Black Sheep Hit / Music

Popular music:

#-D

• 311 - "Amber", a slow reggae-ish song compared to their signature Alternative Rock sound.
  • And their cover of The Cure's "Lovesong," too. It was even softer than "Amber" was.
• 38 Special is known for its guitar-driven, arena rock-oriented Southern rock. Yet the band's biggest hit was the synth-driven soft rock/adult contemporary ballad "Second Chance", released in 1989 and a "comeback" single (it had been several years since they'd had a top 40 hit) to boot.
• The biggest hit for 4 Runner on a debut album of standard, by-the-numbers upbeat country-pop was the dark and brooding gospel harmonies of "Cain's Blood."
• British band A (yes, that's their name) is somewhat of a downplaying of this trope. Their first two albums were mostly pop-centric alternative rock, then they released "Nothing", their Signature Song and the lead-off to their third album (Hi-Fi Serious), which is an arena rock-styled Nu Metal song. The rest of Hi-Fi Serious mostly saw a pop punk edge added to their existing alternative rock sound, however several songs experimented with a Post-grunge-adjacent style. Their fourth (and to date final) album, Teen Dance Ordinance saw a continuation of their pop punk/alternative rock sound, but with several radio metal songs as well, with songs like "Wisdom" reflecting the nu metal style.
• Aerosmith, multiple times, with "Dream On", "Angel", and "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing", the latter being their only number-one hit in the US. "Dream On" is less so than the others as it is from their first album and it still has an intense build up, while the other songs are more straightforward ballads.
• AFI was mostly known as a hardcore punk band at the beginning of their career. Their biggest hit, however, was the hard rock/emo song "Miss Murder", which blended in with other rock radio hits of the time.
• After the Fire were a British power-pop/new-wave band who had their biggest hit with "Der Kommissar", a cover of a Falco song, that sounded nothing like their regular material. Additionally, it began moving up the charts after the band had broken up. A compilation album was quickly thrown together by Epic Records to capitalize on the song’s popularity in the US market (where none of the band’s studio albums had been released).
• Jason Aldean had his first big hit in 2007 with "Why", which was also his only love ballad for quite some time. "Big Green Tractor" and "The Truth" are also far mellower than his usual rock style. With the release of the Kelly Clarkson duet "Don't You Wanna Stay" (a Power Ballad), "Why" now looks like much less of a Black Sheep Hit, but the other two still qualify.
  • There's also "Dirt Road Anthem", a Country Rap that was his highest-charting hit on the Hot 100 until "Try That in a Small Town" in 2023. Country-rap is not usually what he does.
• Fans turned on to Alien Ant Farm by their hit cover of "Smooth Criminal" were probably confused when they got that track and 12 tracks of emo. Before "Smooth Criminal" hit the radio circuit, AAF were a hyped band in the local Bay Area rock scene, and they had two minor singles that received some radio play. After "Smooth Criminal", it got really hard to market "that band who did that Michael Jackson song".
• Alison Krauss & Union Station, best known for very moody, mellow bluegrass music, had its only big hit with a more mainstream cover of Keith Whitley's "When You Say Nothing at All". The song was a hit due mainly to unsolicited airplay from a tribute album, following closely on Krauss' first mainstream hit, a duet vocal on Shenandoah's "Somewhere in the Vicinity of the Heart" — which was also a slick, mainstream, mid-90s country ballad, and thus an anomaly in the catalog of Shenandoah, who were usually more energetic, slick honky-tonk influenced country.
• All That Remains are known as a heavy-metal band, but "What If I Was Nothing", a #2 hit, is a slow ballad.
• "This Guy's in Love with You", a #1 hit for Herb Alpert in 1968, is one of the few vocal entries among the mostly instrumental material of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. It's a Black Sheep Hit in another way—even though it was recorded during the Brass' heyday, it was credited solely to Alpert.^PostscriptAlpert went on to become the first (and to this day only) artist to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with vocal and instrumental performances, with "Rise" (1979) filling the latter slot.
• British duo AlunaGeorge is an Electronic Music act, mainly synthpop, trip-hop, and UK garage, but their biggest worldwide hit sounds nothing like it. While the original "You Know You Like It" fits their normal material well, the DJ Snake remix that turns it into trap is their only song to cross The Pond.
• One of Angels & Airwaves' most successful songs is "Paper Thin", a dubstep-influenced EDM track made in collaboration with DJ and electronic artist Illenium in 2020. While the band's music has always included elements of electronic and ambient music, they're primarily an alternative rock group.
• Angry Anderson is a hard rock artist who got his biggest hit when the romantic ballad "Suddenly" was chosen to be the song at Scott and Charlene's wedding in Neighbours. He's reportedly fine with this.
• Aphex Twin and 'Avril 14th'. Most people don't even know it's by him but they know the song.
• Canadian hair-metal band April Wine is best known for a sweet ballad with French lyrics (and a kick-ass guitar solo) called "Just Between You And Me". It was admittedly written as an attempt to bring more female members into their fanbase.
• Louis Armstrong, primarily a player of hot jazz, is best remembered for the sentimental pop ballad "What a Wonderful World".
  • Either that or the theme from Hello, Dolly!, which is a Black Sheep Hit of a different style.
• Avantasia is a German power metal project. Their biggest hit? The pop ballad "Lost in Space".
• Avenged Sevenfold's first number-one hit on the rock charts must have been a hard-rocking metal anthem, right? Wrong, it was actually a slow ballad called "So Far Away".
• The B-52s are well-known for their new wave and post-punk sound, but "Love Shack", one of their five Top 40 hits, is lighter and more poppy.
• The rapper B.G. felt this way about the song "Bling Bling", which spawned a global phenomenon, and made the term a recognized word in the dictionary. Saying that people thought that was what he was all about.
• Bachman-Turner Overdrive, a band cited as one of the precursors to heavy metal, hit the US top 10 only once, with "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet", considered a bit of a novelty piece because of the stuttering vocal. It's not that much of an outlier to the rest of their music, but still was one of their more light and poppy songs. The lyrics were written as a lark.
• The Bangles write the vast majority of their own songs, but of their four best-charting singles, "Manic Monday" was written by Prince (and sounds like it, being a Suspiciously Similar Song vocally to his "1999"), "Walk Like An Egyptian" was a novelty song, "Hazy Shade of Winter" was a Simon & Garfunkel cover, and "Eternal Flame" was the only ballad on Everything. Only their last top 5 hit "In Your Room" sounded like a typical Bangles song.
• Barenaked Ladies ran into this with "One Week", the entirely goofy white-boy rap which finally shot them to international recognition after years of crafting intelligent, snarky pop-rock. A track off a later album hung a lampshade on the pressure they faced to repeat this success:
  Kinda like the last time
  With a bunch of really fast rhymes
  If we're living in the past I'm
  Soon gone...
• Count Basie, leader of an influential jazz big band, had his only #1 hit in 1947 with "Open the Door, Richard", a comedy skit with the occasional chanted refrain and not much jazz outside of Basie's piano accompaniment. A contemporary review lamented that "musically, this is Basie's worst record."
• Songwriter Dave Bassett is best known for writing hard rock songs (including the aforementioned "Second Chance" for Shinedown), but the biggest hit of his career? Rachel Platten's "Fight Song", which is a purely Adult Contemporary ballad. He had another major hit only a few months later writing Elle King's Grammy-nominated "Ex's & Oh's". While it's the closest pop radio has seen to a "hard rock" hit since "Second Chance" and Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody", it's still practically pop compared to most other Bassett tunes. That being said, they're both typical songs for Platten and King. Those three songs were Bassett's only mainstream hits, with his only other top 40 entry being a song he wrote for the first winner of The Voice, and none of the artists ever had another pop hit aside from Platten, and even then, with a song that wasn't written by Bassett and barely scraped the top 40 for a week or two. Shinedown and King both maxed out at #42, the latter only via a featured spot on a song by country singer Dierks Bentley.
• The Beach Boys went through this several times:
  • "Good Vibrations" (#1) was psychedelia at its peak, especially compared to their early "surfin' style".
  • "Sail on Sailor" (#49) is a piano-driven song with some light soul and gospel influences that sounds more like early Elton John. It also sported a lead vocal by Blondie Chaplin, who was only in the band for two years.
  • "Kokomo" (#1), released in the 1980s and well after their peak of popularity, uses reggae and calypso elements, such as the steel drum heard during the verses.
• Beabadoobee's song "Coffee", best known through its sample on Powfu's 2020 hit "Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)", is a lo-fi indie folk song that is very different from her normal sound, which is noisy guitar-driven indie rock similar to Pavement. This is partly because of Early-Installment Weirdness, as "Coffee" was the first song Beabadoobee wrote and released.
• Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill spawned one in the form of "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)". Not only was it different for being a Rap Rock tune, but most people didn't understand the irony of the lyrics. The band hates the song and hasn't played it live for over 20 years.
  • Their second biggest hit "Sabotage", despite the turntables is clearly a rock song that's very unlike the hip-hop breakbeat output of the rest of the songs on Ill Communication.
• The Beatles declined to release "Yesterday" as a single in Great Britain for fear it would become one of these. (Let's just say that their producer, George Martin, proposed that it be a Paul McCartney solo work. Brian Epstein nixed it.) It became the most covered of their songs.
  • Revolver's "Eleanor Rigby" is another one, for similar reasons to "Yesterday" though not as severe.
  • "Help!", originally written as a slow, bleak ballad similar to "Yesterday", was retooled into a rock song for similar reasons too.
  • "The Ballad of John and Yoko" has a similar history, being written by John and Paul as a snarky response to the media hype around John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It's credited to the Beatles as a whole, but only John and Paul appear, with John playing both lead and rhythm guitar, and Paul playing bass, drums, piano, and percussion (it was an 'on the spur of the moment' recording).
• Bella Morte's "The Rain Within Her Hands" was a Lighter and Softer proto-Synthwave song, in contrast to their normal Dark Wave and Industrial Metal output, and became the basis for Andy Deane's Solo Side Project, The Rain Within.
• Ben Folds Five with "Brick": Their signature style usually revolves around uptempo, jazz-influenced songs with witty, irreverent lyrics and fuzz bass. "Brick", meanwhile, was a somber ballad about abortion and the destruction of the relationship between the couple involved.
• Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield".
  • Rather typical of her later style; she and Neil Giraldo seem to indicate that their earlier style was more the result of Executive Meddling, and that a change in record label produced songs like "Love Is a Battlefield" and "We Belong" that are more in line with their preferred style.
• Listen to Berlin's best-of collection and you'll notice that "Take My Breath Away", the only song they're really known for, sounds like nothing else on the disc. Berlin's usual style is high-energy synth pop; "Breath" is a rather somber power ballad.
• Chuck Berry, the Rock & Roll legend whose songs such as "Johnny B. Goode" and "Roll Over Beethoven" influenced entire generations of rock artists, scored several hits on the R&B charts but only one #1 hit single on the Billboard Hot 100 during his multi-decade career: the silly novelty ditty "My Ding-a-Ling", which he didn't even write.
• Big & Rich's only Top 40 pop hit and only #1 country airplay hit is "Lost in This Moment", a sensitive and serious wedding ballad which is far removed from their in-your-face hard rock and rap influences (as codified by "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)").
• Elvin Bishop's musical style is primarily blues-rock. His only Top 10 hit "Fooled Around and Fell in Love", however, is an easy-listening soft rock ballad. Adding further is that the vocals were done by his then-backing vocalist Mickey Thomas (who eventually joined Jefferson Starship on the strength of this song), as Elvin felt that his gruff vocal style did not do the song justice.
• While Björk is known for "being weird", it's likely that the only song of hers the average person could name is "It's Oh So Quiet" (from her early album Post) which is (a) nothing like anything else she's ever done, (b) A cover and (c) a song she detests now.
  • The relative popularity of her singles varies geographically, eg. in the UK, where she has the most chart success, "Hyperballad" and "Army of Me" were also top 10 hits. The former allowed her to avert One-Hit Wonder status, and like Radiohead and Beck who did the same thing (after a longer wait in their case), she achieved critical acclaim and established a long career.
• Black Sabbath's "Changes", a piano-driven Power Ballad from the band that basically created Heavy Metal.
• Husband-and-wife team Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan had a #1 hit on the country chart (and a fairly sizable crossover hit on the pop chart) with the wacky 1970 novelty tune "Tennessee Bird Walk", then also had a Top 10 country hit with the equally wacky followup "Humphrey the Camel". While their repertoire (mostly written by Blanchard) had a few more eccentric songs along those lines, the majority of it is fairly straight Slice of Life country songs, featuring the pair's Soprano and Gravel vocal stylings. Their other Top 20 country hit, "Somewhere in Virginia in the Rain" (about a separated couple deciding to reconcile) is much more representative of their usual style.
• Blind Melon. A very extreme and passionately-defended case among fandom. "No Rain" is not only a classic example of Lyrical Dissonance, being a sort of sill-sounding upbeat song about paralyzing depression, but was also intended as a kind of parody of the white suburbanite angst that permeated much of the pop music of the 90s. And while the rest of the band's catalog ran the gamut of sound, style and emotion both lyrically and musically, the only thing any of their other material had in common with "No Rain" was Shannon Hoon's distinctive voice.
• Blondie's primary musical style is New Wave/Pop Punk, but their four highest-charting singles in the US were the disco-electronica songs "Heart of Glass" and "Call Me", the hip hop song "Rapture", and a cover of a rocksteady song "The Tide Is High".
  • New Wave was in its infancy in the late 70's, and punk was just starting to become big in the US. Blondie's hits mark a transition phase in American pop music from disco to New Wave.
  • Also, Blondie had a very flexible style that was tied strongly to both '60s pop and current trends. Thus, the experiments with hip-hop and disco, and the "Tide Is High" cover at a time that ska was experiencing a revival were typically unpredictable moves.
• Blue Öyster Cult's Agents of Fortune album featured "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", which became a fluky breakthrough hit for a band whose previous albums are full of weird, abrasive proto-metal songs. Their only other U.S. Top 40 hit was "Burnin' for You", which somehow managed to be even poppier and less representative of their sound than "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was.
• Blur, "Song 2", especially in America where it's the only song most people know by them. Ironically the song was written to parody American alternative rock at the time. Right down to the indecipherable vocals.
  • Which isn't as much of a black sheep in the context of that album, which probably changed the course of indie rock music for the next decade.
  • On a lesser note, there's "Girls and Boys", which is downright dance music, but employed in the same mocking tone as "Song 2".
• The BoDeans' biggest hit is "Closer to Free", a jangly Power Pop song that sounds nothing else like the rootsy folk-rock they normally play.
• Bone Thugs-n-Harmony: The Ghetto Cowboy Song, and to a lesser extent "Tha Crossroads". The latter making them Contractual Purity in some fans eyes. What really made "Tha Crossroads" stand out on the E.1999 album was the fact it was a somber rap ballad amidst a album that was filled with occult mysticism, and bloodthirsty gangsta rap. The original mix was closer in tone to the Gothic-sounding album. The former was actually a remix.
• The Boomtown Rats was a punk rock/new wave band, but their one US hit was I Don't Like Mondays, a much slower ballad.
• Boston, who were stadium rockers, rarely recorded ballads. However, one of their few, "Amanda", became their only #1 hit.
• A rare example where the black sheep hit was their first: Boyz II Men are known for their romantic ballads and soulful harmonies. Naturally, their first hit "Motownphilly" was an up-tempo New Jack Swing dance number.
• The two biggest American hits for the British band Breathe were the ballads "How Can I Fall" and "Hands to Heaven". The rest of their material isn't exactly heavy by any means, but does have a much more upbeat and dance-y Sophisti-Pop quality to it than those two songs.
• Jacques Brel: One of Brel's most popular songs, "La Valse a Mille Temps" (and its Translated Cover Version, "Carousel"), is a comedic number, almost completely devoid of any of the social commentary he is best known for. He once claimed in an interview that "La Valse" "should have never become such a success."
• Atlanta singer Alicia Bridges got pegged as a "disco diva" when her dance-oriented "I Love the Night Life" became her biggest/only hit. It was far removed from the bluesy rock & roll that made up the rest of her output.
• Garth Brooks, "Lost in You" (from In the Life of Chris Gaines) at least was his biggest single pop-wise (it was his only Top 40 pop single, believe it or not).
• Two of Brooks & Dunn's biggest hits were outside their honky-tonk roots: a Latin-flavored cover of B.W. Stevenson's "My Maria", and the bombastic, electric guitar-heavy, rock-influenced "Ain't Nothing 'Bout You". These are also among the few singles of their career that neither member of the duo wrote.
  • While most of the songs have Ronnie Dunn doing lead vocals, and his voice is what people think about when they think of Brooks & Dunn, there are a few songs (most notably "Rock My World (Little Country Girl)" and "Lost and Found") that feature Kix Brooks doing lead vocals. This can be quite confusing if you're a casual fan.
• BTS' first #1 hit in the US, "Dynamite", is also their first fully English single^note not counting songs where they appear as featured artists, and it's the only one where no member has writing credits (rap line included), so while its sound is on par with their Genre Roulette musical approach, it doesn't have BTS' usual lyricism, Call Backs or ties to larger themes. It was also originally released as not part of an album (they usually release Concept Albums, and (most of the time) release singles during their album releases), before being added to the group's album BE. Thematically, it only really fits on a meta sense, with the stated intent to bring joy to listeners during the COVID-19 pandemic being in line with the way much of their work seeks to bring healing and comfort (albeit through lyrics more elaborate and personal than in "Dynamite").
  • According to the members, they liked the demo sent to them so much that they wanted to capture that feeling as much as possible, leaving the original English lyrics untouched (though not for lack of trying - they tried to add Korean lyrics and rap but it didn't work). This decision, however, also helped greatly in gaining US radio support (one of the main factors in Billboard Hot100 charting), as a major reason previous BTS singles had lackluster radioplay in the US was the fear that non-English songs would lead listeners to tune out.
• Buckcherry mostly does heavily sexualized hard rock songs, but "Sorry", their only pop crossover hit, is a slow ballad.
• Kate Bush's biggest international hit, "Running Up That Hill", is an upbeat and mainstream-accessible New Wave Synthpop number, departing significantly from her traditional Art Rock and Baroque Pop.
• Butthole Surfers' number one hit "Pepper" is a style parody of Beck with serious lyrics, and not really representative of their output, which is generally darker, more humorous, and more experimental.
• John Cage's "4'33''." Of course, what else could sound like it?
  • Although he's also sometimes noted in the record books for another reason: His piece As Slow as Possible is currently being played in a church in Germany... and if things go as planned, will be until September 5, 2640.
• CaptainSensible of The Damned had a solo hit with a cover version of "Happy Talk" from South Pacific. Allegedly the band's usual punk rock style came as a shock to some old ladies who later bought tickets to one of their shows expecting an evening of similar ballads. ^note  One of the old ladies, upon hearing the dulcet tones of The Damned's "New Rose" is reported to have said to a fellow concert goers that "This isn't exactly what I came here for - but I am glad I came!"
• The Cardigans' "Lovefool" is much poppier and upbeat than the rest of their work (but its lyrics are just as dark and ironic as their other songs). The original music video made the intent of the song very clear: needless to say, they were forced to shoot a new one for American audiences.
• Comedian/singer Rodney Carrington rarely saw chart action due to the highly profane nature of his songs, which include such titles as "Letter to My Penis", "Dancin' with a Man", "Morning Wood", "Burning Sensation", et cetera. But in 2009, he had his only major chart hit to date with "Camouflage and Christmas Lights" — a completely serious song about a soldier celebrating Christmas while on active duty.
• Nick Cave's duet with Kylie Minogue, "Where The Wild Roses Grow", was an international hit song, yet Cave himself felt a bit bothered by this as its soothing performance, despite the Lyrical Dissonance of the topic, is not all representative for the rest of the album.
• The Chainsmokers:
  • Their Breakthrough Hit was "#SELFIE", a novelty dance song about taking selfies. It sounds nothing like most of their more "normal" style of EDM, and it was thought that it would doom them to one-hit wonder status because of it. They managed to escape it by reinventing themselves as a more serious act, making this a textbook example of one escaping the looming shadow of a black sheep hit.
  • They later had another one with "Closer", to a lesser extent. It was the first single to feature a member of the duo, specifically Andrew Taggert, singing as opposed to being handled entirely by a guest. This duet style song done with featured artist Halsey became their first song to hit #1 in the United States.
• 80s group Champaign's big hit was the slow ballad "How 'Bout Us", which stands in contrast to their usual upbeat funk style.
• "Rockney" duo Chas & Dave, best known for their humorous and fast-paced songs, had a hit with their maudlin ballad "Ain't No Pleasin' You".
• Charli XCX finally had a hit with her theme from The Fault in Our Stars, "Boom Clap", after 8 non-charting singles and only being known for features (Icona Pop's "I Love It" and Iggy Azalea's "Fancy"). "Boom Clap" is a clean, upbeat, energetic silly love song that could safely be played on any radio station or event with children involved (indeed, the song is very popular with kids). Anyone who looked up her other material however, might have been in for a shock to discover how sarcastic, raunchy, and swear-filled her songs normally are. This is most likely why she never had another major solo hit afterwards.
• Cheap Trick's "The Flame". Best known for their high energy Power Pop numbers, they were forced to record this ballad by their label because their previous two albums had been duds. Guitarist Rick Nielsen hated the song so much that when its demo was first played for the band, he pulled the cassette out of the machine and destroyed it by grinding it with his boot heel. Eventually they felt obligated to record it and it became their only number 1 single. When they play it live, they often mock the song and the fanbase they picked up from it.^note The band was offered the choice of either recording "The Flame" or a Diane Warren song called "Look Away", and they picked the ballad they hated the least. Chicago took "Look Away" to the top of the Hot 100 six months after "The Flame" did the same.
• Cherry Poppin' Daddies recorded music in practically every genre, but their main one was primarily ska. Yet they are labeled as a swing band, thanks to "Zoot Suit Riot". To be fair, "Zoot Suit Riot" was also the title track to a compilation specifically meant to highlight their swing material, which then became their most commercially successful album. Even before "Zoot Suit Riot" became a hit, the swing revival caused them to pick up a new fanbase, so their manager suggested they put together a compilation featuring just the swing songs from their previous albums.
• Kenny Chesney has had three styles since scoring his first big hits at the Turn of the Millennium: beachy Jimmy Buffett-esque tunes, introspective acoustic ballads, or arena rock. His two biggest hits on the country charts, "The Good Stuff" and "There Goes My Life", are none of the above — they're slicker and more mainstream than the likes of "You and Tequila", "A Lot of Things Different", or "Down the Road".
• "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" was also a black-sheep hit when Mark Chesnutt covered it; before that song, he was mostly known for his honky-tonk influences, and certainly not for pop power ballads. It was also apparently forced upon him by the label.
• Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" was this at the time of its release. It was almost left off Chicago X for this reason. After the album was released, band member Walter Parazaider heard the song on the radio... and didn't know it was his own band's work. Needless to say, the success of the song led to a big shift in the band's style. Thirty-five years later, keyboardist Robert Lamm has been known to jokingly introduce it at concerts as "The song that ruined our career."
• Childish Gambino started off as and has always been primarily a rapper. However, his album "Awaken, My Love!" saw him veer off into funk. That album has ''Redbone'', which was his first big hit on the charts.
• Chumbawamba got known as an anarchistic punk band, but the only song of theirs most people could probably name is the dance-rock number "Tubthumping". Unfortunately, due to "anarchist punk" being virtually unknown in mainstream, and this tag being used in conjunction with every mention of the band, "Tubthumping" has become a representation of "anarchist punk".
  • This was an Enforced Trope, putting out a rollicking crowd-pleaser to attract people to their more serious work.
• Gary Clark Jr. is known for his eclectic mix of guitar-driven rock, blues, and soul. However, his biggest hit, and his only rock radio hit so far, is his cover of The Beatles' "Come Together" made for Justice League (2017). This one is a booming electronic rock track that sounds nothing like what he usually makes, mainly due to being produced by Junkie XL.
• Most of The Clash's biggest hits are examples of this. Although music critics know them as revolutionaries in punk rock music (who later played reggae, jazz, world music and just about anything they could think of), most normal people know them for their pop hits: the title track and "Train in Vain" from London Calling and "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" from Combat Rock.
  • "Train in Vain" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" are especially notable, since they were not sung by frontman Joe Strummer, but rather by guitarist and and occasional vocalist Mick Jones.
• David Allan Coe was best known for his rebellious outlaw style, yet his biggest hit was the sensitive ballad "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile".
• Coldplay was quite possibly the most popular rock band in the world during the 00s, rivaled only by Linkin Park for the title. They're known for playing Alternative Rock, and later incorporating Electronic Music into their sound. Their biggest hit? "Viva la Vida", a Baroque Pop song with elements of neither one. It was their only #1 pop hit in the US.
• Paula Cole's "I Don't Wanna Wait", a.k.a. the Dawson's Creek theme song. The rest of her work is much harder and darker. Yes, darker than a song about wanting to die.
• "Everyday I Write the Book" is one of Elvis Costello's biggest hits, but he's said he's not that big a fan of the song, admitting he deliberately wrote it to be very poppy.
• Coven was a hard rock band in the late '60s whose use of Satanic imagery predated Black Sabbath by nearly a year (they even had a song called "Black Sabbath" and a bassist named Oz Osbourne), and their debut album concludes with a recording of a Satanic mass performed by the group. Their biggest hit? "One Tin Soldier", a folksy Protest Song (first by The Original Caste) recorded for the soundtrack to Billy Jack.
• Covenant, one of the Trope Codifiers of the Futurepop subgenre of Industrial, shattered the mold with "Lightbringer", an Auto-Tune-heavy, borderline Hip-Hop joint venture with fellow Swedish duo Necro Facility, one member of which, Oscar Holter, would go on to be a prominent pop music producer alongside Max Martin.
• The Cranberries' "Zombie" to an extent - they've had hits that were just as big and were more representative of their signature style, but it's one of their most famous songs and also the only heavy, grunge-influenced thing they've ever done. They specifically went for a darker, more aggressive sound in this case because they thought it would fit with the overtly anti-war lyrics. It's sort of an inverse of the typical Surprisingly Gentle Song example.
  • Even more so with "Salvation", an uptempo pop-punk number.
• Crazy Town's entire discography consists of macho Rap Metal. Their only #1 hit and by extension their only Hot 100 entry? "Butterfly". A funky pop-rap love ballad that sounds absolutely nothing like anything else they have ever done.
• Jim Croce wrote mostly melodramatic, guitar-laden pieces during his brief career as a singer-songwriter. A couple of months before his tragic death in a plane crash, however, he scored his only #1 hit – at least in his lifetime – with the blues-inspired, piano-heavy "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown".
• Culture Club had their only American #1 hit with "Karma Chameleon," which most of the group expressed reluctance for with its harmonica-laden riffs and country-sounding melody greatly in contrast to the new-wave music they're better known for.
• The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love" is an incredibly silly love song, contrasting their usual darker style.
  • The uptempo pop-styled "Just Like Heaven" is in great contrast to their gothic style, sounding more reminiscent of New Order's guitar-driven material from around the same period.
• Billy Currington is usually known for his relaxed, laid-back drawling country songs such as "Good Directions" or "People Are Crazy" (his biggest hit overall), or for warm impassioned ballads like "Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" or "Let Me Down Easy". However, his career from 2013 onward has been dominated by heavier and more upbeat songs driven by electric guitar, such as "Hey Girl", "Don't It", and "It Don't Hurt Like It Used To".
• Da Yoopers' two best-known songs are "Rusty Chevrolet" and "Second Week of Deer Camp". The former is an example because it's one of the only parody songs they've ever done (specifically, of "Jingle Bells"), while the latter is far more traditional and folk sounding (the only instruments on it are an accordion and gutbucket bass).
• Daft Punk's Random Access Memories takes it to another level by applying it on an album-scale. They're a massively influential Electronic Music duo, so naturally their biggest hit album would be a '70s Disco/Funk throwback to the sounds that originated from Los Angeles.
• Everything Chris de Burgh ever did falls into three categories: 1. Michael Bolton-esque Power Pop beltfests ("Don't Pay the Ferryman"), 2. Gentle, melodic folk ballads ("This Song for You"), and 3. narratives ("Patricia the Stripper"). One time... one time... he did a mushy love song, "Lady in Red". Which he specifically did as a tribute to his wife. Guess which one gets the most airplay? (At least they're still married.)
• To some extent, two of the best known Dead Milkmen songs are these: "Punk Rock Girl" doesn't differ that much from their usual style musically, but the lyrical humor is a bit Lighter and Softer than usual, and Joe Jack Talcum sings it instead of their regular vocalist Rodney Anonymous. Meanwhile, "You'll Dance to Anything" does have Rodney on lead vocals and is more representative of their Take That!-laden humor, but since it's a Take That! to NewWave, it's based around deliberately repetitive synthesizers and drum machines instead of their usual full-band sound.
• Del Amitri's "Roll to Me" was added to Twisted as an afterthought, and it's now the only song of theirs that many people know. The rest of Twisted is a bit harder and while not inaccessible, isn't nearly as perky as "Roll to Me".
• Lana Del Rey's only pop radio hit is a dance remix of "Summertime Sadness" by Cedric Gervais. It sounds nothing like her normal material (the original "Summertime Sadness" included), which is many things but not dance music.
• "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever" by Delirious might have been their most famous song in America. It was mellower than their other hits and was also more of an old-timey praise chorus song than a contemporary worship (a genre they helped popularize). Martin Smith didn't think it was one of his best songs, either. They later released a rocked-up version of it.
• Derek and the Dominoes recorded a large number of blues-rock songs in their brief existence, but "Layla" is a hard rocker, an abnormality even for Eric Clapton.
• Diamond Rio had their biggest crossover with "One More Day", a lush pop ballad that stood at complete odds to their usual twangy country-rock.
• Dion is probably less notable for his more serious works. One of his biggest hits, however, was "Abraham, Martin and John", a Protest Song that reached #4 in Billboard in the wake of the assassinations of one of its namesakes and the brother of another namesake.
• Dire Straits, "Money for Nothing"; a fast-paced, high-energy pop rock song from a band typically known for roots and blues rock. Even in the context of its parent album, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
• In a bizarre twist, this happened to Disturbed in just the opposite manner: "Down with the Sickness" remains one of their heavier and most well-known songs, which has gone to undermine their slower, more melodic works in later albums. 11 million records, five number 1 albums and a Grammy nomination later, they're still seen in the public eye as that band that makes staccato monkey noises. "Down with the Sickness" was typical of Disturbed's style at the time. The slower, melodic, stuff came later as the band got more mature.
  • Happened in a much more typical fashion with their orchestral cover of the 60's folk classic "The Sound of Silence," which charted higher than anything they've ever done (becoming their first multi-platinum song) and saw them gain exposure on Conan, Gears of War 4 and Dancing with the Stars and became one of very few post-2009 songs from Mainstream Rock artists to have even minor crossover success. Besides one electronic rock ballad, the album it came from is one of their heaviest yet.
• Donovan's lone #1 hit was the totally psychedelic "Sunshine Superman", following a long chain of Dylanesque folk rock. Eventually he switched to psychedelia because of this.
• Drake's "Jimmy Cooks", which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, while typical for Drake standards, is this in the context of the album it's featured on, as its the only trap cut in an album primarily rooted in house.
• Dream Theater wrote "Pull Me Under" almost as an afterthought to the album Images and Words because it was thought the album (which was released in 1992 but mostly written in 1989) needed a more straight-forward heavy song to balance out the Epic Rocking and the ballads. The song went on to be a surprise # 10 rock radio chart hit and popular MTV video. They've also expressed irritation over the immense and enduring popularity of "Metropolis Pt. 1" (although this was not a radio hit) to the point where many fans wanted to hear it at every show. Mike Portnoy once asked, "Don't you guys ever get tired of this fucking song?" and John Petrucci said the band could "play it in [their] sleep."
• Duran Duran are chiefly known for danceable New Wave and Alternative Dance/Rock, whereas their 1993 comeback hit "Ordinary World" is a lighter-raising power ballad. The other big hit from that album, "Come Undone", is an equally moody soft rocker.

E-L

• While calling any of their songs a "hit" would be stretching it, the cult classic Death Metal band Edge of Sanity is best known for "Black Tears", a catchy punk/alternative rock-influenced song which has been covered by numerous other metal bands including Heaven Shall Burn and Eternal Tears Of Sorrow. Even with singer Dan Swanö's new band Nightingale, it remains a Signature Song that gets played at most live shows and has become an Audience Participation Song.
• The Elastik Band were a pretty obscure, short-lived band in the 60's, but later on their bizarre, politically incorrect psychedelic blues-rock single "Spazz" became a cult favorite when it showed up on the compilation Nuggets. Some time later, a compilation of their complete recordings came out, and it turned out they were otherwise a gentle folk-rock band who generally had more in common with The Byrds or The Left Banke than Captain Beefheart.
• Electric Light Orchestra's trademark sound of symphonic rock brought them fame... but their biggest hit in the US was the string-less Power Pop song "Don't Bring Me Down".
  • They also had two other top 20 hits in the U.S. — "Hold on Tight" and "Calling America" — which lacked strings (although it must be noted that strings had been largely abandoned by that point in their career).
• Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Lucky Man". ELP's first album did not have enough material to meet contract obligations, and thus Greg Lake decided to record a song he had written when he was twelve. It is very atypical of the band in that it focused mainly on acoustic guitar and singing instead of keyboards and instrumentals. A song meant to be a filler turned out to be a successful hit, reaching number 48 in the Billboard Hot 100. As a result, Lake would write and play acoustic guitar ballads on later albums, such as "From The Beginning", "Still... You Turn Me On" and "C'est La Vie", some of which were Black Sheep Hits in their own right.
• Eminem had an unprecedented Black Sheep Hit with "My Name Is" (the second single off The Slim Shady LP ^note  the first was the much more aggressive "Just Don't Give a Fuck"), which typecast him into launching every album with a novelty song that mocks pop culture and celebrity gossip. Because of the lighthearted tones of these tracks and their suitability for a video, they serve as the lead singles to his albums and, as a result, are some of his more popular and well-known songs - even when the albums they're attached to are twisted Black Comedy or outright brooding in tone. In the 2010s, Eminem stopped making these songs and expressed Creator Backlash against them, seeing as they had originated as the product of Executive Meddling and didn't, in his opinion, do anything to make anyone's lives any better, noting in "Guts Over Fear" he'd 'rather make "Not Afraid 2" than another motherfuckin' "We Made You"'. He did continue to make comedic songs/videos that nodded to the tradition, but they stopped serving as lead singles and became more stylistically diverse.
  • "My Name Is" from The Slim Shady LP. "My Name Is" deserves special attention because it is so much an outlier that nothing else in Eminem's discography, before or since, has sounded like it. It's based on a barely manipulated soul sample with psychedelic keyboards, while everything else on the album is done in a spooky, synthetic G-funk style; Eminem also raps it in an almost conversational flow, using little in the way of his signature complex rhythm patterns and rhyme schemes. He also raps it as Slim Shady in a squeaky, nasal voice that he stopped using after this album. Its sound is hard enough to classify that it was heavily played on rock stations, who viewed it as being suburban comedic Rap Rock rather than the Dr. Dre-produced, Battle Rapping-derived hardcore hip-hop work it was intended to be. Notably, despite extensive attempts to replicate the song, neither Eminem nor Dre could even figure out how to make another record that sounded like it.
  • "The Real Slim Shady" from The Marshall Mathers LP and "Without Me" from The Eminem Show are follow-ups to "My Name Is" to the point where the three stack like a musical trilogy, and all three really stand out in style and mood from anything else on their respective albums. Each is like hitting the Silliness Switch on otherwise Darker and Edgier albums full of Black Comedy and explicit lyrics. "Without Me" even begins with a reference to the previous two with "guess who's back, back again?" "Just Lose It" and "We Made You" are also part of the sequence, but are often excised due to being less critically well-regarded.
  • While different from the other examples, "Stan" from The Marshall Mathers LP is an oddity in his discography for its deep storytelling, acoustic guitar ballad production, and conversational rapping, which won Eminem a fandom amongst people who preferred singer-songwriter and Classic Rock genres, as well as literary-minded critics who started calling him the great poet of the 2000s. Some of the Hype Backlash against Eminem was driven by these fans turning on him when they figured out that he doesn't write storytelling songs as often as he indulges in stream-of-consciousness Vulgar Humor.
  • "Purple Pills" from Devil's Night
  • "My Band" from D12 World
  • "Just Lose It" and "Ass Like That" from Encore
  • Apart from "3 a.m.", which is typical of the content on the album, all of the singles on Relapse are oddballs:
    • "Crack a Bottle" is a Glam Rap (!) posse cut with Dr. Dre and 50 Cent, not fitting the album concept due to lacking Em's Relapse bloodbath lyrical content and accent. It had been written for Dre's Development Hell album Detox, leaked online, and then bounced between Em, Dre and 50's albums because none of the Platinum Trio particularly liked it. Dre eventually consigned it to Em's album, with the reasoning that it had what he felt was a Rock chord progression and production that better suited the white Eminem than either of the Black artists.
    • "We Made You" from Relapse is in the tradition of the goofy novelty records, with a music video directed by Joseph Kahn (who directed "Without Me"). On its own, it's about Slim Shady lusting after female celebrities - but in the context of the album, where it comes after a track about lynching Lindsay Lohan, it's much darker song about a priapic Loony Fan Serial Killer targeting drug-addicted women, fitting the Slasher Movie album concept. "We Made You" is also the final primary-colored celeb-bashing joke single in the classical style, as Eminem decided that the formula was played out and didn't release one for Recovery. His later comedic singles tend to nod at this tradition, but diverge in significant ways - at least until enough time had passed that he was able to use the candy-colored MTV-pop imagery again as a Stylistic Callback.
    • "Beautiful" is a Rap Rock ballad produced in a totally different way to the rest of the album, and Eminem performs it in a strange, deep voice that he never used before this and didn't use again. This is because it was a song Eminem started writing on his first day in rehab in 2006, possibly intended for the scrapped album King Mathers; Em decided it was the best song written during that time, finished it off, and kept it as testament to how much he'd improved since getting clean.
  • While not a comedy lead single in the same way as the other examples, Recovery's lead single was "Not Afraid", an inspiring gospel-rap ballad that, while it has jokes in, stands out from the rest of his entire discography for being earnestly positive, having none of the sarcasm, hostility, Self-Deprecation or provocation that forms his Signature Style. Much like "My Name Is", above, Eminem wasn't able to replicate this no matter how much he tried, with his later attempts at making "Not Afraid"-like songs (such as "Survival" and "Guts Over Fear") being more ambivalent and negative, in line with his earlier inspirationals like "Lose Yourself" and "Sing for the Moment".
  • "Berzerk" from The Marshall Mathers LP 2 - silly, contains celebrity disses, but also a Genre Throwback to late 80s hip-hop, with the visuals, sound, sample, and Eminem's delivery and accent evoking Beastie Boys.
  • "Framed" from Revival - based around Anti-Role Model and controversy-magnet themes like "The Real Slim Shady", but also a (silly) Horrorcore song with a dark, moody beat that the video makes into a prequel to Eminem's Relapse Medical Horror single "3 a.m."
  • Though dissimilar from other examples, "Venom" from Kamikaze is the only track on the album that is a Boastful Rap rather than a rager or Break-Up Song, and also got much more reach from being the theme to, well, Venom. One of Kamikaze's other singles was "Good Guy", a Pop Rap love song that stands out as a strange choice of single for an album intended to announce Eminem's abandonment of a stadium-pop sound audiences had grown sick of.
  • "Godzilla" from Music To Be Murdered By and "Gnat" from Music To Be Murdered By Side B both have videos with a distinctive visual style meant to call back to Eminem's earlier comedy hit videos, complete with ultra-bold colours, Homage Shots and Eminem interacting with and reprising his old characters and personas from these videos. "Gnat" also recaptures the Unintentional Period Piece aspect of his older comedy lead singles, being about the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Eve 6 followed a similar path. The hit from their debut self-titled album, "Inside Out", was much lighter and more pop-flavored than the harder-edged post-grunge style of the rest of the album. The following album Horrorscope was filled with mellower, poppier songs. Among several songs from that album to hit the charts was one that took them even further from their roots - the ballad "Here's to the Night", making it, arguably, a black sheep among black sheep (or maybe a black goat).
• Everything but the Girls greatest hit was Todd Terry's dance remix of "Missing", which influenced them to undergo a Genre Shift from their prior Sophisti-Pop, though they never achieved any further US pop hits.
• Extreme was known for funky Hair Metal with clever lyrics and remarkably intricate and speedy guitar work by Nuno Bettencourt (the Beethoven guitar riff from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure came from their song "Play With Me" and a regular feature in their concerts was Nuno's rendition of "Flight of the Bumblebee"... take THAT, DragonForce!). The only songs by them that get any airplay anymore? The ballad "More Than Words" and the folksy "Hole Hearted", both slower acoustic songs.
• After it was used for the closing credits of Rushmore, "Ooh La La" has probably become the best-known Faces song, but it's an outlier for them several ways. The lead vocal wasn't by frontman Rod Stewart or occasional lead singer Ronnie Lane, but rather by guitarist Ron Wood (his only lead vocal for the band, in fact), and it's an acoustic guitar-led Country Music-influenced number, when they specialized in raucous Hard Rock. As noted below, their predecessor band The Small Faces already had experience with this trope.
• Faith No More had one with "Epic", their only Top 40 hit. Of the countless genres they've done over their long career, this was one of only a handful of songs that featured rapping. Commonly seen as a song that pioneered rap metal, this song has led to them getting pigeonholed as being a "rap metal" band.
  • Their second highest entry on the Hot 100 was a completely straight-faced cover of the Commodores ballad "Easy". Before they recorded it, it was a song that they would perform in concerts to intentionally annoy close-minded metalheads in the audience.
• 90s emo band Far, similarly to many other bands who came from that scene, had no hits before they disbanded in 1999. When they reunited in 2008, they released a joke cover of Ginuwine's R&B hit "Pony" as a reunion single. That cover, which is heavier than their usual fare, became their first and only entry on the Billboard Alternative chart.
  • The band's frontman Jonah Matranga scored a Top 10 pop hit in 2006 with his guest appearance on Fort Minor's "Where'd You Go", a song that is stylistically a million miles away from Far's mid 90s work.
• Texas power-pop group Fastball's "Out of My Head" was a ballad that was different from the rest of their album All the Pain that Money Can Buy. As a bit of extra (and unfair) trivia, due to a Billboard chart quirk that denied Hot 100 chart entry to their monster pop radio hit "The Way", "Out of My Head" is also their only official Top 40 hit despite being much less remembered than "The Way". Nowadays, when Fastball appear on one-hit wonder retrospectives and countdowns, it's usually for "The Way" and not "Out of My Head".
• Fat Larry's Band were a funk dance group whose one crossover hit was "Zoom", a slow ballad.
• Fergie has numerous hits independent of The Black Eyed Peas, but one of her biggest would be "Big Girls Don't Cry". It's an adult contemporary song that sounds nothing like her normal "urban" material. It topped both the AC and Hot AC charts, which marks her only entry on the former, though some of her other songs scraped the end of the latter.
• Filter's "Take a Picture" is a light, melodic song that stands in contrast to their darker, heavier music. This leads to a funny moment when one unfamiliar with the group first plays "Hey Man, Nice Shot" on Guitar Hero World Tour and then wonders why the band has a song on the mainstream pop-oriented Band Hero.
• Finger Eleven presents a variation. Until they had a hit with "Paralyzer", their best known song was the slow ballad "One Thing," which was far less representative of their typical style.
  • And "Paralyzer", which was far more poppy than their usual work, is itself an example.
  • Also, many WWE wrestling fans are only really familiar (aside from the aforementioned two songs) with "Slow Chemical", which the band tailor-made for Kane to use from 2002 to 2008. It was a remake of Kane's instrumental theme and took more cues from that than the normal Finger Eleven sound.
• Most people who've heard of Leslie Fish know her first for "Banned From Argo", a lighthearted song about spacers^note as in the crew of space ships misbehaving in bars and becoming Personae Non Gratae as a result. However, most of her work, even most of her filks, is some kind of protest song.
• Sort of averted by The Flaming Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly" — the band's only American chart single. Most fans tend to be weary of it still being the first thing many people think of when they hear the band's name, but the band still like it: Even though they're increasingly playing less early material live, the song is nearly always included in their setlists. Plus, whilst their work tends to be a lot more atmospheric, the song still shows off the average LSD-infused weirdness of their early output, and their tendency to not take themselves too seriously.
• Fleetwood Mac's best-selling single in the UK is still, by quite a distance, the 1968 single "Albatross", an almost easy-listening instrumental bearing no resemblance to either the blues rock they normally played at the time, or the pop rock they became known for.
• Focus, "Hocus Pocus". It still gets more play than anything else they ever did (with the possible exception of "House of the King"). If you've heard it, you'll remember Thijs van Leer's yodeling performance ("...yodel-lay-ee yodel-om-pom-pom!"). It is quite distinct from the rest of their repertoire, and has misdirected potential fans in the past. However, the group never turned against it.
• Foo Fighters have a couple:
  • "Big Me", from their debut, is an upbeat jangly Power Pop song, and it was their first major hit single and unlike any of their normal hits.
  • "Walking After You", a downtempto love ballad.
  • "Everlong", their most popular song, sounds very different than their usual hard rock style, with drums clearly influenced by Post-Punk. This naturally makes it seem out of place when they perform it, hence why it's usually the show closer.
  • "Learn to Fly", their biggest pop hit, was one of Dave's least favorite songs particularly for feeling it did not represent the band - and then its success led him to play it every night!
  • "All My Life", their biggest hit in the United Kingdom, could count upon release it was harder than their usual style. Then the albums afterward produced plenty of heavy hits (such as their highest charting song in the US, "Best of You"), and it did not seem that much of a black sheep.
• Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks", their only Top 40 hit, completely lacks the electro-pop slant of the rest of Torches. Interestingly enough, it was the song that got the band a record deal in the first place; the material that made "Pumped Up Kicks" seem incongruent came along after it.
• While it's still one of the Foundations' many Silly Love Songs, "Build Me Up Buttercup" is a lot more upbeat than most of them (including their other hit "Baby Now That I've Found You").
• Michael Franti is a fusion musician who has been playing professionally since 1986 and recording since 1992, with nine albums in his name in a variety of styles from jazz to reggae to hip-hop. The only song of his to get significant airplay is 2009's "Say Hey (I Love You)", a Silly Love Song that barely represents the scope of his abilities.
• Free, "All Right Now". Before that, they mostly did slow blues-rock ballads.
• Funk group Freeez's biggest hit was the uncharacteristically electro-influenced "I.O.U.", which was written and produced by Arthur Baker.
• Front Line Assembly, best known for their serious, angsty Industrial and sometimes Industrial Metal material, collaborated with Mindless Self Indulgence's Jimmy Urine on an over-the-top cover of Falco's synthpop hit "Rock Me Amadeus", starkly contrasting with the rest of their discography.
• Fuzzbubble were a Power Pop band who were once the only rock act signed to Bad Boy Records, a label otherwise known for hip-hop and R&B. The Bad Boy connection led to the only charting song they were ever involved in, a Rap Rock remix of Puff Daddy's "It's All About the Benjamins" (you know, the version that formed the basis of "All About The Pentiums"). When their full-length album finally came out, they lampshaded this history a bit with its Hidden Track - a cover of The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize" In the Style of lounge music.
• Subverted by Genesis. Once a sophisticated progressive rock band, "Follow You, Follow Me" (a gentle love ballad) and especially "Misunderstanding" (a poppier song done In the Style of The Beach Boys) should by all rights have been Black Sheep Hits for them. But they seemingly decided to go with it, and soon became far better known for a string of hit singles mostly fairly similar to those songs than for their more progressive work.
  • Genesis had been making a steady progression towards the mainstream even before Peter Gabriel left ("I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" and "Counting Out Time" are probably the most "poppy" sounding of their early stuff, despite both of them being tucked into the middle of lengthy concept albums, the latter of which is an outright Rock Opera). They had no serious commitment to a particular style or image; they just did what they did and followed whatever worked for them. Hell, their first singles were done "in the style of" The Bee Gees in an attempt to appeal to producer Jonathan King, and their largely forgotten first album, From Genesis to Revelation was essentially a Procol Harum/The Moody Blues clone. They didn't really have much success with it until Phil Collins underwent a nasty divorce and started throwing himself at his work ("Misunderstanding", along with "Man on the Corner", were essentially Collins solo tracks that the rest of the band liked).
  • One of the most famous songs of Phil Collins' solo career is "In the Air Tonight", which is much darker than his usual output (same deal with "I Don't Care Anymore").
  • Two of Peter Gabriel's biggest solo hits, "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" (both from So), are quite a bit funkier and more light-hearted than his usual World Music-influenced post-prog songs that frequently tackle serious, mystical, and/or intellectual subject matter.
• The Goo Goo Dolls were originally a punk-oriented alternative band similar to The Replacements (they were on Metal Blade Records — a famous metal label, and as such, were a strange fit there) with a few slower acoustic songs here and there. They decided to record a ballad ("Name") for their 1995 album A Boy Named Goo, which wound up being a major hit (their first, after five albums). They actually decided to roll with it and wound up completely changing their style to the softer pop-rock they're known for now.
• Ellie Goulding:
  • As a common example of covers being black sheep hits, one of her biggest hits is "Your Song", an Elton John cover. It is a lot more piano based than her other songs, which are basically electro-pop with folk elements.
  • Also, "Burn" was the biggest hit off of Halcyon Days. It's the most straightforward pop song on the album, being a light-hearted song about The Power of Friendship, while rest of the album consists of obsession songs and destructive romances with a Darker and Edgier sound.
  • "Love Me Like You Do" became her third Top 20 hit and second Top 10, and it is, by a sizable margin, the biggest hit of her career worldwide, yet it's completely different from what she normally does for a couple of reasons. It was made for Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack, and as such is heavily about Intercourse with You (a topic she hasn't even hinted at before), and Goulding had absolutely no involvement in the songwriting process (a far cry from her normal Indie Pop DIY style). It is in her signature synthpop style, however. It's just that the subject matter and production is completely different from what she normally does. It was also unusual in that its success was fueled by digital downloads and streaming whereas most of her previous hits were predominantly radio hits (it briefly held the World record for the most streamed song in a single week).
• Ariana Grande had a massive hit with "Break Free", which is an EDM number that is at complete odds with her normal Mariah Carey-esque R&B style. This is because it was produced by German DJ Zedd (who was even credited as a feature). For Zedd, however, it's pretty normal sounding.
• Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey" was a hit pop rock single far removed from the band's improvisational psychedelic style. The pop song introduced them to new fans in the '80s, who clashed frequently with the band's preexisting fandom.
• Green Day, "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)". Also, to a lesser extent, American Idiot's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Wake Me Up When September Ends". Different from many examples in that they're not upset about it, and the songs are hardly out of place for the band anymore since 21st Century Breakdown has many similar songs.
• Guns N' Roses:
  • The intro to "Sweet Child o' Mine" was just Slash warming up in their rehearsal-room, and Axl just happened to hear it, loved it and found an old poem he'd written and voila, Guns' most famous song was written. It had been heard that Slash does not really like the song.
  • Most of Use Your Illusion and all of "The Spaghetti Incident?" is this. In fact, when set-lists are put together, TSI is left off entirely, and only a few certain fan-favorites from UYI get on the set-lists. On Slash-tours, that'd be "Civil War". On GNR-shows, that'd be "Civil War", "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", "You Could Be Mine", "Estranged", "Don't Cry" and "November Rain" (the Ballad-Trio). And that's out of a setlist with up to 35 songs! 6 from UYI get to be played. Granted, the current GNR tour is called "Appetite For Democracy", which might help explain the shortage of UYI and TSI songs (and there's only one or two from Lies).
• Calvin Harris did all the singing himself on his first two albums, but since he broke into the mainstream almost every song features a Special Guest doing the singing rather than him. There are two exceptions, namely "Feel So Close" from 18 Months and "Summer" from Motion, two massive hits sung entirely by him (the latter of which is seen as his Signature Song). Almost every other song that doesn't feature a guest vocalist is an instrumental.
• Sophie B. Hawkins' biggest pop hit is "As I Lay Me Down", which lacks the overt sexual content of most of the rest of her repertoire (including her other big hit, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover").
• "Strange Fruit" was the only protest song Billie Holiday ever recorded. It was the underground hit that marked the turning point in her career.
• The Hollies' "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" is much harder than their usual material. Also, the lead guitar was played by vocalist Allan Clarke as opposed to Tony Hicks, and it contains a solo vocal from Clarke (one of the Hollies' trademarks was their great vocal harmonies). Justified since its In the Style of Creedence Clearwater Revival (Clarke's vocals in this song specifically imitate John Fogerty's from the song "Green River"). Interestingly, Fogerty himself views the song as somewhere between Actually Pretty Funny and "A damn good song in its own right" to the point where he has happily sung the song in concert!
• "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes, who otherwise does serious work. This song is "the success that ruined his career."
• Hoobastank, "The Reason". It's completely a ballad, contrasting strongly with Hoobastank's usual alternative rock/alt-metal style (though they are mostly the former).
• One of The Human League' greatest hits, "Being Boiled", was produced by their Darker and Edgier "Mk. 1" lineup, whose producers, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, split with singer Phil Oakey to found Heaven 17 after their first two albums. On the other end of the scale, "Human", THL's only American #1 hit after "Don't You Want Me", is an adult contemporary ballad quite distanced from their signature synthpop sound.
• Icehouse, an Australian New Wave and Alternative Rock band, made a foray into Eurotrance with their 2002 single "Lay Your Hands On Me".
• Billy Idol, "Eyes Without a Face"; a synthpop ballad by a normally punk-rock singer.
• Incubus' breakout hit, "Drive", was much softer than their past work, though they've done more like it since.
• Iggy Pop. Known for being the grandfather of punk rock, much of his output is rough, hard, and loud. But the closest thing he's had to a hit was a pop ballad love song. It's called "Candy" and is duet with Kate Pierson of The B-52s. It reached 28 in the US Billboard top 100.
• Alan Jackson is one of the leading voices in "neo-traditional" country, a style that flourished in The '90s and up to the Turn of the Millennium which was defined by twangy fiddle-and-steel with a bit more modernized polish. So what was his biggest hit? A duet with Jimmy Buffett titled "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere", which fit well into Buffett's laid-back beach-party style but was a pretty radical departure for the usually more buttoned-down Alan.
• Jane's Addiction: "Been Caught Stealing", an upbeat, hooky, somewhat comical song with Hip-Hop influences and even dog barks.
• Japan: "Ghosts" was the band's first single to reach the UK top ten and remains their biggest hit to this day. Despite that, it's a radical departure from the rest of their output — whereas Japan's usual material was New Romantic fare (with their earliest stuff being Glam Rock), "Ghosts" is a slow, atmospheric dirge with no instruments apart from sparse synths and a marimba. Frontman David Sylvian, however, would regard this as a blessing for him, as the song laid the groundwork for the avant pop of his solo career.
• Jefferson Starship mostly did rockers. Their biggest hit, "Miracles", was a soft ballad.
• Waylon Jennings hated "Luckenbach, Texas", because it was way too conventional and derivative for his outlaw country style, but he recorded it anyway because he figured it would be a huge hit. He was right: it was his biggest hit on the country charts and crossed over to the pop Top 40 too.
• "Aqualung" is one of the most recognizable songs by Jethro Tull, yet it lacks the flute prominent in their other songs. Another Tull example is "Living in the Past", scored in the Uncommon Time of 5/4.
• Jewel, normally a folk-pop singer-songwriter, had an unexpected #1 hit on the dance charts with "Serve the Ego", especially when it received a remix from the DJs Gabriel & Dresden. The success of "Serve the Ego" led her to lean fully into electronic dance-pop on her next album 0304; unfortunately, said album is widely regarded by her fans as an Audience-Alienating Era that killed her mainstream success, and she's largely returned to her older style since. She would later record a pair of Country Music albums, Perfectly Clear and Sweet & Wild, and two albums of children's music with Lullaby and The Merry Goes 'Round, but compared to "Serve the Ego" and 0304, they were a much smaller diversion from her usual style.
• David Johansen, former singer for the proto-punk band New York Dolls, recorded the pop song "Hot, Hot, Hot" under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter. He later described the song in an interview as the "bane of his existence". Unfortunately for him, the song is more famous than anything he ever did with his band.
• Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" is one of his best-known songs, but is much harder than his other material. An inversion of the usual scenario. Elton also never thought "Bennie and the Jets" was commercial enough to be a hit. It not only did become a hit, but topped the R&B charts. Elton was one of the first white performers to play on Soul Train.
• Journey felt this way for a long time about their ballads, fancying themselves an arena rock band. While Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain wrote and believed in ballads like "Faithfully", "Open Arms" and "Don't Stop Believing", Perry and guitarist Neal Schon clashed constantly over the creative direction of the band, especially since their ballads usually performed better.
• Kansas, "Dust in the Wind". Also "Carry on Wayward Son" — it lacks the "fiddle" strings that characterize many of their other songs.
  • The disco-ish "People of the South Wind" is a good example. Kansas were unusual among prog-rock bands, in that they would bend to record company pressure to write hit singles, and were able to produce songs that charted well and weren't embarrassing. Unlike, for instance, Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Since Kansas were much harder-edged than most other prog bands, they had a lot of mainstream success despite their main style being more along the lines of Yes and King Crimson, making the band itself an example of this trope.
  • Then in 1986, they released their last Top 40 hit, "All I Wanted", which had more of a mid-'80s adult contemporary sound to it.
• Toby Keith's biggest crossover hit is "Red Solo Cup", a silly acoustic novelty song far outside his usual mainstream sound, and one of only a handful of singles that he did not co-write.
  • His 2000 hit "How Do You Like Me Now?!" is his biggest hit on the country charts. At the time, it was far more cocky and in-your-face than he had ever been before, but instead of letting it be a black-sheep hit, he began changing his style to match. Similarly, the post-9/11 "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)" was a jarring change for him as he had never done a patriotic song before, but its success led to him doing several more.
• Kesha is mostly known for raunchy party anthems, but "Praying", a ballad she wrote about her experiences being abused by her former producer, is an Adult Contemporary ballad.
• Kid Rock with "Picture", a country-rock ballad duet with Sheryl Crow^note the official radio edit replaced her vocals with those of Allison Moorer, but most stations played the Crow version anyway due to her greater name recognition far removed from his usual mashup of hip-hop and rock. The song even became his first hit on country radio, which had never played him before.
• Kings of Leon's biggest hit (and their only pop hit) "Use Somebody" is completely different from the rest of their catalog, which leans far more towards indie rock, or its parent album, which has a more alternative rock feel.
• KISS released "Detroit Rock City" from their album Destroyer as a single. Yet radio stations liked to play the piano and string based B-side ballad "Beth" instead. Their other big Top 10 pop hit was "Forever" (co-written by Michael Bolton of all people, though then-guitarist Bruce Kulick used to be part of Bolton's band) which while somewhat heavier still falls firmly into the Power Ballad genre. The only other studio single to flirt with the top ten (reaching number 11) was the disco influenced "I Was Made for Lovin' You" - Kiss just can't get a hit single with songs in their trademark style.
• Krewella's biggest hit "Alive" is much Lighter and Softer than most of their other songs.
• Miranda Lambert is known for her somewhat prominent rock influence and empowering lyrics, with up-tempos such as "Kerosene", "Gunpowder & Lead", or "Mama's Broken Heart". But her first top 5 hit was the mid-tempo, bluegrass-influenced "White Liar". And its followup was "The House That Built Me", a sentimental ballad featuring only her voice and acoustic guitar, which became her absolute biggest hit to date.
• Lasgo is normally cheesy electro/pop trance, but "Only You" is retro Italo Hi-NRG.
• Led Zeppelin:
  • "Stairway to Heaven" is far more gentle and calmer than most of their loud and heavy output. To this day Robert Plant despises "Stairway to Heaven" and even encourages radio stations not to play it! The band prevented it from charting by refusing to release it as a single (although a few 7-inch promos were made for distribution to US radio stations). In at least one interview, Plant stated that he always thought of the more typical Zeppelin-sounding "Kashmir" as the definitive Led Zeppelin song. Despite Plant's feelings towards his signature song, Heart performed it live at Kennedy Center and the video released shows Plant in the audience, visibly moved by the performance. The presence of Jason Bonham, son of the late John Bonham (drummer for Led Zeppelin) playing his father's drums and wearing his father's trademark bowler also affected those tears.
  • The reggae-tinged "D'yer Maker".
  • The Brazilian-influenced "Fool in the Rain" which managed to be the band's final Top 40 hit in the US.
  • Plant felt the same way towards the chart success of his cover of "Sea of Love" as part of his side project The Honeydrippers, fearing that he would be typecast as a crooner.
• Jazz legend Peggy Lee will be remembered to kingdom come for "Fever", "It's A Good Day", "Is That All There Is?", "Why Don't You Do Right" and literally hundreds of other superbly performed torch songs... but her biggest hit by far was a forgettable, racist (by today's standards) number called "Mañana (Is Good Enough for Me)", sung in a faux-Mexican accent and comprising a string of stereotypes about Latin Americans. Latinos were considered to be acceptable targets in 1948, which helps explain how that song got to #1 for nine weeks.
• When "Breaking the Habit" was at its high point, new listeners may never imagine Linkin Park was best known for being the raprocking face of Nu Metal. The song helped the band change their style more successfully.
  • "In the End" is this to a lesser extent compared to the other songs in their nu-metal era — it lacks the use of electronica that defined their other songs, instead being replaced by the use of piano. It's also a bit lighter compared to the other songs, hence why it was such a big pop hit.
  • "Bleed it Out" was a big hit on rock radio. It was also the only song off Minutes to Midnight that featured Chester and Mike as a Vocal Tag Team.
  • This distinction even extends to Linkin Park's co-vocalist Mike Shinoda, whose side project Fort Minor only managed one pop hit: "Where'd You Go?". It is a far softer song than the rest of the material found on The Rising Tied when compared to the hard-edged underground Rap Rock featured throughout the rest of the album.
• Country music band Little Texas' biggest hit, "My Love", was also the only single with keyboardist Brady Seals on lead vocals instead of usual lead singer Tim Rushlow. It was also a more relaxed midtempo song, instead of their usual upbeat country-rock fare or slick power ballads.
• While Andrew Lloyd Webber is known for his work in musical theatre, he used to produce an Eurodance remix single of Game Boy Tetris's theme song in 1992 under the pseudonym "Doctor Spin".
• The people who made "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" a hit in 1972 would be surprised when attending live performances by Looking Glass—it was a a hard-edged Jersey Shore Sound band. Many of its members later formed heavy metal band Starz.
• Los Bravos recorded a large amount of material in the pop-rock vein. However, their only hit, "Black Is Black", shows some soul influence (particularly from the Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself") rather than pop-rock.
• Few people who aren't fans of flamenco music (or even those who are) can name any other song by Los Del Rio besides "Macarena". While the original version of "Macarena" sounds like a fairly standard flamenco song, the Bayside Boys remix is a different story entirely.
• From Argentina's border, Brazilian band Los Hermanos had "Anna Júlia", a catchy pop-rock song unlike the rest of their material (specially the one stuff came after), which they've grown to hate.
• The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City", which had a much harder sound than their usual folk-pop. Their second biggest hit, "Do You Believe in Magic?" was poppier than their usual sound.
• The Lyrics were a short-lived band that recorded a series of harmonica-driven folk- and blues-rock songs in their brief existence. The one oddity, becoming a cult favorite through the Nuggets box set, was "So What!!" – often cited as an early proto-punk song.

M-R

• Maddie & Tae's Take That! to bro-country, "Girl in a Country Song", is much more mainstream-sounding than their other work, which has a neo-traditional sound comparable to The (Dixie) Chicks. Given the song's purpose, the different sound was likely intended as a Stealth Parody.
• The British ska band Madness, known to Americans for the '80s song "Our House", is a One-Hit Wonder in the United States, in part due to the fact that ska in general wouldn't really catch on until the third wave of ska during the '90s. "Our House" itself is a far more conventional-sounding post-disco and soft rock song that sounds almost nothing like their 2 Tone and New wave material.^note  They actually had another American hit on the Top 40, their cover of Labi Siffre's "It Must Be Love", but that song has been completely forgotten in the U.S., and also sounds much closer to their regular style.
• Similar to The Elastik Band mentioned above, The Magic Mushrooms gained immortality on the Nuggets compilation, which closed with their wacked-out 1966 minor hit "It's-A-Happening". They only released two follow-up singles, and the A and B sides are Folk Rock in the vein of The Lovin' Spoonful, rather than the Psychedelic Rock that the first single (and the band name) would lead you to expect.
• Major Lazer scored a massive crossover hit with "Lean On", which became one of the biggest EDM crossovers since "Wake Me Up". It's also one of their only songs that doesn't feature any reggae vocals.
• Melissa Manchester's biggest hit and only Grammy Award-winning song is "You Should Hear How She Talks About You" in 1982 which is a dance pop song while her primary music style is MOR. Her other top 10 hits, "Midnight Blue" and "Don't Cry Out Loud", are more representative of her usual style of music.
• Manufacture's "As the End Draws Near", which features a pre-fame Sarah McLachlan on vocals, is much Lighter and Softer and more mainstream-accessible than the rest of their catalogue, which is chiefly aggressive industrial that ranks high on the Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness.
• Marillion had one with "Kayleigh", which is a lot poppier than their usual progressive rock style.
• Marilyn Manson's two biggest hits are his cover of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and his song "The Beautiful People". The first is unlike most of his work due to being a cover song (but admittedly, standard for his covers, which are "Take song with dark lyrics but more positive sound, inject the misery that oozes out of him, record") and the second really doesn't mesh with most of the album it is on, due to being heavier than half the songs, lighter than the other half, and being much more sane than most of the album (the figurative language is much easier to figure out, with stuff like "It's all relative to the size of your steeple", and the song in general being more traditional metal). The both are concert staples, but still don't fit in, partially due to the fact that each album is so insanely different that slamming them all together really can be just kinda odd.
• Bob Marley's "One Love" and "Three Little Birds" are happy anomalies in his usually serious rock reggae catalogue, but they are the songs most commonly associated with him. Similarly the album Kaya sold well but is Lighter and Softer than the rest of his work. It is said that he released accessible material on Exodus and Kaya so that the public would pay attention to his work for his next album Survival, which contained his most political themes to date. However, they ended up changing the public perception of him to that of a carefree hippie rasta rather than someone who was using his music to call for social change.
  • The same can be said about his international hit song "No Woman, No Cry" (the version featured on his live record), which is a track most people consider very moving. Yet, the original studio version, found on Natty Dread, almost sounds comedic. And despite the fact that Marley did write a lot of love songs: he is also best known for his social commentary, which is overshadowed in "No Woman, No Cry" by its message of love.
• While Bobby McFerrin is still respected as a jazz vocalist, he's not likely to ever live down "Don't Worry, Be Happy".
• Maria McKee with "Show Me Heaven" mean't people expected her to be a pop balladeer when her usual style was more of a raw country rock.
• In The '90s, Sarah McLachlan was an artist who specialized in folk and alternative music, and she commonly received airplay on rock radio. However, her two biggest hits, 1998's "Adia" and "Angel" (both from Surfacing), were adult contemporary piano ballads. Ever since the success of these two singles, she's been producing nearly nothing but piano-based adult contemporary music.
• One reason that Don McLean's successful career as a singer-songwriter was somewhat limited was that audiences and radio programmers expected his other songs to be similar to "American Pie" and were disappointed when they weren't.
• "Hurts So Good" by John Mellencamp. (And don't call him Cougar.) His greatest hit (besides "Jack and Diane"), but his later career should make clear he always wanted to be a "political" singer.
  • "Ain't Even Done With the Night", a laid-back, Steve Cropper-produced soft rock/pop-soul ballad which pre-dates "Hurts So Good" and "Jack and Diane" and is far mellower that most of John's singles, might also count.
  • As does his final US Top 40 single to date, "Key West Intermezzo (! Saw You First)", a vaguely Latin-influenced ballad.
• Metallica, "Nothing Else Matters" (the closest the band came to writing a ballad) and "The Unforgiven" from The Black Album, and all of And Justice For All save for "One", which was the only song from said album that survived the band's live setlist after the tour for the album ended.
• MGMT's album Oracular Spectacular was a criticial and commercial hit and reached the charts with "Kids", "Time To Pretend" and "Electric Feel". Despite the album and singles' success its entire sound is very different compared to their regular music. Even "Kids" and "Time To Pretend" had appeared earlier on their EP "Time To Pretend" (2005) in a different version. As a result it became a Black Sheep Hit and the band themselves have made clear that they won't be making songs like those again.
• Frank Mills first gained notice as a singer-songwriter in his native Canada, with a couple of his vocal songs also becoming minor hits south of the border in the United States. But when a piano instrumental he initially recorded as an album cut, "Music Box Dancer", became a major worldwide hit in 1979, he shifted his style to instrumental music.
• Nicki Minaj had a massive hit with "Starships", which is one of her few songs that's entirely sung rather than rapped.
• Ministry's "(Every Day Is) Halloween" was the biggest single from the band's period where they tried to be a new wave/Synth-Pop act. Once they became an Industrial Metal band, they tried to shove it under the rug. Same with "Revenge", their first hit song.
• Modern English were generally a moody, goth-influenced post-punk band when the jangly, upbeat "I Melt With You" became a big hit — in the US they're still considered a One-Hit Wonder (they did technically have two other hits on the Billboard charts, but one of them was just a 1990 remake of "I Melt With You").
• Modest Mouse – "Float On". While the song sounds pretty similar to their other songs, it is 1000x times more upbeat and positive than other songs by them. "Dashboard" far more so.
• Janelle Monáe's highest charting song is "Yoga", which is a much more traditional R&B/hip-hop song than most of her other music (which tends to fall into the Genre-Busting trope).
• The Monkees had one with "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone", which they Covered Up from Paul Revere and the Raiders by making the Top 20. Not too may songs of theirs are that hard (the live versions they did around that time are almost Proto Punk). Also worthy of mention is the schizophrenic "Alternate Title", aka "Randy Scouse Git", which Micky Dolenz wrote after watching Till Death Do Us Part on TV.
• Montgomery Gentry reflects this with most of their #1 hits. The first was the in-your-face, vaguely Rap Rock-influenced "If You Ever Stop Loving Me", which stands out as being more aggressive than even their typical country-rock style. "Lucky Man", "Back When I Knew It All", and "Roll with Me" are far softer than their usual fare, with "Something to Be Proud Of" being their only #1 hit that reflects both their rowdiness and introspection in equal measure. Both "If You Ever Stop Loving Me" and "Roll with Me" stand out for being sung entirely by Troy Gentry with very little vocal contributions from Eddie Montgomery (mainly due to the latter having a second backing vocal from Five for Fighting), as opposed to their usual formula of having both of them sing lead alternately or having Eddie lead and Troy harmonize (which was more common on their earlier singles before they established the back-and-forth formula on "My Town").
• The Moody Blues were best known for their psychedelic and prog-rock songs in the 60's and 70's like "Nights in White Satin" and "The Story in Your Eyes". In The '80s, however, they scored their second and last Top 10 entry with 1986's "Your Wildest Dreams", a synth-pop song. Two years later, they had their last US Top 40 hit with the sequel song "I Know You're Out There Somewhere", also in the synth-pop vein.
• Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" is way poppier than most of his other stuff. It really doesn't help that Morrison was broke, desperate, and had no star leverage when he wrote it. Because he was forced to sign the rights to Bang Records, he gets virtually no ongoing royalties whatsoever from what is still his most popular song (which is why he was still broke and desperate when he recorded his career-defining album, Astral Weeks). Yet the fans still expect to hear it at gigs, which does not help his legendary curmudgeonliness.
• Mr. Big, a band known for having one of the fastest and most technically adept guitarists in rock and metal (and this was in the late '80s, when lightning-fast guitar shredders were everywhere) and a world-famous bass guitar virtuoso, naturally had their biggest stateside hit with "To Be With You", a relatively slow and simple acoustic ballad.
• Mr. President's "Coco Jamboo", their only major hit in Anglophone countries, was a reggae-rap tune very different from their traditional Eurodance material.
• With My Chemical Romance, they like to take it to an extreme, with their entire latest album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys being the most successful album they've had so far, despite a different style to what they're often known for (This album was Fun Personified as an album instead of a character while they're often known for emotional 'don't stop singing' powerful songs which are often mistaken for Emo). However, to fans who listened to their previous albums, they'd know they've had similar songs scattered through their previous albums, but none had been released. This time, all but a small percentage are anything but poppy and fun. Previous non-single songs, such as House of Wolves for example, have a similar tone and style to Danger Days.
• Nada Surf's "Popular" differs a lot from their other songs, for using spoken word verses excerpted from Penny's Guide to Teen-Age Charm and a sound more reminiscent of grunge rather than the power pop and indie rock that the is common in the band's discography.
• Nazareth was a hard rock band that made the mistake to record a ballad, "Love Hurts", and has been mistaken for a ballad band ever since.
• While many of No Doubt's most memorable hits are in the ska-punk genre, the ballad "Don't Speak" is by far their most recognizable song, and arguably the song that turned singer Gwen Stefani into a household name.
• The Neighbourhood's most popular song is "Sweater Weather", a romantic song with a vastly different tune than their other songs like "Afraid" or "Honest".
• New Order's "Blue Monday" was only meant as an experiment with electronic instruments, and an encore instrumental piece which could be played after they had left the stage, but ended up as their best selling single.
• "Head Like a Hole" was originally this for Nine Inch Nails. It's a loud, angry rock song with a guitar-driven chorus while the rest of their debut album is dark synth pop with little, of any, guitar and more brooding or angsty lyrics. The follow-up Broken was full-on industrial metal in a style more similar to "Head Like a Hole" than any of their other material.
• Nirvana's "About a Girl" is the only song off Bleach that most people can name, and the only one you'll likely hear on the radio or in a public setting. For good reason, it's much more mainstream-friendly than the rest of the album, being more in line with the material from Nevermind as well as sounding very Beatles-esque. Bleach is easily the least-accessible album in their entire library, being much noisier and denser than its polished follow-ups, with the exception of that song. It should be noted however that it wasn't a hit until after Kurt Cobain's death, due to being featured as the lead single off of MTV Unplugged in New York, where before then it was very obscure (like the rest of Bleach), making it a Sleeper Hit.
• The Touhou Project arrange "Bad Apple!!" is by far Nomico's most popular song, but most of her other works are peppy moe songs in a much higher, cutesy register.
• Minor example: Although Duane Allen is considered the lead singer of The Oak Ridge Boys, tenor Joe Bonsall sang lead on their most famous song, "Elvira".
• The Offspring:
  • "Gone Away", their 1997 song, is a tear-jerking Due to the Dead that sounds nothing like most of their comedic material. It was their only #1 hit on mainstream rock until 2015, and their first song to go gold in any country (Australia).
  • "Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?", which became one of the band's few pop radio hits in their nearly 25-year career.
• As an experimental musician, Mike Oldfield has never been interested in crafting pop hits, but he's remembered by most people as the guy who recorded "Tubular Bells", the theme from The Exorcist. Only a small part of the album-long composition was used in the film, but that part was released as a single and made the U.S. Top 10.
• Another one whose first hit is the black sheep: OneRepublic. In The New '10s, they're best known for upbeat pop-rock like "Good Life", "Counting Stars", and "Love Runs Out", but try convincing anyone from the previous decade that that would be the case, when their first single was the ultra-slow "Apologize" (thanks to a redrummed backing track by superstar producer Timbaland) and their second was another ballad, "Stop and Stare" (though still a step towards the rock side, which was completely absent from the former).
• Joan Osborne is a raw and rootsy blues-rocker whose one big hit, "One of Us", is a relatively lightweight alternative-pop tune.
• Ozzy Osbourne is known for the metal he does. His only two songs to chart in the top 40 in the US were "Close My Eyes Forever" (a somber, melancholy duet with Lita Ford) and "Mama, I'm Coming Home" (about his impending "retirement"; also co-written by Lemmy!), which are not indicative of the bulk of his discography. His highest-charting song in Britain, "Changes" (which hit no. 1), is a father-daughter duet with Kelly, and a cover of what is itself a Black Sheep Hit of Black Sabbath's.
• The Osmonds, purveyors of safe seventies pop music had a big hit with "Crazy Horses", a hard rock song.
• OutKast have long been known for their endlessly creative brand of hip-hop. Their biggest hit? "Hey Ya", a Beatles-esque pop song, which became this trope mostly because Big Boi wasn't involved with that song. If OutKast was just André 3000, there would have been more songs like "Hey Ya!". Follow-up "The Way You Move" was also more R&B than rap; this time around André 3000 wasn't involved with the song, so if OutKast was just Big Boi, there would have been more songs like it.
• "Jackie Blue", by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, sounds absolutely nothing like the rest of the album it appeared on (It'll Shine When It Shines), or much of the rest of the band's catalog for that matter.
• P.O.D. is known for rap-rock, but their surprise comeback in 2012 with "Lost in Forever" and "Beautiful" differs heavily from the material they're known for. While the former is still fairly heavy, it lacks a lot of the rapping, while the latter is a full-on soft ballad. The single released in between, "Higher", was more typical P.O.D., but unlike the other two, it fell short of the top 10.
• Brad Paisley:
  • He usually records tongue-in-cheek novelty numbers, and on the rare occasion that he does a ballad, it's still got an undercurrent of humor mixed with introspection ("Letter to Me") or sympathy and praise for the opposite sex ("Waitin' on a Woman"). Not so with "Then", a very pop-sounding Cliché Storm love ballad that sounds nearly nothing like the rest of his career as far as melody or lyrics.
  • "Whiskey Lullaby" (featuring the aforementioned Alison Krauss) is a very soft, somber Tear Jerker, which is unusual for Paisley's standards, but not so much for Krauss'.
  • Another example of a black sheep hit from him is "Remind Me", a duet with Carrie Underwood, which is his highest charting song on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. Like "Then", it's a poppy ballad, and its subject matter of Dead Sparks is an aberration to both artists' catalogs.
  • His very first #1 hit, "He Didn't Have to Be", is a ballad honoring stepfathers. A much softer and more heartfelt beginning compared to the songs he'd record later on.
  • And then there's his collaboration with Dolly Parton. "When I Get Where I'm Going" has a reverent, preachy quality that, although right up Dolly's alley, is rather far from Brad's wheelhouse.
• Pantera's biggest hit on rock radio was a cover of Black Sabbath's "Planet Caravan". Like the original, it's a softer Psychedelic Rock number that sharply contrasts their hard-hitting Groove Metal material. The Far Beyond Driven liner notes even acknowledge that this isn't the kind of material fans would normally expect from them - The following message is printed in place of the song's lyrics:
  This is a Black Sabbath song off of the Paranoid album. So don't freak out on us. We did the song because we wanted to. It has nothing to do with the integrity of our direction. It's a tripped out song. We think you'll dig it. If you don't, don't fucking listen to it. Thanks. On behalf of the rest of Pantera, Phil Anselmo '94.
• Paramore:
  • "The Only Exception" is the band's biggest pop hit (or at least it was, until "Ain't It Fun" a few years later), and has managed to become one of many examples of "punk band with hit ballad" syndrome.
  • "Ain't It Fun" is much funkier than anything else the band has made.
• Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters", which sounds uncannily like the Huey Lewis and the News song "I Want a New Drug" but sounds nothing like Parker's other work. This led to legal action being taken and an out-of-court settlement.
• Pearl Jam had this with "Last Kiss". Even though it was a cover of an old '60s pop song, and only originally offered to the band's fan club, once radio stations picked it up it became their biggest hit.
  • The jury is still out if their second biggest American radio hit, "Better Man", also qualifies.
• Comedian/singer Minnie Pearl, best known for her appearances on Hee Haw, had exactly one hit: a completely serious Answer Song to Red Sovine's heartwarming trucker's hit "Giddyup Go", titled appropriately enough, "Giddyup Go — Answer".
• Katy Perry's Prism is filled with pure Pop music, except for its biggest hit "Dark Horse", which is much more "urban" than her normal material. It became her second song to top the rhythmic charts (following "E.T.", itself an example).
• Invoked intentionally by early Christian Rock band Petra, because their usual material was considered unacceptable for airplay on Christian radio.
• Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2" became a Protest Song, something which the band hadn't planned, resulting in it being banned in South Africa.
  • Their first commercially successful singles, "See Emily Play" and "Money" count for being groovier and more accessible than their Progressive Rock sound.
• "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White T's — their usual style is much more upbeat and is more pop-punk oriented, but their acoustic ballad was what became a major hit. Their only other Top 40 hits in the United States, "1234" and "Rhythm of Love", were also acoustic ballads (although both slightly more upbeat).
• The Police with "Every Breath You Take". A number one hit in many countries, it was the best-selling single of 1983 in the US and the 5th-best-selling single of the decade. The Police's music style is a combination of New Wave, reggae, post-punk, and rock, but "Every Breath You Take" was borderline soft rock and a departure from their usual sound. Everyone of all ages has probably heard of this song at least once since almost any radio station still plays this song daily (it actually holds the record of one of the most requested songs in radio history) and many think it's a romantic ballad to this day. They are in for a huge surprise.
• Porcupine Tree are mostly a Progressive Rock group whose music is not generally considered radio-friendly. Their 2005 song "Shallow", a Grunge-esque rock song, was their only radio hit in the U.S.
• "Dance with the Devil" was Cozy Powell's first and biggest solo hit. Unfortunately, he didn't really mean it: "I only cut 'Dance with the Devil' for a laugh, but then it escalated until I felt I was losing credibility..." It led to him quitting music and going into motor racing full time for a few months, after which he was persuaded to join Strange Brew and then Rainbow.
• Elvis Presley pretty much ran the gamut from loud rockers and jumpy, jazzy tunes to soft ballads and bluesy melodies. Shortly before his entry into the army, however, he recorded the Dixieland-based "Hard Headed Woman", one of the more unusual of his numerous chart-toppers, for the film King Creole, while his last #1, "Suspicious Minds", was less unusual but featured a little soul music to it.
• Primitive Radio Gods scored a hit in 1996 with the ethereal "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand", but the rest of the album it was taken from consisted of '80s style rock. The only things the rest of the material had in common with the hit was sampling and use of drum machines. Unsurprisingly, the group never had another hit.
• Queen:
  • John Deacon conceived "Another One Bites the Dust" as a "little ditty about a cowboy". It was initially not intended to be a single because it was so far and away from the rest of the album, but Michael Jackson managed to convince them it should be a single. They took the risk, and you can see how it paid off.
  • "Bohemian Rhapsody", particularly the operatic middle section ("I see a little silhouetto of a man..."). Not only does it lie at one extreme of their range of styles, it also employs an eight-part harmony (overdubbed in the studio), so despite its huge popularity they have never been able to perform the entire song live.
  • "Under Pressure" was the band's only big name single to be recorded alongside an outside artist, in this case David Bowie. It's gone on to be one of their most recognizable hits.
  • "Body Language", from 1982's Hot Space, peaked at #11 in the United States and was not only a departure in sound from their earlier hits, but it was also the album's highest-charting single in that region. As a result, the band included it on the US leg of the Hot Space tour, but outside of those performances and its later inclusion on the 1992 Greatest Hits compilation in the US, it remained largely ignored by the band.
• Queensrÿche's sole Top 40 hit, "Silent Lucidity", which is a mainstream rock ballad rather than their prior Progressive Metal.
  • Its source, Empire, could be considered a Black Sheep Album, as the majority of it is lighthearted Yes-esque Progressive Rock of the more mainstream-leaning '80s sort, in stark contrast to the darker material that surrounds it.
• Radiohead's "Creep", which is a very radio-friendly pop/indie rock song with a relatively traditional guitar/bass/drum sound. It's not only very different than most of the rest of the parent album Pablo Honey, but completely different than Radiohead's subsequent stuff, which is heavily electronic, jazz, and pure-rock. Even 20 years later, it's still their most recognized (but hardly only) hit.
• Rainbow was a metal pioneer, but their one and only Top 40 hit was "Stone Cold", a slow song from the Joe Lynn Turner era.
  • In the UK at least, "Since You've Been Gone" was a big hit, but it is a glam rock song.
• The Rascals scored three #1 hits in the 1960's, the last being "People Got to Be Free". Holding the top spot for five consecutive weeks in the summer of 1968 – longer than both "Good Lovin'" and "Groovin'", for which people still remember them — that song was much Darker and Edgier than its two predecessors, coming out, by pure coincidence, in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.
• "Mujer Amante", a love song by the Argentinean Heavy Metal band Rata Blanca was their biggest hit ever. The rest of their music was 100% Heavy Metal. (Even at high speeds and heavy sound.)
• James Ray had a very brief career as an R&B singer, but his only Top 40 hit was "If You've Got to Make a Fool of Somebody", featuring a waltz melody, something more commonplace in jazz than in R&B.
• Record label Razor & Tie mostly serves as an outlet for hard rock artists like All That Remains, The Pretty Reckless, and Starset. But they will always be best known for Kidz Bop, an act who can’t be any more different from the former three, plus, Razor and Tie started out as a reissue and compilation label.
• Chris Rea is best known as a blues-rock artist and for his slide guitar playing, but his biggest American hit was his debut single "Fool (If You Think It's Over)", a keyboard-based soft rock song which is also the only song he's released that he doesn't play guitar on.
• "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers got a lot of people buying Blood Sugar Sex Magik expecting more of the same and not an album full of funk with only maybe two other ballady songs. Imagine all the suburban housewives who liked "Under the Bridge" and wound up stumbling into "Sir Psycho Sexy"!
  • "Under the Bridge", while being a Surprisingly Gentle Song, nevertheless treats a fairly dark topic — Anthony Kiedis' reflections on everything and everyone he's thrown away in his life because of drugs, and the city/spirit of Los Angeles as the only entity that will support him unconditionally.
  • They managed an inverted version of this later on, with the hit "Can't Stop" from the album By the Way. "Can't Stop" is the only example of funk-pop on the album. The remaining tracks are mostly ballads, though there are a few exceptions.
• Otis Redding was already famous as a Stax/Volt R&B artist when he recorded "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay". Three days later, he and most of the rest of his band died in a plane crash. The song became wildly popular (the first posthumous song to top the charts in the UK), even though it's very different from much of his large body of work.
• Aaron Barrett of Reel Big Fish has gone on record saying "... ["Sell Out" was] some dumb novelty song I wrote ten years ago.".
• R.E.M. has the peppy "Shiny Happy People", which even features Kate Pierson. And damn, they hate this song.
  • "Radio Song", a funk-rap-rock song with KRS-One.
  • "Stand", which is far more bubblegummy than their normal output.
• The Rembrandts' "I'll Be There for You" (the Friends theme), a more mainstream-pop friendly song compared to their alternative power-pop sound.
• The Residents are best known by the mainstream public for their underground hit "Kaw Liga", which is a very danceable cover of a song by Hank Williams and very catchy and slick compared to their general experimental output.
• Canadian indie-rock band Rheostatics had to write an in-universe hit single for the soundtrack of the film version of Whale Music, and the song ended up becoming an actual Top 40 hit, proving that they could write a hit single if they wanted to. They didn't enjoy the experience and never tried it again.
• While Rihanna frequently plays the Genre Roulette (she is ostensibly a Contemporary R&B singer), she had this happen to her with FourFiveSeconds, her 2015 collaboration with Kanye West and Paul McCartney. It's a folk tune that doesn't sound at all like anything else she's ever done.
  • An earlier single "Take a Bow" is much slower, and more suited towards adult contemporary than her normal 'urban' material.
    • "Stay" is also much slower than her normal material, and ended up being her biggest hit on AC and Hot AC radio.
  • Even her signature song "Umbrella" falls into this, not so much in sound as it is in subject matter. Many, many of her songs are about love, and often, sex. "Umbrella" however, is completely about The Power of Friendship. It's not often she sings about platonic relationships.
• Rise Against usually write blistering Hardcore Punk anthems with heavy political themes, but they had a big hit with the subdued, apolitical acoustic song "Swing Life Away".
• Rollergirl's only major hit, a cover of Sunscreem's "Love You More", is trance, while most of her other songs are Eiffel 65-style Nu-Italo/Europop.
• This often happens with veteran artists who try changing their sound to meet current tastes. "Miss You", The Rolling Stones' flirtation with disco, is one example.
• Lita Roza was much respected as a jazz and ballad singer, but her big hit record was the children's novelty song "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?", which she loathed so much that after recording a single take, she never sang it again.
• Todd Rundgren, despite his mastery of a myriad of different genres and styles, may be best known for the latter-day Talking Heads rip-off "Bang the Drum All Day". Especially by Green Bay Packers fans.^note The song is played after every Packers touchdown at their home stadium, Lambeau Field.
  • All of Rundgren's big hits ("Bang the Drum All Day", "Hello It's Me", "I Saw the Light", "We Gotta Get You a Woman") are from the poppier side of his music. He can get really experimental and weird from time to time (A Wizard, A True Star; the early Utopia albums).
  • He was so disgusted with the vapidness of his biggest hit "I Saw the Light" (which he insists his record label forced him to record, and he writes off as a "bad Peter Frampton wannabe song"), that he intentionally quit the high-profile music business to focus on producing other artists while occasionally releasing more low-profile but critically-acclaimed albums.
• Rush's only Top 40 hit in the United States (charting at #21) and only number one hit in Canada was "New World Man" off their 1982 album Signals. The song was a huge hit on the radio, but the only reason the song was written was to balance out Side A and Side B on cassette and vinyl versions of the album. The song was written in one day and recorded at the very end of production. The song departs the progressive-elements that characterizes Rush and it has a standard 4/4 time signature throughout the whole song, a very rare thing for Rush to do. The song essentially follows a standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern in the absence of a guitar solo and the bridge sounds like something that should be on a song by The Police.

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• "Always" by Saliva was a post-grunge ballad that was softer than the rap-heavy nu-metal songs they’re better known for, like "Your Disease" and "Click Click Boom". They did shift away from the rap stylings later on, but even compared to their new output, "Always" is
• French singer Henri Salvador is best known for his child-friendly comedy songs, yet he also wrote a lot more mature romantic ballads, which were never quite as popular. He's also famous for recording the first French rock-and-roll songs under the pseudonym Henry Cording, but despite that he later claimed to dislike rock-and-roll and treated his Henry Cording persona as an Old Shame.
• Lina Santiago's only hit, "Feels So Good (Show Me Your Love)", was Latin freestyle/electropop, while the rest of her debut (and only) album, thanks to Executive Meddling, was mainly R&B/pop ballads.
• Saving Abel were another late 2000s to early 2010s band often lambasted as "butt rock". Only two of their five top 10 hits on rock radio, "18 Days" and "Drowning (Face Down)", were not highly sexual or hedonistic songs, and only "Drowning" had nothing to do with women or romance at all. Their sophomore album leaned much more heavily on the sexuality, right down to having a model on the cover. (Their debut originally had a woman’s butt on the cover, but it was later replaced by a photo of the band.)
• Scorpions, "Wind of Change". Even though this song became the hymn for the fall of the Berlin Wall, vocalist Klaus Meine said that the song had actually been written long before, and he happened to stumble on it when looking at some annotations.
  • Also, the Power Ballad "Still Loving You".
  • Ever since "Wind of Change", all their hits have been ballads. And we're still talking about the band that gave us "Rock You Like a Hurricane".
• Jill Scott's debut single "Getting in the Way" is about a woman confronting some hussy who's making moves on her man. It is much angrier in tone than 90% of her music, which is generally good-natured and uplifting, making it all the more baffling that this song was chosen as her first single and video.
• Bob Seger was first known for his garage rock and then his guitar-driven arena rock. His only #1? "Shakedown", a synth-driven song that was written by him, Harold Faltermeyer, and Keith Forsey for the movie Beverly Hills Cop II.
  • Another one of his big hits, "Shame on the Moon", managed to get enough airplay at country radio to make #15 on the country music charts. It was even written by critically acclaimed country singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell. It, too, is a (less blatant) departure from his usual sound.
• Seether are usually considered to be South Africa's answer to Three Days Grace. Then they released "Words As Weapons", a rousing, "Mad World"-influenced alt-rock anthem, gaining them new-found success. Then of course there's "Broken", which was their only pop hit. It's far softer than their normal material, and their only song to feature guest vocals (courtesy of frontman Shaun Morgan's then-girlfriend Amy Lee).
• One-Hit Wonder Michael Sembello's "Maniac", a fast-paced New Wave Synthpop anthem, is completely different from the other songs on its parent album, which are mainly post-disco, funk, and contemporary R&B/soul.
• Shadows Fall, while no strangers to power ballads ("The Art of Balance", "What Drives the Weak", "Inspiration on Demand", etc.), had never made one that was quite as modern rock-oriented as "Another Hero Lost". It was an obvious bid at widespread radio play; while it did accomplish that, it also pissed off dedicated fans (who hated it for being such an obvious radio song) and alienated non-fans who latched onto it (as the parent album was far heavier than that song). The band quickly turned against it and stopped playing it live around the end of 2008 and never brought it back.
• Blake Shelton was one of the big figures in bro-country, a subgenre defined by two things: rap-inspired production and a near-total disinterest in any topic beyond parties, booze, tits and cars. Even after bro-country fell out of favour, Shelton's output was still pretty heavy on pop production and light on deeper themes, which is why "God's Country", a bleak, harsh-edged Southern Gothic country song, is so jarring. It's not his biggest hit, but it still feels weird to listen to it and think that this was the dude who made "Boys Round Here".
• Shinedown's cover of "Simple Man". Constantly screamed for at concerts by drunk people who know the band only for Brent Smith's rendition of this Lynyrd Skynyrd classic. Old interviews had the band stating that they would never play it live again, due to guitarist Jasin Todd's departure. It is thought among some fans that the song's resurfacing in their Carnival of Madness tour is due to pressure from their record label Atlantic, and the band actually hates playing the song. Singer Brent Smith has been heard to drop snide remarks at fans who show up only to hear Simple Man ("How many of you want to hear Simple Man so you can leave?").
  • To a lesser extent, Shinedown's biggest hit to date (and their only pop hit) "Second Chance" is not very representative of the band's typical hard rock style, although the band does embrace this song.
• The Silencers, a Scottish rock band with a bit of a cult following, are known for their highly prolific and eclectic output, but most of their songs are generally categorized as "punk", and they skew towards a rather aggressive sound with strong electronic influences. But their best-known song is probably their mellow and soulful cover of the traditional Scottish folk song "Wild Mountain Thyme", which caught on after it was used in a Scottish tourism ad. The music video is the most viewed Silencers video on YouTube by a pretty substantial margin.
• Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" is not her only Take That!, but it's probably her least subtle. While it's far from her only hit, it's her only #1 (in Australia and North America), her best-known song and is more rock-oriented than most of her hits.
• Simply Red were one of Britain's biggest blue-eyed soul groups of the '80s and '90s. Their only number one single in their native country is "Fairground", a house track.
• Frank Sinatra and his Signature Song "My Way", which is more adult contemporary than his usual swinging style. Indeed, he never really liked it despite being his most famous song.
• Siouxsie and the Banshees, whose signature style is Goth Rock, achieved their biggest hit in the US with the much poppier Alternative Dance single "Kiss Them for Me".
• Slipknot's lead single off their successful self-titled debut, "Wait and Bleed", could be considered an example. While it has the speed, angst and chaotic qualities of most of their output, it's by-far the least heavy non-electronic song on the record. It's also one of the album's shortest songs.
  • Another example from may be the record's other single, "Spit It Out". While it's faster and longer than "Wait and Bleed", it's one of the band's few songs that has out-and-out rapping, causing them to often be pegged as Rap Metal.
  • Same goes for "Before I Forget". Even taking Volume 3 being Lighter and Softer in account, the melodic rock nature of the song stands in contrast to the less conventional arrangements of the album's other songs. Doubly so for "Vermillion", the band's rather twisted attempt at a romantic Power Ballad.
  • In keeping with the theme, "Left Behind" is Iowa's Spiritual Successor to "Wait and Bleed" in terms of song structure and style.
• The Small Faces were a mod rock band comparable to a bluesier version of The Who. Their biggest hit (and only hit in the US) was "Itchycoo Park", a flower power number they wrote as a joke. In the UK, they scored another Black Sheep Hit with the equally jokey "Lazy Sunday". The lukewarm reception of the band's more serious songs led Steve Marriott to leave the group in order to form Humble Pie, while the other four regrouped as Faces.
• Smash Mouth's first hit single, "Walkin' on the Sun", was a '60s-esque pop tune; the rest of their debut album was mostly pop-ska, with the exception of a cover of War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?" Like Sugar Ray, who charted at about the same time, they embraced their Black Sheep Hit, and their second album was much heavier on the retro-pop.
• One of the Smithereens' biggest hits? "Too Much Passion", a light soul-pop song that sounds nothing like their guitar-driven sound. Their other top 40 hit, "A Girl Like You", is an upbeat power pop love anthem also atypical of their headier fare.
• Patti Smith was a founding mother of American punk music who was shockingly profane for a female vocalist of her time, and brought to her music a strong feminist vibe. Her best-known hit is "Because the Night" (first heard on the 1978 record Easter), a pop love ballad written by Bruce Springsteen, which contains none of these elements.
  • "Hungry Heart" for Springsteen would qualify as well, being musically miles away (although lyrically similar) from his bleak late '70s/early '80s output. He originally wrote it for the Ramones, but recorded it himself after being chewed out by his manager for giving away his hit songs ("Because the Night", as well as "Blinded by the Light", which became a #1 hit for Manfred Mann, and "Fire", later a #2 hit for the Pointer Sisters). Most of his later singles from Born in the U.S.A. were cut from the same cloth.
• The Smiths have "How Soon Is Now?" It's probably their best-known song, but its psychedelic atmospheric quality is nothing like their normal jangly indie rock sound.
• Soft Cell's megahit, "Tainted Love", is nothing like most of their other material, which is loaded with kinky sexual content that would not be played on most radio stations. In fact "Tainted Love" was originally an obscure 1965 Motown song performed by Gloria Jones.
• Despite being their Signature Song, Sonic Youth's "Teen Age Riot" is highly atypical compared to their usual oeuvre, consisting of the standard verse-chorus structure that they more often than not forego.
• Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" is Lighter and Softer, with a tone described by the band as "Beatles-esque", but became the band's Signature Song.
• Outside of their native UK, the vast majority of people have probably only heard one Spandau Ballet song, the jazzy ballad "True". This actually sounds nothing like the majority of their very synth-heavy work.
• Dusty Springfield kicked off her solo career in 1963 with "I Only Want to Be with You", a heavy song in her rather light career. Somehow, it shot to #4 in her native UK but missed the Top 10 in the US.
• Squeeze seem to make a habit of being atypical in their successes:
  • Their first significant success was “Take Me I’m Yours”, In which the lyrics depict an exotic fantasy world. Then they went on to a career of closely observed slice-of-life pop songs.
  • "Cool for Cats", one of their biggest hits in the UK, was sung by guitarist Chris Difford rather than usual lead singer Glenn Tilbrook.
  • Their two biggest hits in the US also count. "Tempted" leans toward soft rock and sports a lead vocal by Paul Carrack during his brief stint with the band. "Hourglass" is Soul-influenced a la Culture Club or George Michael, with an odd Motor Mouth chorus.
• Steeleye Span is an electric folk/folk-rock band with a repertoire drawn from the British Isles' musical tradition. However, their first UK hit in 1972 was an a capella Christmas song, "Gaudete," sung in Latin.
• Steely Dan's biggest hit in the UK is "Haitian Divorce", a reggae-influenced song that is not only atypical of their normal jazz rock sound, but also one of their more obscure singles in their native United States. It's one of only a few of their singles to miss the Billboard Hot 100 entirely. The main reason "Haitian Divorce" was a hit in the UK was because it came out at a time when reggae music was particularly popular thanks to the likes of Bob Marley. It should be noted that the song doesn't get radio airplay very often anymore.
  • In the US, they had a big hit with "Dirty Work", a country-influenced ballad which features effeminately voiced guest vocalist David Palmer on lead vocals. At the time, songwriter and usual singer Donald Fagen felt Palmer could help make the song a bigger hit, and had also hired him to sing vocals live, due to lack of confidence in singing and playing piano at the same time. After the album Can't Buy a Thrill (which features vocals from Fagen, Palmer and fellow band member Jim Hodder), Fagen would assume lead vocals for all their songs - partly for continuity and partly because he felt nobody could convey the cynicism in his lyrics as well as he could. This is something of a subversion in that the two other hits from Can't Buy a Thrill - "Do It Again" and "Reelin' in the Years" - do feature Fagen singing lead.
• Cat Stevens was quite reluctant to release "Wild World" on Tea for the Tillerman because he considered it too commercial compared to his folk-rock output, but it was indeed one of his first Top 20 hits. His next album, Teaser and the Firecat, gave him two Top 10 hits with "Peace Train", which has a loose soul inspiration, and his cover/arrangement of "Morning Has Broken", contrasting his calm guitar with the flamboyant piano of Rick Wakeman.
• Ray Stevens is mainly known for his novelty songs. However, he had his biggest hit with the extremely serious and sentimental "Everything Is Beautiful". He had another serious hit earlier with "Mr. Businessman" and also had a country hit with the Gospel standard "Turn Your Radio On".
• Stevie B was a singer in the late 80s and early 90s who was part of Miami's freestyle scene and, as a result, wrote and performed mostly dance songs. His only number 1 (and only top 10 hit, for that matter) on the Billboard Hot 100 was "Because I Love You (The Postman Song)", a piano-based love ballad. Unlike his previous singles, this one never even touched the dance charts, but that never stopped it from being his most well-known single.
• One of the most popular Stingers songs with fans of the 80s cartoon Jem is "Destiny". Riot usually sings lead and the women are backup however in this song Riot only sings the chorus.
• Stone Sour's two biggest hits, "Bother" and "Through Glass." (the latter starts off ballad-y and gets harder as it goes, but is still different from their other songs). A few other of their rock hits, like "Sillyworld" and "Hesistate", also qualify.
• 1990s country star Doug Stone was usually known for being a balladeer, usually with an emphasis on heartbreak or sorrow (as exemplified by his debut single "I'd Be Better Off (In a Pine Box)"). Two of his biggest hits ("A Jukebox with a Country Song" and "Why Didn't I Think of That") were far more uptempo, but not completely outside his comfort zone thematically — the first is about him seeking a place to drown his sorrows after a fight with the Mrs., while the latter is him regretting that his girl is now with someone else. However, "In a Different Light" stands out as a romantic love song about a relationship with an office worker. "Addicted to a Dollar" and "Born in the Dark" also stand out for having a much harder country-rock edge than the rest of his career.
• The Stranglers' "Golden Brown", a baroque composition that was completely different from the band's earlier punk rock sound.
  • The Stranglers had no particular commitment to any one style. Their roots were actually in folk rock, but they abandoned that with the emergence of punk/new wave.
• The Strawbs specialised in folk-rock, mostly based on timeless poetic themes, historical events or personal experiences. The majority of their songs originated from frontman Dave Cousins, who sang lead vocal on all but a few. "Part of the Union", by far and away their biggest hit ever, was a topical pub-rock anthem that took the rise out of the militant workers who were butting heads with the UK's employers and government at that time. It was written by Rick Hudson and John Ford and performed with John Ford on lead vocals. The huge success of this Black Sheep Hit was one of the main factors in Hudson and Ford's departure from the group, and also resulted in it being excluded from the playlist entirely when they took their next album on tour. (However, Hudson, Ford and PotU were all eventually returned to the fold.)
  • Also, "Part of the Union" is sometimes assumed to be a pro-union anthem.
• Strawberry Alarm Clock and their #1 hit from 1967 "Incense and Peppermints" count. For one thing, the lead vocal on "Incense" wasn't even by a band member. The band had worked up the melody as an Instrumental, then their producer hired an outside writer to pen some lyrics that the band hated, so they asked a friend who was visiting the recording session to sing lead. And the song leaned much more in the direction of Psychedelic Rock than their usual material, which was typically Sunshine Pop (with a bit of Psychedelic influence) featuring elaborate vocal harmonies. Naturally, the band never had another hit afterwards.
• "Babe" by Styx is a slow electric piano-based ballad, unlike most of their other more rock-oriented works. Additionally, "Mr. Roboto" is mostly synthesized, while most of their songs were guitar-based.
• Sugar Ray's "Fly". To the point where they had a song that sounded like it ("Every Morning") released as the first single from their next album 14:59. And another, "Someday", from the same album... and another, "When It's Over", as the lead single from their next album.
  • "Every Morning" was likely the result of Executive Meddling. Sugar Ray were originally an abrasive punk-influenced alt-rock band who turned out to have an unlikely talent for sweet-sounding ballads. Their singer commented that they had turned into the kind of band they hate.
• One of Sugarland's biggest hits was "Stay", a ballad done entirely on organ and acoustic guitar. It is also one of the only songs in their catalog where lead singer Jennifer Nettles sings entirely by herself (although the other member, Kristian Bush, is still the one playing guitar on it). The five-minute minimalist ballad was far removed from anything else in Sugarland's discography, never mind anything else on country radio at the time.
• Sum 41 is a skate punk / Pop Punk, but their biggest hit "Fat Lip" is one of their only songs to feature rapping.
• Donna Summer was most famous as the Queen of Disco, but then "I Feel Love", her 1977 collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, was almost entirely produced on a Moog Modular 3P synthesizer, and may be the Ur-Example of Italo Disco and Electronic Dance Music, not to mention her singing in head voice as opposed to her normal chest register.
• Taylor Swift:
  • Her first ever Billboard Hot 100 #1 song "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" leans more towards being catchy, radio friendly bubblegum pop (with some electronica thrown in for good measure) when compared to her more thoughtful, guitar based country-pop fare. It (along with its parent album Red) also marked a huge turning point in her career - her switch from straight country-pop to more mainstream music.
  • That song's follow-up "I Knew Were You Trouble" is a dubstep song, albeit in a more restrained manner.
  • "Shake It Off" is a horn-driven, Motown-like song with a tongue-in-cheek cheerleader chant in the middle and not a hint of country elements; even "Trouble" had acoustic guitar strumming in the verses. It was even different from much of its parent album, 1989, which is built around 1980's-influenced synth-pop.
• Talking Heads' "Wild Wild Life", from True Stories, was a mainstream rock song rather than the eclectic World Music-influenced sound the band became known for on albums like Remain in Light.
• Ten Years After's biggest hit, "I'd Love to Change the World", was much softer than their usual hard-rock style.
• Terror Squad's only #1 hit (and only hit whatsoever) was "Lean Back", a party track that introduced a dance move made for people who can't dance. This song came in the midst of the rest of the album, which feature less mainstream-friendly material that was not made for the radio or party playlists.
• Latin music star Thalia's "I Want You", a deliberate and successful attempt at a US crossover pop hit, but generally considered a throwaway by her regular fanbase.
• Theory of a Deadman is mostly known as a poster-child for the much maligned "butt-rock" genre, but their only pop hit, "Not Meant To Be", was a soft ballad that got zero airplay on rock radio. They’ve done more songs like it since, such as "Hurricane" and "Angel". "Drown", meanwhile, is a dark and brooding song that lacks the hedonistic themes they’re known for on most of their songs.
• Thin Lizzy's "Whiskey in the Jar" was originally recorded as an Irish in-joke and as B-side to one of their singles. When the management got hold of it, they flipped it to the A-side and it became a massive hit, much to the band's chagrin. Metallica covering it didn't help too much.
• Bryson Tiller is often known for being a modern-day R&B singer, whose work mixes in elements of hip hop and trap. After a few years of no hits, Bryson hit it big in early-2024 with "Whatever She Wants", a song that's almost purely trap and rap with very little singing or elements of R&B.
• Country Music singer Aaron Tippin is best known for his patriotic, blue-collar working-man songs and his extremely nasal singing voice. However, his only #1 hits on the country charts do not reflect his typical blue-collar themes at all: "There Ain't Nothin' Wrong with the Radio" (1992) and "Kiss This" (2000) are goofy novelty songs, while "That's as Close as I'll Get to Loving You" (1995) is a smooth ballad about an affair which has Aaron singing in a much higher and less nasal range than usual.
• "867-5309/Jenny", the only hit single for the band Tommy Tutone, was a goofy novelty love song that didn’t sound anything like the rest of their discography, which was much more serious and straightforward.
• Tones and I's "Dance Monkey" is this for her, according to this article.
• Emiliana Torrini's biggest hit "Jungle Drum" is a textbook example of this. Being very upbeat and rather poppy it was a big hit in Europe. And also completely different from her usual rather quiet, dark and bittersweet songs. Torrini herself was rather surprised at the success of the song since it barely even made it to the album.
• Peter Tosh's biggest hit "You Gotta Walk And (Don't Look Back)" is a very upbeat synth-heavy reggae cover of the Temptations song, sung as a duet with Mick Jagger. Sounds nothing like his other work where he usually sounds more cynical.
• Toto's "Africa". The song was almost omitted from the Toto IV album, since the band in general was tired of it, and some members even thought it didn't sound like Toto at all.
• "Christmas Canon" is one of Trans-Siberian Orchestra's most famous works, yet it's very different than most of their albums and songs. Instead of using electric guitars, the song strives for a children's choir, pianos and strings instead.
• Meghan Trainor had one with "Like I'm Gonna Lose You", featuring John Legend. The song is more along the lines of classic soul, rather than her normal bubblegum pop/doo-wop style. It ended up being her biggest hit on adult contemporary stations.
• Travis Tritt is known mainly for big-voiced impassioned ballads (including all of his #1 hits — "Help Me Hold On", "Anymore", "Can I Trust You with My Heart", "Foolish Pride", and "Best of Intentions") or rowdy honky-tonk numbers ("Here's a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)", "T-R-O-U-B-L-E", "Put Some Drive in Your Country"). But in late 2000-early 2001, he scored one of his biggest career hits with "It's a Great Day to Be Alive", a folksy sounding, light-hearted ditty about enjoying life.
• The British Punk Rock band Tubeway Army had exactly one big hit: "Are Friends Electric?", a Synth-Pop tune that came into existence after their lead singer Gary Numan had found a stray Minimoog in the studio. The reason why they had no more hits: Gary Numan dissolved the band because he wanted to switch to synthpop entirely, and he didn't need a band anymore for that.
• Josh Turner is known for his very conservative, old-school approach to country music, with very modest production and lyrics (as exemplified by his breakthrough "Long Black Train", a Southern gospel song that many felt could've been cut in the 1940s or 1950s with almost no changes). But his biggest hits include "Your Man" and "Why Don't We Just Dance", both of which are unusually upbeat and sultry, and "Time Is Love", a more keyboard-driven country-pop song.
• The Turtles, under pressure from upstairs to put out hit material, recorded "Elenore", deliberately going for the trite and cheesy ("Elenore/gee, I think you're swell") — it was a big hit. The band's best-known song, the #1 hit "Happy Together", was created in a similar way.
• Bonnie Tyler is primarily a pop-rock artist, but her first international hit was the country rock styled "It's a Heartache". Due to the success of "It's a Heartache" on country radio stations at the time (1978), this made people originally think she was a country singer.

U-Z

• Uriah Heep, a hard rock group, had their biggest hit in Germany with "Lady in Black", a semi-acoustic song that borders on progressive folk. The keyboardist Ken Hensley wrote it, changed from his usual Hammond to Mellotron strings for a change and even contributed the lead vocals because David Byron refused to sing it. Probably the only reason why this didn't happen in the UK and the USA is because it was kept from being released as a single there.
• Velvet is an Italian band whose most popular song is the poppy, catchy "Boyband". The problem is, they are an indie rock band mostly influenced by Britpop and AOR, and that song is a parody of the Boy Band phenomenon at the peak of its popularity in the early 2000s. Not only that song has very little to do with the rest of their discography since then, but the general public took it at face value despite it being clearly satirical. Thus most listeners didn't take them seriously anymore and their sales and popularity suffered.
• "All in the Mind", the title track of The Verve's first single, is in a very different style from the rest of the band's early output as seen on the Verve EP, which was more strongly psychedelic or shoegazer.
  • "Bittersweet Symphony", their sole American hit, which was certainly more mainstream in its sound than their normal output.
• Vince Vance & the Valiants were mostly known for their novelty songs, such as "Bomb Iran" (a parody of The Beach Boys' Covered Up version of "Barbara Ann") and the flashy appearance of Vance. However, their most famous song is the fairly serious Christmas song "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (not to be confused with the Mariah Carey song from her album Merry Christmas), which also has Lisa Layne doing the vocals.
• The Waitresses were a struggling New Wave band when their label ordered them to create a Christmas Song for an Anthology album it was producing. Several months later the band was on tour in December and they were shocked to learn that the song, "Chistmas Wrapping" was a big hit on the radio. It has remained a seasonal favorite to this day.
• Walk the Moon's "Shut Up and Dance" became a surprise Sleeper Hit, being their first song to hit the Hot 100 (entering the Top 10). It's also different from their repertoire as it's far more poppier than their normal material, which usually targets alternative radio. They’ve done more like it since
• ZZ Ward's single "Last Love Song", which has received solid airtime on radio stations, is a pretty traditional Break-Up Song: slow, melancholy and despairing. The rest of her debut album, "'Til The Casket Drops," is quite upbeat and energetic, even when dealing with breakups or bad relationships.
• Filipino rock band Weedd was, by nature, a band of 16-year-old high school boys who drew their influence from the '70s hard rock their dads most likely listened to. But their only mainstream hit was the faux-reggae "Long Hair", a novelty throwaway about how teachers in their school didn't like long bangs and "undercut" hairdos, as was the style in the mid-'90s.
• Canadian alternative R&B artist The Weeknd made a surprise detour into Synthwave territory with his late 2019 hit "Blinding Lights".
• Ween's biggest hit was "Push Th' Little Daisies", a cheerful, upbeat pop-rock song that is remarkably different from the rest of the band's work. Their penultimate album quebec was also the most critically well-received of their career, despite it being tonally extremely different from the remainder of their work (being an extremely downbeat Progressive Rock album for the most part).
• Weezer's Green Album got lots of airplay for "Hash Pipe", which had a harder sound than most of the emo the band regularly played, and a much harder sound than anything from that album.
  • The Green Album's second single "Island in the Sun" then went and did the opposite, taking the album's poppy direction and going even further with it.
  • "Beverly Hills" is a better example. It's their biggest hit, and it sounds nothing like the rest of the album (mostly soft ballads).
  • And more recently scoring a big hit with a fairly faithful Cover Version of "Africa".
• The Whirling Dervishes were an early Alternative Rock band who had a big following in their home state of New Jersey starting in The '80s, noted for hard-edged, lyrically sardonic songs. Their one minor national hit was a lighthearted rock cover of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch".
• Wild Cherry was a 70's rock band. As disco became more popular, many of their audience, particularly the black members, started asking them to play "funky" music. So they came up with the song "Play That Funky Music". which became their only number one hit (more specifically their only hit ever), although it was nothing like the rest of their music.
• Kim Wilde is best known for perky New Wave Music jams such as "Kids in America"; however her Darker and Edgier Synth-Pop single "Cambodia" was a surprise hit in many European countries, though it never caught on in the UK or US.
• Within Temptation's "What Have You Done" was a commercial success, but many longtime fans dislike the presence of male vocals (especially from a singer who never appeared in any other WT track) and dismiss the song as an Evanescence rip-off.
  • It could be argued that Evanescence had its own black sheep hit with "Bring Me to Life", as that song was recorded with someone from a different band entirely, and 99.98% of its output lacks male backing vocals. Said male backer was added due to Executive Meddling, and Amy Lee released a version that lacked it in 2017 (claiming to have been happy to do so).
• Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" was recorded for the Furious 7 soundtrack and was a pop-rap song combined with a piano-based ballad, which is completely at odds compared to usual urban stuff. It became his biggest mainstream hit, becoming much bigger than its already-huge parent movie and the biggest rap hit since "Thrift Shop".
  • This also extends to the Furious 7 Soundtrack itself. The entire licensed soundtrack has a very 'urban' feel with rap, EDM, and latin music. "See You Again", which is a piano ballad that's placed almost in the middle of the album, is very incongruent compared to the rest found throughout.
• Lee Ann Womack's career is dominated by neotraditionalist country with twangy vocals and plenty of fiddle and steel. But her biggest hit was the extremely slick pop ballad "I Hope You Dance".
• XTC's only number one hit in the U.S. is "Dear God", an extremely dark and serious tune about the thoughts of a young man who curses God for His callous and uncaring nature and blames Him for all the tragedy in the world. All of this coming from a band who's catalogue consists mostly of upbeat, quirky, and fun songs.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic:
  • While parody artists frequently adapt their output to match the music of the times, was there anyone who watched him and his band develop their fame in the "Eat It" era who believed that his first top 10 hit in the US was going to be a rap? "White and Nerdy" is his biggest American hit to date.
  • Weird Al's original composition "You Don't Love Me Anymore", a breakup song with humorously brutal lyrics, was a decent hit in Canada and one of the most popular ballads in the Philippines in 1992 and 1993 — probably the only Weird Al song many Filipinos instantly recognize. So popular was the song in the Philippines that it inspired a song called "Sinaktan Mo Ang Puso Ko" (semi-literally translated to "You Broke My Heart") by Michael V, who is arguably the country's answer to Weird Al for his parodies of popular songs and original novelty recordings. Even in the States, "You Don't Love Me Anymore" stands out for being one of his only non-parody songs that isn't In the Style of another artist.
• Shortly before Eric Clapton left The Yardbirds, they recorded their major breakthrough hit, "For Your Love" — a pop song as opposed to the blues-driven rock they'd recorded prior. Needless to say, Clapton has since detested it — despite the song's mass success (#3 in Britain, #6 in America) — while the pop sound would be better suited to his replacement, Jeff Beck.
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs' best-known song is "Maps"—a somber, minimalist love ballad that's quite different from the band's usual upbeat, eclectic Indie Pop sound. For comparison's sake, try listening to the song before playing one of their other big hits, like "Heads Will Roll", "Zero", or "Gold Lion". If you're not a fan, you could be forgiven for not realizing that it's the same band.
• Yellow Magic Orchestra was to be a single album side project that parodied Exotica. Instead, the album became one of the most important in Japanese recording history.
• Yes – "Owner of a Lonely Heart", compared to their Progressive Rock work from before that song/album, which is largely because they had undergone massive turnover right before that album. It was the same band In Name Only.
  • Their second biggest hit, "Roundabout", while poppy, is still "progressive", but not nearly as much as their other material.
  • Their 1977 minor hit, "Wondrous Stories", was more soft-rock and folksy (well, with heavy Mellotrons and synthesizers) than the band's usual style of the time.
• You Me at Six's biggest hit in America was "Room to Breathe", a song that takes more cues from alternative metal than their typical pop-punk style.
• Zac Brown Band, despite being a constant player of Genre Roulette (they are nominally a country band), pulled this off with "Heavy Is the Head", their 2015 collaboration with Chris Cornell which went to #1 on Mainstream Rock while not charting on any country-based format. The track is a great deal heavier and harder than anything else ZBB has done before. "Beautiful Drug" also stands out as their first stab at an electronica influence.
• Zager and Evans remain best known for "In the Year 2525", which held the #1 spot for six weeks during the summer of 1969 — the longest reign for any One-Hit Wonder in the decade. Compared to the remainder of their debut album, however, its apocalyptic message makes it Darker and Edgier.
• Frank Zappa's Sheik Yerbouti contained one in the form of "Dancin' Fool". The humor is very typical of Zappa's music, but the highly commercial melody and radio-friendly production is not. Ironically he was trying to parody these effects, but Top-40 radio programmers didn't get the joke. See also "Valley Girl", the lead single from Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch.
  • "Bobby Brown (Goes Down)", from the same album as "Dancin' Fool", fits the bill as well.
• How many people could have guessed that the biggest hit of Zedd's career in the United States would be, of all things, a collaboration with a country singer of all people? "The Middle" with Maren Morris is his highest charting hit as a lead artist. It also sounds nothing like the country music that Morris normally makes.

Other music:

Classical Music

• Camille Saint-Saëns did not permit "The Carnival of the Animals" to be published during his lifetime, feeling that its frivolity would harm his reputation. (The movement "Tortoises," for instance, consists of the "Can-can" theme from Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld" played absurdly slowly.) Today, it's his best-known work, aside from "Danse Macabre", which was also written more as a joke, but has remained popular for decades.
• While Carmina Burana was a major turning point in Carl Orff's career and cast a long shadow over his later works, and its framing number "O Fortuna" was indeed the one Orff was inspired to write first, it's much more ominous than most of his later vocal and theatrical works, which also tend to be less heavily orchestrated.
• Antônio Carlos Gomes, a Brazilian composer, gained his first major exposure with Il Guarany, a strongly Verdian opera based on a Brazilian novel but set to an Italian libretto as opposed to Portuguese. Though not as frequently revived today, it remains his best recognised work, especially in his homeland.
• Giacomo Puccini was not a man to write comic operas, but Gianni Schicchi is the best known of his three opera collection Il trittico, and O Mio Babbino Caro remains one of the most popular operatic arias in history.
• For many years after the failure of Un giorno di regno, Giuseppe Verdi considered writing a comedy in contrast to his more tragic output, but it wasn't until he settled on The Merry Wives of Windsor as a subject that this came to light, and Falstaff has long held its position in the opera house despite being his operatic Swan Song. His Requiem, written in 1874 following the death of Alessandro Manzoni the previous year, also bears honor as one of these since it is one of his few non-operatic works still commonly performed.
• Gustav Holst, despite writing mainly folk-influenced works, including two great suites for military band, is known best for the far more modernistic "Planets" suite.
• Almost all of Johann Pachelbel's output consists of chorales and fugues, and is regarded as relatively important in the development of the mid-Baroque chorale by musicologists, but very few people nowadays can even name a piece by him not titled Canon in D, which was the only canon he wrote and gained popularity in the 1970s.
• Karl Goldmark devoutly followed Richard Wagner in musical terms, and his music showed his idol's evident influence. Even in its neglect, however, his most popular work remains Die Königin von Saba, showing greater inspiration from Meyerbeerian grand opéra than Wagnerian music-drama, with Assad being one of only two roles in a German opera (albeit in an Italian translation) performed by Enrico Caruso and "Magische Töne" remaining a popular tenor aria.
• Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" consists of two melodic motifs repeated over and over with increasingly heavier orchestration. Ravel fully recognized how gimmicky this was, describing the piece as "seventeen minutes of orchestration without music," but it became an instant hit and his best-known work.
• Like Verdi and Wagner, Paul Dukas was a relatively serious composer. His most famous work, of course, is one of his few "comedic" pieces – the symphonic scherzo L'apprenti sorcier.
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is commonly known for two things: his ballets, and the 1812 Overture, a (relatively) short tone poem/patriotic military piece featuring heavy Orchestral Bombing and the use of artillery as an instrument.
• Although it has since fallen out of the repertoire, Richard Wagner initially had one of these with the Meyerbeerian Rienzi. Among his later works, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is the only comedy among his works most frequently seen.
• "Clair de lune," the third movement of Claude Debussy's "Suite Bergamesque," remains one of the composer's most popular pieces, even though its cloying harmonic textures represent something the composer took pains to avoid in his later works. Debussy composed the Suite relatively early in his career and published it over a decade later, at a time where he needed the money.
• While it's never held the popularity of Norma, Vincenzo Bellini lived just long enough to witness the success of his final opera, I puritani. It falls under the trope not because it is dissimilar in style, but rather because it is 1) Bellini's only opera written for a non-Italian market (in this case, for the Théâtre-Italien in Paris) and 2) his only mature opera that has a libretto not by Felice Romani, with whom Bellini had severed ties after the tepid reception of Beatrice di Tenda a few years earlier.

Other Music

• “Katusha” is one of the Red Army Choir's best known songs. While it is a marching song, instead of being about patriotism or killing capitalists and fascists, it's about a young girl's love for a soldier.

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