The 10 Biggest Musical Transformations Of 2013

For years, B.o.B has gone out of his way to be difficult to pin down or categorize. In 2007, he was a Decatur MC with the fairly nondescript hit “Haterz Everywhere,” but soon he was bristling at both the name and the sound he was known by, beginning to call himself Bobby Ray and making songs like “I’ll Be In The Sky” that recalled Andre 3000 circa The Love Below. Then in 2010, he became a pop radio darling by recording duets with Bruno Mars and members of Paramore and Weezer, turning his love of rock music and discomfort with mainstream rap’s boundaries into a launching pad to crossover success. But his second album, last year’s Strange Clouds, failed to repeat the success of the first, so he’s been aiming back at hip-hop radio with strip club-ready singles like “We Still In This Bitch” featuring Juicy J and “HeadBand” featuring 2 Chainz. Just a year after dueting with Taylor Swift, B.o.B is on mixtape tracks with T.I.’s Hustle Gang.

For over a decade, Calgary twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin have been inching towards the American mainstream, from indie pop circles, from the Canadian charts, and from the perceived niche audiences that gay and lesbian performers are often relegated to. But in 2013, they made a power move with Heartthrob, an album produced mostly by Greg Kurstin, who’s had his own long transformation from alternative cult hero (as a member of Geggy Tah and The Bird And The Bee) to a Hot 100 mainstay (producing huge hits by Kelly Clarkson and Pink). At the top of the year, the single “Closer” was a minor breakthrough for Tegan and Sara, but nine months later the song has given birth to a whole new chart resurgence, climbing up pop radio playlists rapidly in the weeks since one of the duo’s famous fans, Taylor Swift, performed the song with them at one of her concerts. Old fans may not all love Tegan and Sara’s newly sparkly, synth-driven sound, but the crossover gamble is paying off nonetheless.

A few years ago, Cassadee Pope came to prominence as the lead singer of Hey Monday, an emo band signed to Fall Out Boy’s Decaydance Records and playing on the Warped Tour. But as Hey Monday’s popularity waned, Pope went solo and found herself where many other music industry refugees do these days, attempting to reboot her career on NBC’s hit reality competition, “The Voice.” Last December, Pope was crowned the winner of the show’s third season with her celebrity coach on the show, country star Blake Shelton, guiding her through a repertoire of Keith Urban and Faith Hill covers. In January, she signed with Republic Nashville, and went full tilt country with her debut album Frame By Frame, released this month, documenting her transition to the genre with yet another reality show, this time on CMT.

“We’ve come too far to give up who we are” is the line from Daft Punk’s blockbuster 2013 single, “Get Lucky,” that could function as a statement of purpose for the veteran French dance duo’s year of crossover success. The irony, of course, is that the line is sung not by Thomas Bangalter or Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo but by a guest performer, hip-hop hit-maker Pharrell Williams. With the knowledge that they were returning to the spotlight this year with a bigger fan base than ever before, after a pop radio takeover by an EDM scene that worships Daft Punk but rarely sounds anything like them, the duo somehow managed to have their cake and eat it too. Teaming up with Williams, Panda Bear of Animal Collective and Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, Daft Punk did their own offbeat version of the “dance producer with a guest singer” hit-making formula, while making an album much slower and moodier than anyone expected, with live band grooves rather than the automated robot grooves they made their name on.

In 2011, music fans everywhere were shocked by the news that one of indie rock’s longest running bands, Sonic Youth, and one of its longest running marriages, that of guitarist Thurston Moore and bassist Kim Gordon, were both going to take a break, and potentially come to a permanent end. After over a year of relative quiet, Gordon re-emerged in 2013, most publicly in an interview with Elle Magazine, in which she spoke frankly about Moore’s affair with a younger woman, and her new single life, moving on and dating younger men. And Coming Apart, the album released last month by Body/Head, Gordon’s new duo with Bill Nace, seems to be addressing the situation head-on in songs like “Last Mistress.” And unlike Moore’s own new band, Chelsea Light Moving, which doesn’t drift too far out from the sound of Sonic Youth’s later albums, Body/Head is a dramatic departure, closer to the band’s noisy ’80s beginnings but with a raw new emotional component, expanding the creative palette of the punk rock queen who had at times seemed too distant or reserved to let listeners into her private life in her songs.

Arcade Fire became one of the most beloved and successful indie rock bands of the past decade with an arsenal of old-fashioned instruments and emotional songwriting. But after the triumph of 2010’s The Suburbs winning the Grammy for Album of the Year, the band evidently thought it was time for a change, and joined up with another indie superpower, James Murphy of the recently disbanded LCD Soundsystem, for an unlikely collaboration. The resulting album, Reflektor, is due out later this month, but already the seven-minute title track and lead single has made waves as a dramatic departure into the world of synths and motorik grooves that had scarcely been hinted at in the band’s earlier albums. The song was even released on a 12-inch single under the alias The Reflektors, reflecting the Sgt. Pepper’s-like conceit that they’re a completely different band this time around.

Kanye West has long proven one of popular music’s great shape shifters of our time, but his transformations tend to be gradual, with an album like Graduation serving as the halfway point transition between albums as dramatically different as Late Registration and 808s & Heartbreak. But as 2013 dawned, nobody was totally sure what form his new music would take, and few would’ve predicted quite how different Yeezus was from Cruel Summer or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. After years of increasingly colorful, ambitious fashion statements, West pared down to an all-black wardrobe, with an album to match it with stark minimalism and politically charged statements on race. Even now, looking into the future, it’s easy to speculate that West will go further down the Yeezus rabbit hole, or tear off in an opposite direction, but the truth is nobody really knows what he’ll do in 2014.

Before 2013, Mac Miller was the de facto face of the “frat rap” movement, a white MC doing huge numbers independently with no radio singles, and only a tenuous connection to the mainstream hip-hop industry via his association with fellow Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa. But the Mac who became a rising star and critical punching bag in 2011 and laid low in 2012 re-emerged this year as an unlikely cornerstone of a burgeoning, diverse hip-hop scene in his new adoptive home of Los Angeles. Building a home studio where members of the city’s influential crews Black Hippy and Odd Future regularly record, Mac Miller’s second retail album, Watching Movies With The Sound Off, depicted a rapidly changing MC with a whole new set of influences and collaborators—it’s hard to imagine the Mac Miller of two years ago recording with Jay Electronica or Flying Lotus. And with a pop breakthrough in his Ariana Grande collaboration “The Way,” Miller doesn’t even seem so far removed from the mainstream anymore, even as his music has gotten stranger and more underground.

Over two decades as one of the most famous rappers in the world, Snoop Doggy Dogg morphed into simply Snoop Dogg, changing his sound as he hopped from Death Row to No Limit to Star Trak. But none of those developments could have prepared his fans for his announcement that he was changing his name—if only temporarily—to Snoop Lion, and making a reggae album. Released in April on Mad Decent and executive produced by Major Lazer’s Diplo, the Snoop Lion album Reincarnated seemed to be another attempt at a ballsy, irreverent, but ultimately heartfelt tribute to the music of Jamaica, but it didn’t go over so well. Sales were soft, reviews were negative, and no less an authority than Bunny Wailer publicly questioned Snoop’s motives. And with all this talk of Snoopzilla, hopefully soon we’ll get Snoop Dogg back.

From long auburn locks to little blonde pigtails, from guitar-driven pop/rock and country to Mike WiLL Made It-powered bass, from moving her hips like “yeah” to twerking across America, nobody has rebooted their music, career and image more completely in 2013 than Miley Cyrus. Years ago, she’d already shed the Disney Channel alias she released her early music under, Hannah Montana, and made some gestures toward a more sexual and “adult” image with 2010’s Can’t Be Tamed, which in retrospect seems a bit, well, tame. But this year was a complete about-face, making almost every other teen pop star’s transition into womanhood besides Christina Aguilera’s seem like not such a big deal after all. The singles “We Can’t Stop” and “Wrecking Ball” ruled both radio and YouTube with provocative videos, while the album Bangerz arrived in stores this week looking like a blockbuster success to cap off months of speculation and controversy.