Spiritual Successor / Music

Spiritual Successor in music.

---

• Adele is considered the spiritual successor to Amy Winehouse by many music critics.
  • Duffy, Paloma Faith and even Emeli Sande are also viewed as this by many people too.
• Alicia Keys is this to Nina Simone.
• The modern Nightcore movement of the 2010s is one to the "chipmunk version" and Speedy Techno Remix crazes of the 2000s. After the popularity of the Alvin and the Chipmunks film, many videos on YouTube began pitching songs similar to the Chipmunks' sound. Similarly, catchy remixes were popular on early YouTube. In the 2010s, these began being displaced with nightcore remixes. The nightcore genre has existed for years, but the mainstream version is a catch-all term for "sped up song".
  • In a way, the Hyperpop movement of the 2020s could be considered a spiritual successor to both of these, combining the high-energy, high-pitched sound of the previous genres with original lyrics.
• Arcade Fire is one of these for Neutral Milk Hotel for some. It doesn't help that Arcade Fire signed to Merge Records because Neutral Milk Hotel was part of the label.
• Atmosphere's song The Waitress could be seen as a sequel to Her Music Box, with the little girl in the latter having grown up.
• Avril Lavigne is said to be a spiritual successor to Alanis Morissette: Both are young Canadian singer-songwriters who play rock music but market themselves more to pop audiences.
  • Although before Lavigne broke out people were touting Michelle Branch as the heir to Morissette's throne; although she was successful, Branch did not achieve a fraction of the success or popularity that Morissette and Lavigne had.
• After The Beatles disbanded in 1970, Paul McCartney formed Wings, which is more or less seen as his successor to the band.
• Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott's 2014 album, What Have We Become, is this to the latter's years in Sophisti-Pop band The Beautiful South.
• The soundtrack to Begin Again is pretty much the second New Radicals album we never thought we'd get. While most of the songs are performed by other artists, Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois wrote or co-wrote all but one of them.
• The Black Crowes broke up in 2015. Chris Robinson continued on with his side-project, The Chris Robinson Brotherhood. Younger brother Rich Robinson eventually gathered former Crowes Marc Ford and Sven Pipien, to form The Magpie Salute.
• Off! can be considered a successor to either of the two other Hardcore Punk groups Keith Morris sang for, Black Flag and Circle Jerks. Aside from Morris' vocal style and the short, fast songs typical of the genre in general, there are some other connections: The band actually directly grew out of a failed Circle Jerks project - Due to a rift between members, what would have been a Circle Jerks comeback album produced by Dimitri Coats gradually turned into a new project with Keith Morris on vocals and Coats on guitar. Additionally, the band name is a play on "Black Flag" - Off! share their name with an insect repellent brand much like Black Flag shared their name with an insecticide. And finally, much like most Black Flag releases, all Off! releases thus far have had artwork drawn by Ramond Pettibon.
• The Black Keys are often considered the 2010s' equivalent of The White Stripes. It helps that their names contrast each other.
• The Break-Up/Blakk Glass are the spiritual successor to the now-defunct fellow Seattle synthpunk band The Fitness.
• Britney Spears is considered to be the 00's successor to Madonna. Noted on her Wikipedia page, by the clear majority.
• BTS have been compared by critics and audiences alike to Seo Taiji & Boys, the group that created the sound that defined Kpop in the 90s ^note Lee Sooman, founder of SM Entertainment, only built the "industrialized production of idols" formula based on what teens were already listening to years after Seo Taiji's debut, so he would actually be a Trope Codifier whose work diverged greatly from what Seo Taiji & Boys did.
  • Both appeal to Korean youth through their narrative, both have lyrics about social and political issues (with both criticizing the Korean education system), both have self-produced music with a mix of genres (including Hip-Hop), and both are notorious for their popularity and impact on recent Korean pop music history.
  • The parallels were especially notorious in BTS' 2016 cover of Seo Taiji and Boys' "Class Idea", which fits neatly with BTS songs like "Not Today" or "No More Dream"- so neatly, that Suga included a verse from "No More Dream" in BTS' performance of "Class Idea" with Seo Taiji himself a year later.
  • Even Seo Taiji himself named BTS his successors; after inviting the group to take part in his 25th anniversary project (where BTS covered "Come Back Home") and his 25th anniversary concert, he told them "this is your generation now".
• Camellia's song "Can I friend you on Bassbook? Lol" is basically the prequel to Knife Party's "Internet Friends". Both songs feature Facebook (or a parody thereof) as a plot point, with the former song being about trying to add a crush only to get punched for being creepy about it, while the latter features a rant over rejected advances, culminating in "You blocked me on Facebook, and now you're going to die!"
• Arch Enemy's early albums (Black Earth, Stigmata, and Burning Bridges) have all been described as a continuation of sorts to Carcass's sound from the time of their fourth album, Heartwork (which Arch Enemy's lead guitarist, Michael Amott, played on).
• Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury is considered to be this to Carmen Miranda since like her, she is of Portuguese descent and both have embraced cultural and ethnic diversity in Brazil. Though both are well-regarded samba artists, the only difference between them is that Mercury's musical style has elements of reggae and axé.
• Tom G. Warrior's band Triptykon is the spiritual successor to his previous band Celtic Frost, which in turn was the spiritual successor to Warrior and Martin Eric Ain's earlier band Hellhammer.
• Four out of six founding members (currently three of five) of the Swedish Power Metal outfit Civil War previously played for Sabaton, and like their original band, Civil War sings primarily about historical themes (though they've expanded their repertoire beyond Sabaton's focus on military history).
• When CN Blue debuted in Korea, they were immediately noted for sharing similar success and appeal as labelmates FT Island, who had debuted about 2.5 years beforehand, as both are popular idol rock bands there. Both promote alongside each other and have moulded their own distinct sounds and success since then.
• Maya Vik is a spiritual successor to now-mostly dormant fellow Norwegian synth/dance pop songstress Annie.
• David Bowie had a couple notable instances during his career.
  • Aladdin Sane is this to his previous album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He wrote some of the songs for it while on the U.S. tour supporting Ziggy Stardust, and keen to wean himself from the Secret-Identity Identity issues surrounding the Ziggy persona, he came up with a Ziggy expy who was suffering a mental/emotional decline as he journeyed across America.
  • By his own word, Let's Dance is one to Young Americans. Both albums are unusually mainstream-friendly by Bowie's standards, combining popular black music (soul & funk for Young Americans, post-disco for Let's Dance) with Bowie's trademark dark, artsy musical and lyrical undercurrents. Both albums were also major commercial successes for Bowie, with Young Americans being Bowie's Breakthrough Hit in the United States and Let's Dance being the album that turned him into a household name worldwide.
• Decoded Feedback's "Night Terror" (2012) is this to "Bio Vital" (1998), using the same key, tempo, and instrumentation.
• Guitarist Jerry Cantrell's second solo album, Degradation Trip, has been described as a spiritual successor to Alice in Chains' Dirt album.
  • Some fans also saw Jerry's first solo album, Boggy Depot, as an unofficial followup to AIC's self-titled 1995 album: Alice In Chains drummer Sean Kinney plays throughout the album, their bassist Mike Inez also appears on three songs, and the albums share a Record Producer in Toby Wright. Additionally, the Boggy Depot tracks "Settling Down" and "Hurt a Long Time" were both originally cut songs from Alice In Chains.
  • Both Alice In Chains and Soundgarden could be considered the 90's equivalent of Ozzy era Black Sabbath (the latter also to Led Zeppelin due to Chris Cornell's Robert Plant-influenced vocal style).
• Dir en grey is a very famous and loved Japanese Visual Kei band; their sound is so strange and unclassifiable some consider them the Spiritual Successors to Faith No More, Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan. They're also regarded as the "Japanese Marilyn Manson" due to their chosen style.
• Dismember can be considered one to Carnage, which had 3 out of 4 members.
• Electric Light Orchestra can be seen as this to The Beatles. Indeed, John Lennon once said in a 1972 interview that he referred the band as "the son of the Beatles", along with that frontman Jeff Lynne worked with the surviving members on The Beatles Anthology in 1994-95, not to mention that the band recorded a song for their album Secret Messages titled "Beatles Forever" when the album was originally planned to be a double album before Executive Meddling from their label forced them to reduce it to a single album for costing reasons with this song among those cut. While the album's original form would ultimately be released in 2018, "Beatles Forever" remains a Cut Song.
• Eminem:
  • Eminem has often been held up by commentators as the Turn of the Millennium version of Elvis Presley — both Pretty Boy white-trash Teen Idols who had complicated relationships with their mothers, whose music was surrounded by disgust and controversy for graphic shock content seen as extreme for the time. Both were technical experts within Black music genres, innovated by fusing their Black style with white musical styles, and both crossed their genre over to the white pop mainstream. Eminem himself has commented on this, even self-declaring as "rap's Elvis", and his Slim Shady alter-ego is seen as an Elvis Impersonator in several of his music videos. These parallels, unfortunately, continued throughout Eminem's career, with him ending up a recluse in his mansion, obese, riddled with physical illness, addicted to painkillers, and dying while using the toilet... well, not quite, as Eminem survived his overdose, got clean, got in shape, and made multiple more albums. Eminem even got a song on the soundtrack of Elvis called "The King And I" in which he alludes to the affinity between the two of them.
  • Eminem is also heavily indebted to the Beastie Boys, as another white rapper with a high-pitched, nasal screaming voice who garnered controversy and outrage with an over-the-top, comedic heel persona that is homophobic, misogynistic, and a rampant drug abuser. On "Cum On Everybody" on The Slim Shady LP, Slim describes how he picks up girls by pretending to be Mike D. ("He might be!")
  • While The Marshall Mathers LP has an official sequel (The Marshall Mathers LP 2), Kamikaze is the spiritual sequel to The Marshall Mathers LP, due to its similarly belligerent tone, and its insulting, controversy-bait lyrical content dissing critics and popular musicians of the era (who, by 2018, were no longer Mousketeer Teen Pop acts, but Trap Music rappers and "mumble-rappers"). Eminem has supported this reading, saying that the rather more optimistic and Kinder and Cleaner MMLP2 wasn't a true sequel but called that to represent its nostalgic tone, and declaring on Kamikaze's lead single that the real Slim Shady was back.
• Swedish synth/dream pop audiovisual group iamamiwhoami, as well as Jonna Lee's solo project ionnalee, may be the spiritual successors to now-disbanded fellow Swedish act The Knife.
• Pink Floyd's The Final Cut is seen by many to be a successor to their previous album The Wall. Both are concept albums dealing with pain, loss, and detachment.
  • Also a rock musician who appears in some of the album's songs may be Pink.
    • The Wall and The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking were written as part of the same set of 1978 demos, and both would have been considered to be the successor to Animals. The Wall won. The Final Cut began as new tracks written in 1982 for the film adaptation of The Wall, along with rejected songs from the album's 1979 sessions, but only "When The Tigers Broke Free" was used. It was to be released as an album called Spare Bricks. It was later completed with new tracks about and a new concept about the schoolteacher from The Wall being angry about The Falklands War and warmongering in general and called The Final Cut. TPACOHH was renewed as Roger Waters' first solo album. As a result, the albums have similar sounds and similar subject matter.
  • Roger Waters' solo album Amused to Death has been described by some fans as on par with Pink Floyd's classic albums. Executives at Roger's label apparently admitted as much to him, saying that it would have sold many more copies if it was a Pink Floyd album.
    • Amused to Death was actually written at first as, literally, a sequel to Waters' Radio K.A.O.S. album. Roger's objections to the first Gulf War (and its depiction by the news media as it unfurled) changed all of that.
• The Foo Fighters are without a doubt the spiritual successor to Nirvana. Dave Grohl was a member of both bands, Pat Smear was the touring guitarist for Nirvana in 1993 and 1994, and the Foo Fighters' first album was widely stated to sound almost exactly like Nirvana.
  • The reason for this is most of that album was recorded in 1992 when Grohl was a member of Nirvana and so was influenced by what they were doing at the time. In fact some of those songs were written for Nirvana (This Is A Call being the most obvious one). Kurt Cobain liked Grohl's songs and wanted to use more of them (just Marigold got recorded as a B Side) but never got round to it.
• So many of Frank Zappa's albums were this to each other:
  • Lumpy Gravy (1968), We're Only in It for the Money (1967) and Civilization Phaze III (1993).
  • Hot Rats (1969), Waka/Jawaka (1973) and The Grand Wazoo (1973).
  • Chunga's Revenge (1970), Fillmore East, June 1971 (1971), 200 Motels (1971) and Just Another Band from L.A. (1972)
  • Over-Nite Sensation (1973) and Apostrophe (') (1974)
• Idina Menzel's "Let It Go", from Frozen, is a spiritual successor to her song "Defying Gravity" from Wicked.
• Futurepop act Interface is a spiritual successor to pre-Genre Shift Apoptygma Berzerk. Better yet is Piston Damp, the group helmed by Jonas Groth, brother of APB frontman Stephan Groth, which sounds even closer to their classic material.
• Some fans consider Gamma Ray to be the Spiritual Successor of Helloween. It was founded by one of Helloween's guitarists, Kai Hansen, and Helloween absolutely did not put out a couple of really bad albums after he left.
  • The same could be said about Unisonic as well. Formed by a former member of Helloween, Michael Kiske, also has Kai Hansen...
• Girls Aloud are generally considered the spiritual successors to the Spice Girls, as not only did Girls Aloud have a long-running career like the Spice Girls, but Geri Halliwell was a judge on the talent show that formed them.
  • In turn, Little Mix are generally thought to be Girls Aloud's successors as well as to Sugababes, since Little Mix were also formed on a talent show and straddle the lines between pop and R&B.
• Honey Colonna, who collaborated with synthwave artist Highway Superstar on "Minds to Rest", "Hunters", and "Dream Diary", sounds like a spiritual successor to Miami Sound Machine-era Gloria Estefan.
• Having Fun with Elvis on Stage is considered one of the worst albums ever made. It is just Elvis' stage banter, stripped of any context, without music. Of course, in the 21st century, Bile Fascination has evolved into a form of comedy, where something is funny for not being funny. Because of that, there is now 45 Minutes of Paul Stanley Stage Banter, which is exactly what it sounds like. 45 Minutes of Paul Stanley's stage banter.
  • Relaxation Of The Asshole can be considered another successor: A "comedy album" consisting entirely of Robert Pollard's stage banter at various Guided by Voices performances. And while the Paul Stanley album is naturally an unsanctioned bootleg, this was an official release.
• Ingested was this to Age of Suffering; while multiple members of Age of Suffering (including their songwriting team) founded Ingested and took multiple Age of Suffering songs with them to the new band, Word of God is that Ingested was not intended to be Age of Suffering with a new name, but a completely new band entirely.
• iVardensphere, whose style combines neoclassical, tribal, industrial, techno, and trance elements, are potentially a spiritual successor to Juno Reactor.
• Jack White's solo work, unsurprisingly, feels like an extension of The White Stripes, of which he was a member before the band's dissolving in 2011. Just like with the White Stripes, Jack White's music is heavy blues Garage Rock featuring lots of distortion and feedback, with White's distinctive vocals.
• Johannes Brahms' first symphony was described as "Beethoven's tenth" after the premiere. Such a comparison annoyed him, as he remarked "Any ass can see that".
• Grunge and Post-Hardcore can more or less be considered the spiritual successors of Post-Punk. Both genres are experimental forms of Alternative Rock that use Punk Rock as a starting point (with post-hardcore, as the name implies, specifically rooting itself in Hardcore Punk). The main difference though is that while post-punk had a relatively cult following during and after its time, grunge and post-hardcore were rather prominent in mainstream rock during the early 90's and the 2000's, respectively. Rather eerily, the bands that first come to mind when one thinks "post-punk" and "grunge" (Joy Division and Nirvana, respectively) followed unusually similar histories, both being relative unknowns who achieved success from making dour, experimental music before disbanding after a surprisingly short run due to their 20-something lead singers committing suicide after a long series of personal struggles.
• Juniel was coined the "Next IU" at her Korean debut - both are Korean Pop Music female soloists, have similar voices and play guitar (though IU doesn't officially promote with it). Their music however isn't particularly similar, with Juniel focusing on acoustic and pop rock music and IU experimenting with a larger variety from pop to swing music.
• Salt Ashes is seen by many fans as a spiritual successor of Kylie Minogue.
• Lady Gaga has been called the spiritual successor to Cyndi Lauper.
  • And Madonna. And Missing Persons' Dale Bozzio (whose hair style she admitted to copying). Many believe Gaga is just playing the system and is writing the sort of popular music whilst not taking it too seriously.
• Lamb of God's 2012 album Resolution is considered by some to be one to Pantera's 1997 album The Great Southern Trendkill in terms of both the dark, depressing and frightening tone and style of both albums. Hell, just compare Lamb Of God's "King Me" with either Pantera's "Floods" or "10's", both styles are alike!
• Led Zeppelin is considered to be this to The Yardbirds, due to the fact it originated as the New Yardbirds before it was renamed. Zeppelin recorded two unreleased Yardbirds songs, "Dazed And Confused" and "Knowing That I'm Losing You" (renamed "Tangerine"), as well as in the early days playing live versions of "The Train Kept A Rollin'", "For Your Love" and "White Summer".
  • Page and Plant is considered to be this to Zep in addition to being the closest to a full reunion to the band.
• Lindsey Stirling, whose style combine classical violin with electronic music, is potentially the spiritual successor to Emilie Autumn. Both may also be successors to Anglo-Singaporean neoclassical techno-pop artist Vanessa-Mae.
• Lita Ford commented to NPR's Fresh Air that she hears bits of her former group The Runaways, the seminal all-girl Punk Rock group, in acts such as Halestorm.
• A lot of solo musicians' careers become spiritual successors to their bands after they break up.
• "Major Tom (Coming Home)" is a spiritual successor to David Bowie's "Space Oddity"
• Groove Coverage's "Little June" was this to Mike Oldfield's "Moonlight Shadow", which they previously covered. Both are about the murder of a loved one, and have similar melodies.
• Mike Oldfield's 1990 album Amarok was initially conceived as a direct sequel to his 1975 album Ommadawn; even after it was rebranded, Oldfield and numerous analysts described the two as sister albums, right down to the cover of Amarok recalling that of Ommadawn (Ommadawn itself would later get a proper sequel, Return to Ommadawn, in 2017).
• Holy Ghost! sound like the spiritual successors of New Order, and were the opening band for the latter's 2013 US tour.
  • For British bands Hot Chip could be the spiritual successor to New Order, with hybrid electronica and rock music, Peter Saville-like album covers, and catchy, if slightly non-mainstream sensibilities.
  • New Order is also the spiritual successor to Joy Division, the former being comprised of all the remaining members of said band except for Joy Division's lead singer, Ian Curtis, who committed suicide in 1980. Notably, when Joy Division were first nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023, they shared their nomination with New Order.
• In a way, Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" could be considered a spiritual sequel to Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back", due to the former heavily sampling the latter, as well as both songs having similar subject matter.
• After Oasis's split in 2009, the Gallagher brothers went in separate side projects that can be considered this for the band: Liam and the rest of the band formed Beady Eye, while Noel formed his own band Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. Several critics view the latter as the true successor.
  • Oasis themselves is viewed as a successor to The Beatles, helped by the fact that the band themselves were fans of their work.
• Following Orbital's second split in 2014, Paul Hartnoll commenced the solo project 8:58, which was more or less stylistically identical. Subverted with the duo's second reunion in 2017.
• Aeralie Brighton, the One-Woman Wail singer on the Ori and the Blind Forest soundtrack, may be seen/heard as a spiritual successor to Lisa Gerrard. In fact, "Limitless", a side collaboration with Ori composer Gareth Coker, is highly reminiscent of Gerrard's work with Dead Can Dance.
  • Allison Lewis, AKA Zoe Zanias, former singer of Linea Aspera and Keluar, also sounds like a successor to Gerrard and DCD.
• Many fans of Buckner & Garcia's Pac-Man Fever consider "Wreck-It Ralph" (which the band recorded for the movie's soundtrack) to be this trope. In terms of theme and style, it's a perfect fit.
• Fans consider A Pale Horse Named Death to be this for Type O Negative, especially appropriate since it was formed by an ex-member.
• Arthur Jeffes' ensemble Penguin Cafe is a spiritual successor to his father Simon Jeffes' Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
• Porcupine Tree is, according to critics and lots of fans, the spiritual successor to King Crimson. Hell, even frontmen from both bands (Steven Wilson and Robert Fripp respectively) agree on this!
  • Hardly surprising, then, that Fripp actually invited Wilson to supervise the remastering of King Crimson's albums.
  • Porcupine Tree were also labelled the spiritual successors of Pink Floyd when they were still doing more psychadelic Progressive Rock, though the band members have repeatedly contested this notion.
• The Postal Service can be considered one to the Dntel (aka Jimmy Tamborello) song "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan". The latter was originally meant to be a one-off guest appearance by Ben Gibbard for the Dntel album Life Is Full Of Possibilities. Gibbard and Tamborello liked collaborating with each other, and the song was well-received, so they started The Postal Service together.
• Punk Rock group Lard haven't officially released anything since 2000's 70's Rock Must Die EP. However, Lard can arguably be boiled down to a collaboration between Al Jourgensen and Jello Biafra, and Jello has made numerous guest appearances for Al's other projects since, whether it's providing a spoken word intro ("Ass Clown" by Ministry), or taking over on lead vocals ("Sabotage is Sex" by Ministry, "Dead End Streets" and "Viagra Culture" by Revolting Cocks, "I Don't Wanna" by Surgical Meth Machine). "Viagra Culture" arguably feels the most like a Lard song due to its nearly six minute length and industrial-punk-metal sound.
  • Lard themselves can be considered a Spiritual Successor to the shorter-lived Pailhead: Members of Ministry collaborating with a politically outspoken Hardcore Punk vocalist (in this case Ian MacKaye) on a project that mixes elements of industrial and punk.
• Queensrÿche's album Promised Land was this this to their previous album Operation: Mindcrime, until a direct sequel to the latter was released.
• Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow could be this to Gillan-era Deep Purple, especially during its days with Ronnie James Dio.
• Rammstein's song "Ohne Dich" (Without You) is this to Franz Schubert's song "Wandrers Nachtlied II", which is itself a setting of a poem by Johann Wolfgangvon Goethe, probably the most famous poem in the German language. In the original poem/song, the wanderer looks out peacefully across the calm forest, where even the birds are silent ("Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde".) In the Rammstein song, the forest isn't so much calm but dark, empty and lifeless, and the birds aren't so much silent as no longer singing ("Und die Vögel singen nicht mehr.") In the first song, the narrator is alone but at peace; in the second one, he's alone because he's without "you" and can't bear it.
• Heaven and Hell was the Ronnie James Dio line up of Black Sabbath when Black Sabbath returned to its original Ozzy-led lineup.
• Bryan Ferry's solo career has been more or less a contiuation of his work with Roxy Music, to the point where many compilations include both solo and Roxy Music tracks.
• Similarly, both Post-Grunge and Metalcore have been called the Spiritual Successor to Hair Metal for different reasons. The former for its lyrical content, near total dominance of mainstream Hard Rock, "poppy" hard rock nature, and abundance of same-sounding Follow the Leader acts. As for the latter, well, just look at this.
• When 16 Horsepower started drifting apart, the frontman and primary songwriter started recording and performing under the moniker Woven Hand, basically picking up exactly where his first band left off.
• Frank Sinatra's album Songs for Young Lovers got a follow-up under the similar title Songs for Swingin' Lovers!.
• A number of critics have cited the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham-led Fleetwood Mac as a spiritual successor to The Mamas and The Papas, since they were both Californian pop-rock bands with tight male-female vocal blends.
  • In turn, Lissie sounds like a spiritual successor to Stevie Nicks and her work with FWM.
• Sun Kil Moon is the Spiritual Successor to Red House Painters. When Mark Kozelek attempted to get RHP back together in 2002, their music had changed to drastically that he considered the project a separate one and renamed it Sun Kil Moon.
• Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones was the precursor for Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years. Collectively, they are known as the Frank O'Brien Trilogy.
• Taiji Sawada could be seen as this to Sid Vicious: a delinquent dropout bassist that ascended to the top of his new music scene (for Sid Vicious it was punk, for Sawada it was Visual Kei), with an aggressive style and bad-boy image that, even when he was kicked from bands, left him an iconic figure of "not selling out." In the same way, alcoholism and hard drugs would eventually ruin their lives and play large roles in both's eventual deaths, with Vicious dying of an overdose and Sawada dying post-arrest for acting out on an airplane, most likely either due to drugs or due to epilepsy subsequent to a past drug-induced stroke). The major difference between the two was that where Vicious was stereotypically "what gets stuck on bass," Sawada was actually a skilled bassist, guitarist, and composer.
• The Limousines had a song called "Internet Killed the Video Star", in reference to The Buggles hit song, "Video Killed the Radio Star", having the same melancholy attitude of someone caught in the past as the next generation leaves them behind. While the original is more of a sorrowful End of an Era memorial, the later song is ambiguous as to whether it is a bitter New Media Are Evil message, or if it's a bittersweet passing of the torch, as the heroes of the music video are children, the next generation.
• This PopMatters article makes a convincing case that modern Country Music, with its slick radio-friendly production and penchant for power ballads, is the spiritual successor to Arena Rock.
• Both Tori Amos and Björk have been considered the spiritual successors to Kate Bush.
• Tribute might very well be this to The Devil Went Down to Georgia.
• Green Day's concept album 21st Century Breakdown is almost a direct sequel to their previous rock opera American Idiot. One could go as far as to argue that this could go beyond spiritual successor, as they both take place around the same time, deal with the same basic themes, and have very similar characters.
  • Several of the songs from 21st Century Breakdown are featured in the American Idiot stage show.
• The umbrella category of "post-progressive" entails genres and artists that act as this trope to Progressive Rock, revitalizing an artistic ethos of musical progression and innovation, but with newer influences distinctly separate from those that gave rise to "classic" prog's sound. In particular, Post-Rock and Math Rock have been singled out as genres in the post-prog category that most distinctly act as spiritual successors to the original progressive rock movement.
• Chickenfoot is this for Van Halen, considering half of Chickenfoot is comprised of two former Van Halen members. They musically resemble the David Lee Roth years, which is ironic, because they feature Roth's replacement Sammy Hagar on vocals.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic could be seen as the spiritual successor of Spike Jones.
• Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe and their Self-Titled Album was in many ways a Spiritual Successor to the '70s era Yes, including having four of the five members of that lineup (only bassist Chris Squire was missing). Yes' Union, which combined the '70s and '80s lineups, even started life as a sequel to Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe's sole studio album.
• The backlash against Justin Bieber in the 2010s is often compared by analysts (especially in hindsight) to the Disco Sucks movement in the late '70s, right down to said analysts noting an undercurrent of toxic masculinity (Bieber being more effeminate at his peak than his contemporaries and having a huge female fanbase) that paralleled the disco backlash's racist and homophobic elements (though Bieber's various legal troubles and personal controversies later in life would give the backlash against him greater ammunition). Comparisons to the backlash against Phil Collins from the late '80s to the early 2010s are also frequently drawn by commentators, who note that both singers suffered from similar levels of overexposure at the height of their fame.
• Justin Timberlake is considered to be the 2000s successor to Michael Jackson, to the point where numerous songs on his solo debut were originally written for Jackson's Invincible. Usher, Bruno Mars, and The Weeknd all received similar labels throughout the 21st century.
• Like Britney and Gaga, Christina Aguilera and Katy Perry have also been referred as this to Madonna.
• Mike Doughty's project Ghost Of Vroom was touted as a successor to Soul Coughing, using more of the experimental sampling and jazz influences that were prevalent in his old band but were usually downplayed for his solo albums. The name of the group is even a Soul Coughing reference - Soul Coughing's debut was titled Ruby Vroom, and they had at one point toyed with the idea of a Remix Album titled Ghost Of Vroom.
• Songs from the Mountain by Dirk Powell, Tim O'Brien, and John Herrmann was inspired by Cold Mountain, and originally was to have been titled after it before much legal wrangling with the rights holders intervened.
• "Bullet Time" by Tom Smith is The Punisher (2004) as a song. Both are about cops who lose their careers and families to the local crime bosses, and become shells of their former selves as they become homicidal vigilantes.
• Mayday Parade's "Terrible Things" is frequently associated with CLANNAD. It's about a formerly Happily Married man telling his son about his wife who died of a terminal illness years ago.
• LeaF's Disguised Horror Story song "MopeMope" is practically a music version of Eversion, featuring what appears to be cute flowery scenery at first and an accompanying jingle that suddenly pulls a complete 180 and turns into a hellscape of otherworldly horrors and nasty music. Both works' creators had to slap on content warnings to make it extra clear that they're not suitable for kids. Its apperance in Muse Dash even features the game scenery randomly "everting" between different kinds, like in early versions of Eversion World 8.
• Soramafuurasaka's RPG, despite the Nintendo inspired imagery, actually describes a typical Diablo II session, and it also pass as one to Diab LOL as well.
• Chilean band Criminal is often considered to be a spiritual successor to early Sepultura. Singer/guitarist Anton Reisenegger was part of the same wave of underground 1980s extreme metal as them with the band Pentagram (not to be confused with the doom metal band of the same name), and he formed Criminal since his first band had trouble getting an album together despite recording several demos. When Sepultura moved away from their death/thrash roots with Chaos A.D. in 1993, Criminal's first album coincidentally came out the following year in 1994. While both bands (and by extension Soulfly after Max Cavalera left Sepultura) continued to evolve their sound in similar ways, Criminal always stuck with death metal elements, while still incorporating groove and hardcore influences to create their signature sound. In layman's terms, Criminal is what Sepultura would've sounded like had they remained in death/thrash territory in their mid-period while simultaneously evolving their style similarly and turning their musicality up a notch.
• Lainey Wilson's song Watermelon Moonshine has been considered to be a spiritual successor to Deanne Carter's 1990s country hit Strawberry Wine. Both songs are about women remembering their first loves during the twilight of their adolescence, named after a fruit-based spirit. Wilson would even cover snippets of Strawberry Wine during her concerts, and some radio station producers created mashups of the two songs.
• Big Time Rush could be considered one for The Monkees. Both groups are four-man Boy Bands who were originally assembled for TV shows centered on the wacky antics they get into, both were able to establish musical success outside of their respective shows, and both ended up going on a multiple-year hiatus between the end of their shows and an eventual reunion.

---