1 because of the Isley Brothers--did she piggyback on their fame, or might that have something to do with the fact it was a Beyonce song?

Less so since Pazz & Jop went under--I hardly keep up with anything since that happened--but before that, not true at all. Checked my albums, and I've got five by the Isleys (including compilations covering the early years, Motown, and two for their '70s stuff).

Well, the song first appeared on The Heat is On. They re-made with her. I don't doubt her propulsion helped, but it doesn't matter: Beyonce wanted to work with them.

I asked the question about your listening because, again, the Isleys were shaped by and shaped so much of what developed in the next 70 years of R&B music. I'm sort of boggling my eyes that the number of tribute albums Neil Young inspired is your metric of influence.

You've brought up other artists you want me to comment on

I just remembered: the Isleys were already coming up as victims of white radio and MTV racism in 1983.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGiVzIr8Qg

I like the Isleys a lot, but I feel like they had a lot of peers who took their accomplishments further. Even in the '70s I don't think they were on par with Al Green, Parliament/Funkadelic and many others.

You know, you should take a look at the eight Isley Brothers threads on ILM. The main one has 100 posts, the other seven (including a poll) combine for about 50. I know all of you would be busily posting on them if you had the time, but you're too busy listening to your Isley Brothers albums.

(The first two Lou Reed threads I checked had a combined 1,600 posts. The Neil Young thread that's always active has ~4,500.)

"I'm sort of boggling my eyes that the number of tribute albums Neil Young inspired is your metric of influence." I brought that up as one thing! It's not my metric of influence--it's one thing among many.

tbf discussion on ILM is probably not a metric for fame

I would say that "this is someone people talk about a lot" is a metric of fame.

are you aware of confirmation bias?

Fair point, as is the point about sampling.

nerds are more interested in guys who can't sing than long running r&b acts, glad that's settled

I changed my mind and decided Miles Davis is the one and only best answer to this

My "you" was probably just a general you, since I evidently disagree with everyone here.

Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Lou Reed--we nerds love people who can't sing.

Just in terms of musical shifts, yeah, I would say Miles Davis is as good an answer as any.

chamillionaire

Jason Derülo

"I asked the question about your listening because..."

Actually, I think I know exactly why you asked it.

I asked it because if you still did the question about the Isleys' influence would've answered itself

No, not at all. That they've now shared a #1 hit with Beyonce does not, for me, leap-frog them in influence over Neil Young or Lou Reed. One of last year's biggest documentaries was Todd Hayne's VU film. Does that count for anything?

Was Parliament/Funkadelic more chameleonic than the Isley Brothers? I'm sure George Clinton took more psychedelics than the Isleys combined.

The Isley Brothers certainly changed more, but I think Parliament/Funkadelic's blend of funk and rock was much more expansive and innovative than the Isley's.

Or Isleys'

But we're not making evaluative claims on this thread, no?

I am confident in my evaluation of George Clinton's consumption of psychedelics.

genuinely regret ever bringing up the isleys. jesus h. corbett.

I'm having popcorn and I'm waiting for more metrics to be thrown in. HoF induction date anyone ?

Idk why Shaggy keeps coming to mind but he does so I'll mention him. It's not even that his music has ever really changed particularly its just every now and then the time is right for him to reappear and get the best greeting

I'm very interested in artists - not necessarily good ones - who seemingly exist to totally camouflage into the times each instance they do something. By which I mean OK Go - snotty power pop in 2002-03, NME-ish garage indie in 2006, MGMT/Anco-ish electropop in 2009/2010 and whatever the 2014 album was I never heard it

HoF induction date anyone ?

Isleys first, but Reed twice!

oh my god this thread is such a nightmare that my dumb chamillionaire shitpost might have improved it!

the one thing i’ll add to this matter is that the isleys made songs in the 50s that were covered by the dang beatles and boasted jimi fucking hendrix as a member of their band in the mid-60s.

meanwhile, in the year 2022, their new album has features from rick ross and 2 chainz, and literally right fucking now have a song on the charts with beyonce

We said that already, get in line, sport!

I'm very interested in artists - not necessarily good ones - who seemingly exist to totally camouflage into the times each instance they do something. By which I mean OK Go - snotty power pop in 2002-03, NME-ish garage indie in 2006, MGMT/Anco-ish electropop in 2009/2010 and whatever the 2014 album was I never heard it

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Thursday, 20 October 2022 08:26 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i like this post, this feels like (at last!) a productive line of inquiry here. The Chap are a kind of preferable analogue - moving from post-rockish artpop in the early 00s to a more confident indie-pop in the late 00s to math-rocky miserablism in the early 10s (The Show Must Go - their best, what an underrated album!) to electropop in the late 10s to whatever they're planning next

i would also be interested in its inverse: artists who change to be completely UNLIKE their times. perhaps a rarer phenomenon, and yet, kevin barnes has been going out of their way to sabotage of Montreal's success since 2007, in ways that lie completely at odds with the fashion of the age, but which have both entertained and maddened; their last 10 years have been a way more compelling arc than the already-varied journey of their supposed heyday

am also sliiiiightly surprised damon albarn hasn't gotten a mention, although ugh, and no he doesn't deserve a mention, and i wish he'd go away

We said that already, get in line, sport!

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, October 20, 2022 6:47 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

nobody said anything about former isley bros guitarist jimi hendrix!

(or 2 chainz)

Herbie Hancock

the mess of this thread has convinced me that there is no real proof of concept here. david bowie was a restless artist who, because of the type of art he was interested in, happened to change his physical appearance alongside his musical evolutions. lots of other people are restless creative musical evolvers, especially jazz giants like miles and trane and herbie. also the isley brothers have had a long, fascinating and successful career.

beyond that no real conclusions do i draw

I think sun ra might even beat miles for radical musical transformations but he's even less of a pop star (yet has more actual pop songs in his catalogue! or attempts at them) and the relative consistently of his persona and the fact that he didn't abandon older styles makes him seem less chameleonic than he actually was

coltrane has a neater more traditionally progressive trajectory that you can more or less track if you ignore a few messy detours

lots of other people are restless creative musical evolvers, especially jazz giants like miles and trane and herbie.

in spite of a certain amount of accuracy regarding his stylistic transformations, herbie was a joke entry to this list.

Bowie claimed (at one time) to only be interested in music as a means to his extramusical artistic ends: to be a chameleonic artist.

Something to the effect of, music just happened to be the most viable path to expressing the sort of artistic / personal vision he wished to express. The implication is that if he had he landed in a universe in which macrame or carpentry or pasta-making (or whatever) was an expedient path to the kind of expression he wanted to make, he would have done that instead.

coltrane has a neater more traditionally progressive trajectory that you can more or less track if you ignore a few messy detours

Really only active for about 12 years. Joined the Miles Davis Quintet in late 1955; first recording session as a leader, May 1957; died April 1967.

My wife was at the airport yesterday and there was a little girl there named Isley. Haven't heard of a child named Neil in a while...

Or Jasper, for that matter.

The Hendrix connection is a good one that I totally forgot about; I also overlooked the kids-at-airports metric. I had a couple of other things to add--and I may poll the kindergarten class I'm working in today--but I'll settle instead for things more or less being back on track to befuddlement over the thread's initial premise.