Breakup Breakout / Music

Whenever a musical group band ends up disbanding, there's almost a guarantee that one member will end up with significantly more success than the others.

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Real Life

One Member Eclipsing the Others

Sorted by breakout names.

• In the mid-2000s there was a little-known southern hip hop duo called Playaz Circle, which became a One-Hit Wonder in 2007 with "Duffle Bag Boy" solely due to it featuring Lil Wayne. After the failure of their second album in 2009, they called it quits. One half of the duo went solo, and had much more success. That member? Tity Boi, better known today as 2 Chainz.
• Alt-country band Whiskeytown broke up in 2000; their lead singer and primary songwriter had a much more successful career as a solo artist. That singer? Ryan Adams.
• fun. guitarist Jack Antanoff has become the highest profile member of the group during its "indefinite hiatus": Not only has his side-project band Bleachers become one of the biggest alt-rock radio success stories of the late-2010s, but he's also become an in-demand songwriter and producer who has worked on huge hits for Taylor Swift and Lorde. Compare this to Fun's frontman Nate Ruess, whose solo career was highly anticipated, but his album flopped and his only real success was a #1 duet with P!nk.
• Destiny's Child propelled Beyoncé to global stardom. Her bandmates have since carved out much lower-key but still fairly respectable solo careers (Kelly Rowland being the most successful) but will likely never come close to Beyoncé.
• Björk went from being one of the lead singers of The Sugarcubes (which helped put Iceland on the music map) to having a more successful and arguably better solo career. You probably haven't heard from the other lead singer, Einar Örn, lately if you're not from Iceland.
• Alternative hip-hop group Leaders Of The New School effectively broke up on a live broadcast of Yo! MTV Raps!, when it became clear that the young-dreadlocked member Busta Rhymes grabbed the most attention out of the three, to the chagrin of the other two. As we know, Busta Rhymes went on to have a very successful solo career where he's practically the Wolverine of hip-hop. Very few would know who the other two members are, much less what they're up to.
• David Byrne has had a successful solo career and became a public intellectual after the breakup of Talking Heads, while the other members have kept a lower profile.
• After the Go-Go's broke up in 1985, all of the former members were able to make careers writing and performing music, but none with anything like the mainstream success and name recognition of vocalist Belinda Carlisle. Jane Wiedlin did have a top 10 hit in 1988, though, as well as doing some acting.
• Eric Carmen, the lead singer of 70s power poppers The Raspberries, pursued a solo career that lasted until the 1980s.
• Nick Cave left The Birthday Party and is much better known and more commercially successful than his first band, with The Bad Seeds or otherwise.
• When Sonny & Cher split, Cher went on to have a great career in music and film. Sonny went into politics. He died in a skiing accident in 1998, after leading the charge that led to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
• In the early 1980s, there was a New Wave band in New York called the Breakfast Club. Its drummer, for a while, was a young woman from Michigan named Madonna Ciccone. She left (recommending her boyfriend and later producer, Stephen Bray, as her replacement) for bigger and better things. The band had one hit single "Right on Track" in 1987, and then broke up the next year. While two of the members of that later lineup, Randy Jackson and E. Doctor Smith, later distinguished themselves, the others have not.
• At the time Cream was together, Lead Bassist Jack Bruce was probably the best known member. Nowadays, however, Bruce is best known as "that guy who was in Cream", while guitarist Eric Clapton is a household name.
• There was once a band called Alice Cooper. When the band broke up, lead singer Vincent Furnier took the name for himself and went on to have a successful solo career, whereas the rest of the members pretty much faded into obscurity.
• Though Commodores remain a staple of 1970's Motown, in wider pop circles the solo career of Lionel Richie is certainly a lot better known. In an unusual twist, while Commodores with Richie is considered to be the group's peak, they actually had their biggest hit after Richie left with 1985's "Nightshift".
• Chris Cornell did this both to Soundgarden and Audioslave. The former when it broke up and Cornell went on a solo career, and the latter when it disbanded and Cornell went solo again and eventually reunited with the former, while Tom Morello's next side project, Street Sweeper Social Club, was much less successful.
• The British synthpop group D:Ream had a handful of hits in the early 90s, including a #1 single in the United Kingdom with "Things Can Only Get Better" in 1994. After the band's split, their live keyboardist Brian Cox became well known as a physicist, professor and presenter of several popular BBC programmes on astronomy, to the point where being a member (albeit a somewhat peripheral one) of a band that had a #1 single is now a footnote in his biography.
• In the early '90s, SexArt was a completely unknown Alternative Metal band that ended almost as quickly as it started. They were never heard of again, or at least they never would've been heard of had frontman Jonathan Davis not started a new band. That band? Korn. Also known as the original Nu Metal band, and with over 40 million records sold, any mention of SexArt is solely in relation to Korn.
• There was a short-lived Country Music duo in the 50s called the Davis Sisters, composed of Betty Jack and Skeeter Davis. They were actually using stage names, and not actually sisters. After Betty Jack died in a car crash around the release of their only hit, "I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know", Skeeter briefly toured with Georgia Davis, who was Betty Jack's sister. When that didn't work out, Skeeter went on to have a long string of albums and singles from 1957 to 1980, and continued to tour until her 2004 death.
• UK dance-pop group D Mob hit the scene in 1988 with the singles "We Call It Acieed" and "It's Time To Get Funky", which both peaked at the top of the U.S. Dance charts. Soon after, they would bring a special guest vocalist onboard named Cathy Dennis, who would lead the group to a second pair of top-selling U.S. hits with "C'mon and Get My Love" and "That's The Way The World Works" one year later. Those would be D Mob's last appearances on the top charts, as subsequent singles (sans Dennis) failed to replicate the success and slid far down the charts. Dennis, meanwhile, would embark on a solo career that not only saw her net four Top 10 U.S. singles over the next three years, but a near-unparalleled songwriting career that saw her write some of pop's biggest hits, including Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out Of My Head", Britney Spears' "Toxic" and Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl".
• The Chad Mitchell Trio had only one real breakout star, but it was not any of the original members of the group. Record execs felt the 'folk trio' fad was passing, and urged Chad Mitchell to leave the trio and perform solo. Chad Mitchell recorded a few solo albums, but has never had any mainstream success. The guy who replaced him in the Mitchell Trio, on the other hand, was John Denver. He went on to become a breakout star while the others in the trio more or less retired.
• Britpop group Theaudience had a handful of minor UK hits in the late 90s but broke up after only one album. After the split, the band's singer, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, launched an extremely successful solo career.
• Wild Orchid had a couple albums, and was reasonably successful. Stacy Ferguson left them to become Fergie and join The Black Eyed Peas. The rest? Some voicework and songwriting, at best.
• After country duo Foster & Lloyd broke up in 1990 over Creative Differences, Radney Foster had a moderately successful solo debut album in 1992 with the Top 10 hits "Just Call Me Lonesome" and "Nobody Wins". He had no more hits after it, but has maintained a small following ever since, mainly in alternative country. He has also written several songs for others, including Sara Evans' #1 hit "A Real Fine Place to Start". Bill Lloyd, meanwhile, did a little bit of production and his solo album Feeling the Elephant became a modest cult hit among Power Pop fans.
• After an obscure 1990s country band called Pearl River broke up, some of their members became the backing band for Bryan White, a young singer who had previously sold T-shirts for the band. White frequently collaborated with ex-Pearl River guitarist Derek George, and both of them made guest appearances on Steve Wariner's 1996 album No More Mr. Nice Guy. When White stopped having hits, George worked as a songwriter, briefly joined another band called Williams Riley, then became a producer for Randy Houser and Joe Nichols in The New '10s.
• Vince Gill became incredibly popular in the late 1980s through mid 90s, long after he left the country-rock group Pure Prairie League. (That's him singing lead on their hit "Let Me Love You Tonight".)
• Dave Grohl, who after Nirvana broke up formed Foo Fighters, which has not had nearly the same cultural impact, but has lasted much longer and is still one of the most popular bands around. Krist Novoselic faded from the music scene and became a politician. Of course, Kurt Cobain is still by far the most famous member of the band, but never experienced a breakout since, well, the breakup was his own death.
• Dry Cell was a short-lived post-grunge band whose song "Body Crumbles" appeared in the soundtracks to Madden NFL 2003 and Queen of the Damned. Lead singer Jeff Gutt emerged from obscurity a decade later, when he placed second on The X Factor US. He's currently the third lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots.
• Before Kanna Hashimoto became known as Kagura from Gintama and Ritsu from Assassination Classroom, she was a member of the indie Japanese Pop Music idol group Rev. from DVL. Only after fan-taken photos of her went viral in 2013 did her popularity boost exponentially and gave her lead acting roles. Her solo career was gaining more momentum compared to the rest of Rev. from DVL, and after they disbanded, Hashimoto is still wildly successful while most of the public doesn't even seem to remember any of the other members.
• Blake Babies was an Alternative Rock trio from the late 80s and early 90s. They were still rather obscure when they broke up in 1993. Two of the members formed another band which didn't last long. The third member was Juliana Hatfield.
• Electronic Suicide, a Dark Wave project of Germans Markus Spillner and Jan Nordus, only managed to produce a 3-song EP in 2002 before breaking up. Spillner, following a stint of progressive/psychedelic trance under the names G-Tronic and Drumatix, now produces Synthwave as Heatwave, while Nordus has more or less disappeared from the music scene.
• In the mid 1980s, hide was the guitarist of Yokosuka Saber Tiger and about to retire to a career of hairdresser work. Pata led his own band, Judy. A little band called X needed a couple of guitarists, owing to their session guitarists having left. The rest can be considered Visual Kei history.
  • And hide was the breakout star of X Japan itself. Everyone else aside from Sugizo, who already had a solo career before he joined, and Yoshiki Hayashi, who developed one slowly, failed to establish a truly successful solo career. (It took Yoshiki himself over 10 years to do so, and his solo work is still nowhere near as successful in Japan itself as hide's was). Most members of X Japan haven't had solo success at all:
    • Hiroshi Morie played in projects that never gained wide notice.
    • Taiji Sawada gained brief wide notice but then imploded almost as quickly, only to gain appreciation after he died.
    • Tomoaki Ishizuka worked with hide but struggled to make a solo name for himself, and a lot of people are still very mixed about Ra:IN.
    • Toshimitsu Deyama did a few interesting solo works, then created 10 years of pure Old Shame before starting a solo career inextricably entwined with Yoshiki's own solo work.
• Oscar Holter was one half of the Swedish EBM duo Necro Facility from 2003 to 2011. Since their split, he has found success as a pop record producer alongside fellow Swede Max Martin. Henrik Bäckström, on the other hand, has mostly dropped off the public radar, save for a few remixes.
• After Kyuss broke up, Josh Homme founded Queens of the Stone Age and had far more commercial success than Kyuss ever did.
• HyunA of Korean girl group 4Minute: despite having many hit singles throughout their time together, she was also putting out a flourishing string of solo releases, raising her status above the other members. After appearing in Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video, Hyuna was further propelled into international recognition, and she is still the only one of the former 4Minute girls to have major individual success.
• Generation X had a few years of notoriety in the early days of Punk Rock. Vocalist Billy Idol, on the other hand, is so well known as a solo artist that his existence in a band may be entirely unknown.
• Canadian group The Poppy Family had a #1 Billboard hit with "Which Way You going, Billy?", then the lead singer and the guitar player got divorced. Susan Jacks had a career as a singer and producer in Nashville; Terry Jacks became much more successful, scoring an international hit in "Seasons in the Sun".
• Michael Jackson. He started as a member of The Jacksons and later became the King of Pop. Jermaine also had some success in the '70s and '80s, but obviously nowhere near that of his brother.
• Sacred Mother Tongue was a British melodic metalcore act that was critically well-liked but never went anywhere and eventually broke up because of that. While guitarist Andy James had released several solo albums during their active run, it wasn't until after they broke up that he really started to become a known figure in the guitar world.
• Between 1984 and 1990, Country Music duo The Judds (lead singer Wynonna Judd and her mother, Naomi) had several big hits, but they disbanded due to a combination of Creative Differences and Naomi contracting hepatitis. Wynonna went solo in 1991 and had a very successful solo career of her own. Unlike The Judds, which were strictly country, Wynonna scored several pop, AC, and dance crossover hits.
• Girl group KRUSH had a hit song on the Mo' Money soundtrack before disbanding. Christy Williams and Angie Smith faded into obscurity, while Ashley Jackson starting using her given name Karan, dropped her last name, and booked a role as the Yellow Ranger on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
• King Charles didn't achieve international notoriety until his band Adventure Playground broke up.
• Geggy Tah was an alternative rock trio with funk and world music influences, who put out three albums on David Byrne's record label Luaka Bop. However, they would only have one moderate rock radio hit ("Whoever You Are", which reached #16 on the Modern Rock charts in 1996) before splitting up in 2001. Not long afterwards, their keyboardist Greg Kurstin would become a huge name as a producer, scoring hits with Adele, Kelly Clarkson and Sia (among many others), and racking up nine Grammys (including winning Producer of the Year, Non-Classical twice in a row in 2017 and 2018).
• Blue Angel were a New York Rockabilly/retro R&B group who released one major label album; They had limited commercial success and were subsequently dropped from the label, leading to their breakup. Not long after, their singer, Cyndi Lauper, was discovered singing in a bar and started a very successful solo career. She would later re-record some songs that were originally Blue Angel material, including ones the band themselves never got to officially release. And in 1987, the band reformed without Lauper under the name Boppin' The Blues (before breaking up again) - during that period, she once put in a surprise guest appearance at one of their shows, singing two cover songs with the band.
• Smash!! ^* exclamation marks part of the name was a Russian pop duo formed in 2000 by Vlad Topalov and Sergey Lazarev. Lazarev left the project in 2004 due to his contract with Universal, the duo's label, expiring, and in 2006 Smash!! officially ceased to exist ^* aside from a quick reunion in 2011 when they performed two songs together . Lazarev eventually continued his music career solo, becoming one of the most popular Russian pop singers and representing the country in the 2016 and 2019 editions of the Eurovision Song Contest, coming in third both times. The only notable thing Vlad Topalov did after Smash!! was confessing to having been addicted to drugs in 2008.
• After space rock band Hawkwind kicked out Ian Kilmister, their bass player, he started up his own band which is far better known. Yup, that's Lemmy from Motörhead.
  • To add insult to injury, the band name - and iconic title track - are taken from a song Lemmy originally wrote for Hawkwind. This is believed to be a Take That! at Hawkwind's notoriously autocratic leader Dave Brock and his wife Kris Tait ^note She is not loved by many ex-Hawkwind personnel.
• When The Tourists split up, most people would have expected band leader Peet Coombes to be the breakup breakout, but it was actually second vocalist Annie Lennox and guitarist David A. Stewart who went on to massive success as Eurythmics. After Eurythmics broke up (or at least went on extended hiatus), Annie Lennox started a very successful solo career, while Dave Stewart was limited to producing.
• Ghost Town DJ's was an impromptu group created by several of So So Def Recordings' in-house artists, who had collectively created "My Boo" for a compilation album and needed an entity to credit it to. That group consisted of Virgo, Greg Street, Rodney Terry, DJ Demp... and Lil' Jon.
• Victoria "Little Boots" Hesketh was formerly the keyboardist and singer of the short-lived synthpop group Dead Disco.
• When Loggins and Messina split in 1976, its two namesakes went on polar opposite career paths. Jim Messina was generally forgotten about, while Kenny Loggins went on to be one of the big names of the 80s. Contributing classic tunes to films like Footloose, Top Gun and Caddyshack.
• Delusions of Grandeur was a deathcore act from the Pittsburgh area who gradually became a minor name, but never went particularly far. Nowadays, they are known for their guitarist, Gabe Mangold, who went on to join Enterprise Earth after being a live fill-in (though he had apparently been asked to join at least once prior to that, but declined because he was still trying to make Delusions of Grandeur go somewhere at the time) and became a much bigger name than his old band ever was as a whole.
• Til Tuesday was an 80s One-Hit Wonder band from the Boston area, breaking up after their final album got good reviews but sold poorly. The lead singer, Aimee Mann, became an Oscar-nominated singer-songwriter, while her bandmates fell off the radar.
• Menudo is well known as a Latin Boy Band with a revolving-door cast of members who were replaced after turning 15. Hands down the most famous member of the band is one Enrique Martín Morales, who would become Latin pop superstar Ricky Martin in his adult years.
• Jesse McCartney was originally the youngest of a five-member Boy Band called Dream Street who went nowhere. After his singing career faded away, he dipped into voice acting.
• George Michael and Wham!, to the point that Andrew Ridgeley is to music what Marty Jannetty is to wrestling. In Andrew's defense, he was tired of the industry and preferred a quiet and comfortable life in Cornwall. He and George Michael remained friends until Michael's death in 2016.
• Ivan Moody was the former lead singer of Motograter, a Nu Metal band that had a minor rock hit in 2003. The band reunited without him in the New 10s, with a Top 20 heatseeker album. Moody joined Five Finger Death Punch, who in the '10s became one of the most popular metal bands in the world.
• Van Morrison's career took off after he left his original band Them. The band had a respectable number of hits with Morrison as lead singer and songwriter; after he left they struggled for a few years and split up.
• Alternative Dance/Trip Hop duo Moloko, of "Sing It Back" and "The Time is Now" fame, was the launch point for Róisín Murphy's solo career, while the other half, producer Mark Brydon, has since retreated into obscurity.
• Michael Nesmith had (some) commercial and (lots of) critical success after The Monkees broke up.
• After the Amboy Dukes broke up, their guitarist Ted Nugent started a much more successful solo career.
• Ozzy Osbourne after being fired from Black Sabbath in 1979. While Sabbath struggled to stay commercially relevant in the 1980s, especially after a brief stint with Ronnie James Dio at the mike, Ozzy managed to score himself a successful solo career.
• Wardrum was a pretty obscure Power Metal band that only really became noteworthy for having their lead singer Yannis Papadopoulos leave the band to join the much, much more successful Beast in Black.
• The girl group Choice had a song "Key to My Heart" which appeared on the soundtrack for Kazaam. When it broke up, the members went their separate ways — Sharon Flanagan went nowhere, Chrissy Conway had decent success with Christian rock group Zoegirl, and Alecia Moore reinvented herself as pop superstar P!nk.
• After the rock group Hey Monday went on hiatus in 2011, lead singer Cassadee Pope competed on The Voice and won the 2012 season. She had a Top 10 hit on the country music charts in late 2013-early 2014 with "Wasting All These Tears".
• There was a 1970s South African band named Rabbitt which achieved some minor local success. The guitarist, Trevor Rabin, went on to become a member of Yes at their commercial height and writing the majority of their best-selling album 90125. The other members of Rabbitt are mostly forgotten except as a footnote in Rabin's career.
• Another obscure mid-80s country band, The Wrays, charted four singles but never put out a full album. After they broke up, group member Bubba Wray (real name: Floyd Elliot Wray) decided to take on a solo career as Collin Raye. Between 1991 and 2000, he had 21 top ten hits for Epic Records, of which four went to #1.
• Before becoming a soundtrack composer for the likes of The Crow (1994), From Dusk Till Dawn and Sin City, Graeme Revell was the frontman of the industrial band SPK.
• John Rich zig-zags this trope like crazy. After he was fired from country band Lonestar in 1998, they went on to bigger and better things (most notably their massive crossover hit "Amazed" a year later). Rich attempted a solo career on the same label, but his album was never released. However, he got a couple songwriting gigs with his friend "Big" Kenny Alphin, with whom he signed to Warner Bros. in 2004 as Big & Rich. Although Big & Rich only had modest success, Rich also gained prolificacy as a songwriter and producer apart from his work in Big & Rich.
• After Hootie & the Blowfish effectively stopped recording, lead singer Darius Rucker went on to become a successful Country Music artist.
• Outside of Japan, while Yellow Magic Orchestra only has a cult following at most, member Ryuichi Sakamoto became very well known after the group's first dissolution thanks to his soundtrack work and collaborations with western artists.
• Soft rock duo England Dan & John Ford Coley recorded from 1972 to 1980, achieving their biggest success with "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight". After they split up, England Dan (now going by his real name, Dan Seals) had a couple minor pop hits, but struck it big as a Country Music singer-songwriter in the 1980s, with eleven #1 hits and five other Top 10 hits on the country charts between 1983 and 1990. Although his hits stopped, he continued to record until his 2009 death. Coley had one other short-lived group and a few acting roles.
• Sonny Moore used to be the lead singer of the metalcore band From First to Last. He appeared on their first two albums and left after having surgery on his vocal chords. Today, he's world famous as dubstep's biggest star, Skrillex.
• To some extent this happened with Portland indie rock band Heatmiser - bassist Sam Coombs formed the fairly popular and still active duo Quasi, and guitarist/vocalist Neil Gust had the less well-known band No. 2, but the major breakout was the solo career of Elliott Smith.
• Chris Stapleton had been a popular songwriter for many years, but didn't have much success as a singer until he left two other bands: The Steeldrivers and The Jompson Brothers.
• After country music band Boy Howdy broke up in the mid-1990s, Lead Bassist Jeffrey Steele tried a solo career that never panned out. However, he quickly made up for that as an in-demand songwriter for other people, including lots of cuts for Rascal Flatts.
• Sting and The Police. While The Police are hardly obscure, Sting is easily the most recognizable in terms of post-band success. Stewart Copeland has also made quite a name for himself in the decades since the Police's dissolution, being a well-regarded soundtrack composer; 90s kids might know him best as the guy who scored the first three Spyro the Dragon games.
• White Eskimo was a short lived garage band that would have been almost completely unknown had it not been for the fact that their lead singer's name was Harry Styles. Styles auditioned for The X Factor in 2010 and was put into an English-Irish boy band called One Direction. They would go on to be far and away the most globally successful boy band to ever come out of either country, and one of the biggest ever, period, selling over 65 million records worldwide, including unprecedented domination in the United States, (almost) wiping out rest of the scene and came incredibly close to ending Justin Bieber's career.
  • Styles did this again after One Direction entered "indefinite hiatus". While all other members have achieved varying degrees of success, none could match Styles' in terms of consistency, breadth, and international recognition.
• Bae Suzy of miss A is so well-known for this in Korean Pop Music that if TV Tropes was Korean, we might have created this page as "The Suzy" instead of The Jannetty. Although Miss A were definitely "A-listers" together — even being the first ever group to have their debut song reach #1 on the Gaon Digital Chart — Suzy's ventures into acting led to her fame quickly overshadowing the other members. Today, she's the only Miss A veteran who's still a top star in South Korea.
• The obscure EBM band Bigod 20 only lasted six years, releasing two albums, but Andreas "Talla 2XLC" Tomalla went on to be one of the world's top trance producers.
• In 1996 and 1997, there was a country music duo called Thrasher Shiver, composed of Neil Thrasher and Kelly Shiver, who recorded one unsuccessful album. After they got dropped, Thrasher became famous as a songwriter, with several cuts by Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, and Diamond Rio.
• Justin Timberlake and *NSYNC. After he split from the group, Timberlake went on to a successful solo career and parlayed his fame into an acting career and various business ventures. While his bandmates have obviously not met the same amount of success, they've done fairly well for themselves in other areas, just not in music.
  • Lance Bass trained with the Russian space program and earned certification as a cosmonaut. In 2006, he came out as gay and has been very involved with LGBTQ+ causes. He also formed a film production company, produced the documentary The Boy Band Con, and is developing future projects. As a media personality, he has hosted multiple TV reality competition shows.
  • JC Chasez had a modest solo career that mostly saw Executive Meddling and poor promotion from Jive Records. After Jive shelved his second album, JC split from the label and went on to be a judge on MTV's America's Best Dance Crew. He currently works as a producer and songwriter, having written songs for Backstreet Boys, NU'EST, and McFly. In more recent years, there has been a growing appreciation for JC’s talents as a performer and songwriter.
  • Joey Fatone went on to act in a few films and in Broadway musicals. He has a fairly successful career in television presenting and currently hosts Common Knowledge on Game Show Network.
  • Chris Kirkpatrick voiced Chip Skylark on The Fairly Oddparents. He's appeared on various reality shows like VH1’s Mission Manband, Gone Country, and Celebrity Big Brother.
• Short-lived Russian country band Bering Strait had multi-instrumentalist Ilya Toshinsky, who quit before their second and final album and went on to become a prolific session musician, songwriter, and producer.
• Tina Turner and Ike Turner. At the time of the latter's death he was performing at small casinos. Of course, Ike brought a lot of that on himself, having gone from a rock legend responsible for one of the earliest rock & roll songs ever recorded ("Rocket 88") to becoming synonymous with spousal abuse.
• Keith Urban's first American recordings were as lead singer/guitarist of a three-piece band called The Ranch. They recorded one album which remained obscure until Urban's solo career was established. The Ranch's bassist, Jerry Flowers, would remain a member of Urban's road band and occasional songwriting collaborator.
• The short-lived all-female country music band Wild Rose had one with fiddler Wanda Vick, who became a prominent session musician after the band broke up.
• When alt-rockers Eve's Plum broke up in 1998, lead singer Coleen Fitzpatrick re-invented herself as pop singer Vitamin C and had a handful of hit singles between 1999 and 2000.
• Steve Wariner, having broken free from Dottie West's and Chet Atkins' road bands to become a solo artist.
• The Flower Pot Men, not to be confused with the Britpop group of the same name, was a short-lived 80s industrial duo consisting of Adam Peters and Ben Watkins, the latter of whom later started Juno Reactor.
• The Pozo-Seco Singers were a Texas country-folk trio with a couple of minor hits in the 1960s. After they broke up, group member Don Williams embarked on a solo career. "The Gentle Giant" would notch over 50 hits on the Country Music charts, with 17 of them hitting #1.
• Take That was an interesting case. When the group broke up in 1996, Robbie Williams was easily the breakout star, scoring multiple international hits. This became inverted, however, when Take That reunited (sans Williams) a decade later with renewed success, while Williams' career plateaued, eventually rejoining the band in 2010. Otherwise, of the other members, only Gary Barlow did reasonably well as a solo artist.
• In the late 2000s, there was a country group called KingBilly, which got some exposure on CMT and GAC but never really broke through. Their mandolinist, Charlie Worsham, had a successful solo debut album in 2013 with the Top 20 hit "Could It Be".
• After White Zombie broke up, Rob Zombie replaced all the band members except the drummer and renamed the band after himself. None of the other members of the band ever did anything else of note. He then did it again when the Rob Zombie (band) guitarist and drummer, Riggs and Tempesta, split to form Scum of the Earth, which did not reach nearly the commercial success that Rob Zombie, either the man or the band, did. On the other hand, Tempesta did go on to join The Cult, so he's doing pretty damn well himself. Riggs, however, has not been as lucky.

Multiple Members Eclipsing the Others and/or the Original Group

Sorted by original group names.

• After Forever was one of the earliest Symphonic Metal bands, releasing five albums from 2000 to 2007 (they were officially founded in 1996, and broke up in 2009), but never enjoyed much more than niche success. Frontwoman Floor Jansen went on to become one of the best-known vocalists in European metal and currently sings lead for After Forever's arena-filling contemporary Nightwish (easily the most successful Symphonic Metal band ever), while guitarist Mark Jansen (no relation) cofounded the number two Symphonic Metal band Epica after leaving After Forever in 2003.
• The Afterimage was a Toronto-based metalcore/djent act that had some minor success in the 2010s, but never got any good opportunities or had any chance to rise above a low-level support. Its members would go on to start a deathcore side project in 2018 during the band's final days just to write some heavy songs about Berserk, with no expectation or intention of meaningful success or longevity; as per Kyle Anderson, they were expecting to put out a few songs on Bandcamp, promote them a bit, and then call it a day. Instead, Brand of Sacrifice blew up over Bandcamp, got signed to Unique Leader Records after having been a band for less than a year, and quickly found themselves getting on major tours. In general, they have managed to achieve the success that continually eluded The Afterimage.
• An obscure 1980s country music band called Bandana produced two examples: lead singer Lonnie Wilson became a session drummer and songwriter, while guitarist Tim Menzies had some songwriting successes. Drummer Ray Johnston's son, Jaren, became a popular songwriter and the lead singer of The Cadillac Three in The New '10s.
• Bauhaus, the Goth Rock band but with no major hits to its name, splintered into Peter Murphy and Love and Rockets, each with their own chart-topping singles.
• Buffalo, NY had a few local high school-aged thrash metal acts that probably weren't ever going to go anywhere. Said acts (Beyond Death, Leviathan, and Tirant Sin) all eventually broke up, though some of their former members went on to form a promising new band that wound up making it far bigger than they had ever dreamed of. That band's name? Cannibal Corpse. Additionally, Darrin Pfeiffer from Beyond Death went on to strike it similarly big with the pop-punk act Goldfinger.
• Bluesology is a blues band from the 60s mostly remembered for the fact organist Reggie Dwight went on to a successful solo career as Elton John, becoming an international superstar who eclipsed most of his bandmates. Meanwhile, lead singer Long John Baldry went on to a successful solo career in England, as well as doing voice acting after he moved to Canada later in life, most notably as the voice of Dr. Robotnik on Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.
• In a rather tragic example, when the metal band Cacophony broke up their two guitarists went onto two very different career paths. Marty Friedman would go on to join Megadeth for a decade as a guitarist before focusing full-time on his solo career, moving to Japan and becoming a major figure in the Japanese music world. Jason Becker, on the other hand, would play with David Lee Roth for a couple of years before being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease and is now unable to speak or play guitar. He still composes however and communicates with his eyes.
• Clover was a country rock band that lasted from 1967 to 1978. They never had much success other than backing Elvis Costello on his debut album My Aim Is True. But after they broke up, backing vocalist and harmonica player Huey Louis (who wasn't involved in recording My Aim Is True) changed the spelling of his last name to the more traditional "Lewis" and teamed up with keyboardist Sean Hopper to form Huey Lewis and the News.
• Dance House Children was a sorta-techno band in the early 90s, consisting of brothers Ronnie and Jason Martin. After two albums, Jason Martin left to start the shoegazing/indie rock band Starflyer 59, while Ronnie Martin retooled DHC into a synthpop project named Joy Electric. Neither group has achieved much mainstream popularity, but Starflyer 59 and Joy Electric are both better known and more respected than Dance House Children was.
• Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore left in 1975 to found Rainbow, and after Purple disbanded in '76, vocalist David Coverdale started Whitesnake. Each of the spinoff bands continued to do well on their own, and in the late 80s, when a reformed Purple was up against Whitesnake in the charts, the spinoff outsold the mother band by a wide margin.
• The Del Fuegos was a Boston roots rock band that experienced moderate success in the 80s, with notable fans including Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, and Rolling Stone named them "Best New Band" in 1984. Today, they are mostly remembered for the fact that the band's lineup included Dan Zanes, who went on to become a pioneer of the kindie rock genre of children's music a few years after the band dissolved. Zanes' brother and bandmate Warren has also had a well-regarded career as a music journalist, including writing the aforementioned Tom Petty's semi-official biography in 2015.
• After the Eagles disbanded in 1980, drummer Don Henley had a rather fruitful solo career. So did Glenn Frey to a lesser extent.
  • Joe Walsh zig-zags this trope, breaking out of rock trio The James Gang as a solo artist, joining Eagles in 1975, then becoming successful as a solo artist again in 1980. His biggest solo hit, "Life's Been Good", came out in 1979, while Walsh was still an Eagle.
• Curious double example: In the early 1990s, there was a band in Kentucky known as Early Tymz. Its members included brothers John Michael Montgomery and Eddie Montgomery, as well as Troy Gentry. Although Early Tymz was well known in the state, they were all but unknown outside it. John Michael left and began a solo career, having many huge hits between 1992 and 2000. Eddie and Troy founded the duo Montgomery Gentry, which has also racked up a respectable number of hits from 1999 until Gentry's death in 2017.
• MuteMath isn't exactly a household name, but they're enjoying a comfortable level of success. 3/4 of the band consists of former members of Earthsuit, which never made it big. Meanwhile, former Earthsuit co-frontman Adam LaClave has started no less four "solo projects" since then (along with other former members), and sadly, none of them have really worked out yet.
• Kenny Rogers left The First Edition behind to become a successful country/adult contemporary singer. Mickey Jones, meanwhile, became a successful actor.
• Three of Genesis' members ended up establishing prominent solo careers as time went on:
  • The British rock band Flaming Youth only released one album before they broke up, and most of the members remain relatively obscure... except for the group's drummer, Phil Collins, who soon afterwards became the drummer for Genesis, and eventually started a very prolific solo career.
  • Guitarist Steve Hackett joined the band in a similar way as Collins, when the previous band he was in, Quiet World, broke up. As for the other members of Quiet World, John Hackett (Steve's brother) is mostly noted for playing on Steve's solo records and in his backing band, the Heather brothers (John, Lea, and Neil) have moved on to writing musicals, Phil Henderson has become a composer, and everyone else has fallen into obscurity.
  • Though not the most commercially successful member of Genesis in terms of his solo career (nor the most prolific, though his discography is still littered with plenty of side projects), original frontman Peter Gabriel became the most critically successful member in the years following his departure, with no shortage of accolades for his work.
• The '60s rock band The Hassles recorded two low-key albums before disbanding. The bassist co-founded Ram Jam (best known for "Black Betty"). The drummer and keyboardist experimented in acid rock before going their separate ways, and that keyboardist had a pretty good solo career. His name? Billy Joel.
• Two members - singer Paul Heaton and drummer Dave Hemmingway - of 80s British indie pop group The Housemartins went on to become The Beautiful South. Another, bassist Norman Cook, went through a lot of bands and acts before eventually reinventing himself as electronic music superstar Fatboy Slim. Guitarist Stan Cullimore went a more low-key route and became a composer for British children's shows, while original drummer Hugh Whitaker later made headlines after he ended up attacking his partner in an unsuccessful business partnership with an axe, for which he spent six years in prison as a result.
• Upon the breakup of the trance group Ian van Dahl, members Annemie Coenen and Peter Luts formed AnnaGrace.
• After The Jonas Brothers broke up in 2013 due to being dropped by the Disney Channel and increasingly outcompeted by the like of One Direction and Justin Bieber, two of its members started careers of their own to commercial (though not quite to the level of the band at their prime) and critical (much more so than the band) success:
  • Nick Jonas developed a mature Contemporary R&B sound far removed from the Brothers and scored a pair of hits with "Jealous" and "Chains" off his debut Self-Titled Album. Additionally, he garnered significant acclaim as an actor with lead roles in Kingdom, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Scream Queens (2015).
  • Joe Jonas founded DNCE, a funk-pop/dance-rock band, and their debut single "Cake By the Ocean" was a huge hit. Unfortunately, they've yet to score a notable follow-up.
  • Kevin Jonas had a (very) brief stint on the reality TV circuit with Celebrity Apprentice and Married to Jonas, but never returned to the music biz until the Brothers' reformation in 2019.
• Happened a lot with former members of King Crimson. Ian McDonald (Foreigner), Boz Burrell (Bad Company), John Wetton (Asia), and Greg Lake (Emerson, Lake & Palmer) are probably the most famous.
• Interestingly, this happened twice with Canadian alt rock group Len. The band scored a U.S. Top 10 hit with "Steal My Sunshine" 1999, and some minor success overseas a year later with the single "Kryptik Souls Crew" before their fame waned. Lead guitarist Brendan Canning decided to split off, and subsequently formed the supergroup Broken Social Scene with Kevin Drew, which subsequently rode to a long-running string of critical smash hits in Canada (along with a US Top 50 record with Forgiveness Rock Record in 2010). Meanwhile, fellow Len bandmate Moka Only, who was briefly part of the group (and can be seen in the "Kryptik Souls" music video) split off to record music with rap/rock hybrid Swollen Members, who charted in the Canada and US multiple times over several albums. The other two lead members in Len, brother/sister duo Marc and Sharon Costanzo, released several more albums to diminishing success before calling it quits in 2005. Len subsequently attempted a comeback in 2012 with the album It's Easy If You Try, but it did not get on the charts.
• Oh-OK was a band that was part of the Athens, Georgia alternative rock scene in the early Eighties. (In fact, vocalist Lynda Stipe was the sister of Michael Stipe from R.E.M..) They disbanded in 1984. Within ten years, when alternative rock had gained mainstream popularity, guitarist Matthew Sweet had started a solo career while other singer Linda Hopper and drummer David McNair formed the band Magnapop. Both Sweet and Magnapop had more success than their former band.
• In the 1980s, there was a country music band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama called The Shooters. After they broke up in 1990, lead vocalist Walt Aldridge went on to become a songwriter and producer, while bassist Gary Baker became a collaborator of country-pop songwriter Frank J. Myers (who formerly played guitar for Eddy Raven, but left that role to pursue songwriting full-time), scoring big hits with John Michael Montgomery's "I Swear" (later Covered Up by R&B group All-4-One) and Lonestar's "I'm Already There", among others. Baker and Myers also did one album as a short-lived duo.
• In 1981, following two very successful albums, half the original line-up of The Specials broke away to form Fun Boy Three. While neither camp was quite as popular as the original band had been, Fun Boy Three were a lot more successful without the rest of The Specials than the remainder of The Specials were without the Fun Boy Three.
• The Spice Girls were the biggest pop act in the world for a brief time, so it stood to reason that their membership would have as much success, right? Yes and no. Melanie C (Sporty) is arguably the biggest success music-wise, with seven albums to her name; Geri Halliwell (Ginger), Emma Bunton (Baby) and Mel B (Scary) have had solo careers as well with varying degrees of success. But the most visible former member is the one who left music entirely — Victoria Beckham (Posh), who briefly attempt a solo career that ultimately never took off (mostly due to her label going under) and ultimately became much more successful in the world of fashion and design, to the point many people don't even associate her with the Spice Girls at all.
• In The '80s, the now-defunct Opryland USA theme park had a house band called the Tennessee River Boys. One of their founding members was Ty Herndon, left early in the group's history to compete on Star Search, and had a handful of country hits between 1995-99. Meanwhile, the band's membership changed several times until they became Diamond Rio, one of the biggest country bands of The '90s.
• Tompall and the Glaser Brothers (Tompall, Jim, and Chuck Glaser) went both ways with this. Originally backing vocalists for Marty Robbins, they released singles between 1966 and 1973, with Jim concurrently charting solo singles for most of that timespan. After they broke up, all three were solo artists in varying capacity between 1974-80, and Tompall had a hit independently of the group with "Put Another Log on the Fire (Male Chauvinist National Anthem)". The brothers reunited from 1980-82, scoring their biggest hit with "Lovin' Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" before breaking up again. After the breakup, Jim went solo a second time from 1982-86, getting a #1 hit in 1984 with "You're Gettin' to Me Again".
• Trucking Company was an alternative rock band active in the New York/New Jersey area in the late 80s. The band parted ways with harmonica player John Popper when he left to form Blues Traveler. The rest of Trucking Company hired some new members and became the Spin Doctors.
• When alternative country pioneers Uncle Tupelo broke up, Lead Guitarist And Lead Singer Jay Farrar achieved moderate success with his new band Son Volt, while bassist-turned-guitarist and singer Jeff Tweedy and the rest of the band became Wilco, which, after a few major changes in musical direction and members, became way more successful than Uncle Tupelo or Son Volt.
• In the mid-2000s, there was a short-lived pop rock girl group called the Valli Girls. While they had some mainstream hype, including appearances on the soundtracks to such TV shows and films as Trollz and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, they broke up after just a short while. Members Este and Danielle Haim went on to far greater success as part of Haim, while the rest of the band faded into near-total obscurity.
• After leaving the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed had a solo career that easily eclipsed his former band's in terms of commercial success, if not in historical importance. On a similar note, John Cale, after being fired from the group in 1968, went to carve his own niche as a solo artist, session musician and producer.
• An obscure Christian rock band called White Heart produced several famous Country Music names: guitarist Gordon Kennedy (son of country record producer Jerry Kennedy) became a songwriter/producer, drummer Chris McHugh became a session musician, and bassist Tommy Sims became a songwriter (most notably Eric Clapton's "Change the World", on which Kennedy was also a writer). Brothers Dann and David Huff left the group early on and later founded the rock band Giant; after they broke up, the Huff brothers and Giant's bassist Mike Brignardello all became session musicians. However, by the end of The '90s, Dann Huff became primarily known as a Record Producer for the likes of Faith Hill, Lonestar, Keith Urban, and Rascal Flatts among others.
• Ever heard of the Wilde Flowers? Well, they were the founding band of the Canterbury Scene. Those who jumped ship before it broke up founded Soft Machine, and the rest founded Caravan.
  • Soft Machine itself had Daevid Allen as a founder member (he left after the first single to found Gong) and was later home to Karl "Adiemus" Jenkins.
  • Soft Machine vocalist/guitarist Kevin Ayers left after the band's first album and went on to found a whole series of self-named bands. The breakup of the first one these, Kevin Ayers and the Whole World, freed their young bass player and occasional guitarist Mike Oldfield to begin the pioneering experiment in multi-instrumentalism that would become Tubular Bells.
  • Another Wilde Flowers and Soft Machine alumnus, Robert Wyatt, has gone on to a respected solo career.
• Issues was formed by Tyler Carter and Michael Bohn after they were fired from Woe, Is Me. What happens afterwards? WIM releases one critically panned album that flopped before disbanding permanently, while Issues quickly becomes one of the most popular Metalcore bands in the United States, with a Top 10 debut album (extremely impressive for a metal band) and a devoted following, bigger than what WIM ever had.
• A band called Y Kant Tori Read emerged in 1988, then broke up after being unsuccessful. The lead singer, Tori Amos, now enjoys her success as an alternative singer-songwriter. Their drummer, Matt Sorum, went on to play with The Cult, Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver.
• The Yardbirds, while successful in their own right, is arguably more well-known for launching the careers of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, the latter of which formed Led Zeppelin from the ashes from the group. Lead singer Keith Relf is mostly famous for his electrocution death in 1976 and for forming the progressive rock band Renaissance.

Subversions and Inversions

Sorted by group names.

• This applies to both Depeche Mode and its departed member Vince Clarke. The latter went on to have continued success as one half of Yazoo and later, Erasure. The former shook off their teenybopper image, adopted a Darker and Edgier sound, and became critical and commercial darlings on both sides of the pond.
• Inverted by the alt-country bands Giant Sand and Calexico. Joey Burns and John Convertino started Calexico as a side project while they were still playing in Giant Sand's rhythm section. Howe Gelb (Giant Sand's frontman) kicked Burns and Convertino out only after Calexico became more famous than his band.
• A pretty extreme inversion of this trope, where all but one member continued their high success after the breakup, is South Korean multi-genre trio Seo Taiji and Boys. After they broke up, Seo himself maintained a flourishing music career for decades, even gaining the nickname "President of Culture". Yang Hyun-suk founded YG Entertainment, one of the biggest k-pop companies of all time. As for Lee Juno, he also tried being a music executive, but didn't have much luck and faded out of public view to become a mildly successful producer & dance teacher. Lee's most recent stint in the news was getting convicted of sexual assault and fraud in 2017, and almost every headline referred to him as "former Seo Taiji & Boys member".
• Those Who Lie Beneath was a low-level deathcore act from the Pacific Northwest who recorded one full-length and toured for a year who were critically well-liked and went over well with crowds, but never really attracted a dedicated fanbase or broke out of the low-level support milieu. Nowadays, they are known for three people: Jamie Hanks, who left the band to join I Declare War and became far more famous there than he ever was in TWLB, and Kyle Rasmussen and Adam Roethlisberger, who took over leadership of the band after Hanks left and gradually transformed it into the critically-acclaimed death metal act Vitriol, who released one of the most heavily hyped debuts of 2019.

In-Universe

• In the fictional history of Garth Brooks' alter ego Chris Gaines, Chris started off in a band called Crush that had only one hit, "My Love Tells Me So". When one of its band members died in an airplane crash, Chris went solo with his debut album Straight Jacket and became a bigger success up until the release of his 1999 Greatest Hits album which would precede The Lamb.
• Tenacious D's track "The Ballad of Hollywood Jack and the Rage Kage" parodies this, with the Rage Kage languishing in obscurity while Hollywood Jack gets famous and stars in movies (not entirely unlike the dynamic that was in place while the band themselves were on hiatus between albums). It culminates in the Rage Kage losing his mind in a jealous fury.

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