Leave Britney alone aged… well.
Probably most surprised by artists like Duran Duran, Gary Numan, and New Order continuing to pump out bangers, and embrace modern synths while keeping their signature sounds.
Coldplay switched to making lifeless, generic pop music…
Sido
Andre 3000 making a flute album was unexpected and I wasn’t even in a coma for 20 years. It’s good
I wouldn’t know about biggest surprise, but I didn’t see the Red Hot Chili Peppers replacing guitar with keyboard. I really liked what John Frusciante and his predecessors had brought to the group. I went from a deep Peppers fan to not listening to anything post Stadium Arcadium
Taylor Swift. She started out as a country singer, completely changed her genre, and became a pop sensation.
Edit: Nevermind, her first album was in 2005 I think.
I miss when she was a country singer. It really felt like a perfect match for her. And then she left it.
And then there’s her 2020 albums, folklore, and evermore. These will forever be my favorite pieces of music from Taylor Swift of all time. And they aren’t pop or country.
Sigh…Antiflag. as a band that stood so strongly for pro-feminism, anti-racism, anti-corporate, just progressive politics to the max, having that news come out about Justin Sane being a complete fucking creep really shatters the music and the message.
I would say the prevalence of K-Pop. The occasional foreign language song would hit the charts every once in a while, but for an entire genre of foreign music to have fans everywhere is surprising.
Linkin Park
If the last thing I’d heard from them was Meteora and then woke up to hear a song like Heavy or Talking to Myself, I would straight up just not believe it’s the same band. That’s not to say I don’t like their later stuff, but its radically different.
On the other hand, the 20th anniversary editions of Hybrid Theory and Meteora would blow my mind.
I just realized I haven’t listened to Linkin Park in at least a decade. Thanks for reminding me about them
