10 pop artists who proved they could make rock songs
For any seasoned rock veteran, the world of pop music feels like a dreaded nightmare no one wants to endure. There can be some catchy rock tunes that find their way onto the pop charts, but chances are, if there are some rock artists that collaborate with a big name, the word ‘sell out’ usually isn’t that far behind them. Then again, there have been some great songs from people like Lady Gaga that any other rockstar would have been proud to say they had written.
But writing a rock song is much different from the standard hook-filled affair of pop. Some power-pop artists know the lay of the land, such as Cheap Trick or The Cars. Still, the art of making a great rock song either comes from the energy that they create or one’s ability to absolutely tear it up on a certain instrument, whether that’s with a guitar or annihilating a piano solo.
And while many people say that half of the pop geniuses of the world wouldn’t know the first thing about how to play their instruments, every song on this list is further proof of how wrong that is. Every artist here clearly had a handle on the medium before they even stepped into the studio, and when looking through the intricacies in the mix, they were ready for war with anyone who claimed that they weren’t good enough for rock and roll.
Although many people are still afraid of mixing their genres now and again, there’s nothing that could get in the way of any artist following their muse, and this is proof that even pop artists can rock out, too. They don’t have the same approach as a Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen, but that was hardly a bad thing.
10 rock songs written by pop musicians:
‘Rockstar’ – N*E*R*D*
Pharrell Williams seems to have enough in stock to run half the music business if he wants to. Although there are power players in the game that he hasn’t worked with, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a cosign from one of the biggest producers in the world when putting something for the radio. But Williams got his start in hip-hop before anything else, and some of his bread and butter came from mashing together the craziest beats until they sounded right.
Such is the case with ‘Rockstar’. While the different keyboard licks sound very Neptunes-esque compared to the rest of the stuff on the radio, the drum break is lifted straight out of the John Bonham playbook. It’s usually great to pull from the best when working on the greatest tunes in your arsenal, but compared to every other band that was using rap-rock tendencies when this dropped, this felt incredibly interesting, to the point where it seemed like Run-DMC if it were a little bit more aggro.
There was a lot to unpack here, but the fairweather fans of hip-hop probably didn’t see the pop stuff coming after Williams hit on this. Certainly a ton of potential for them to work with, but if this was the first thing that someone heard from him, no one would see the producer behind Gwen Stefani and Justin Timberlake that would one day get an entire LEGO movie centred around his life.
‘Larger Than Life’ – Backstreet Boys
For a good portion of 1990s rockers, the boy bands were practically their nemesis. They had some great tunes that got the girls screaming, but for anyone blasting something like Nine Inch Nails or even Green Day at the time, no one would have been caught dead wearing a T-shirt for NSYNC or New Kids on the Block. But that didn’t mean the boy bands didn’t have some real muscle up their sleeves when they wanted to.
While the majority of all Backstreet Boys songs are usually reserved for the end of the night at a bar when everyone wants to cut loose and belt in the early hours of the morning, ‘Larger Than Life’ has some decent fire behind it. No one would have seen this coming, but the production behind this is as forceful as anything you’d find in a typical rock production, complete with the drums hitting everyone over the head the minute they come in.
The boy bands may have put a lot of rock bands out of work, but the fact that they managed to sneak in a guitar solo on their hit is insane, especially since the guitar break itself is extremely tasteful, almost pulled out of the same kind of grab bag of riffs that you’d expect out of a virtuoso guitar player. Suddenly, the paradigm had shifted, and the novice guitar players of the world actually had a reason to pick up an album like Millennium and see what the fuss was really all about.
‘Let Me Entertain You’ – Robbie Williams
In the glory days of Britpop, the idea of Robbie Williams going solo and becoming a rocker was cute more than anything. Everyone seemed to tolerate him blacking out his tooth and co-mingling with Oasis at Glastonbury, but it was all in service to an idea that seemed too stupid to actually work. After all, former pop pinups didn’t normally get rock credibility, but ‘Let Me Entertain You’ actually managed to pull it off for a brief few seconds.
While most of Life Thru A Lens is made up of songs that are Britpop-adjacent, his first major single helped solidify his status away from Take That. There was no room for him to be strictly a ballad singer, and as soon as those booming pianos came in, it hit with the same kind of force as a guitar would. It’s not Oasis-levels of guitar crunch, but Williams commands the stage with the same type of charisma as the rockers of yesteryear.
And out of all of the songs in his arsenal, this is one of the few that actually manages to feel like stadium rock before he even graduated to the massive arenas of the world. Any pop star has to dream big before they even have a shot at reaching the big time, but as soon as people got a closer look at what Williams was doing, they realised that they may have a genuine superstar on their hands.
‘Crazy Horses’ – The Osmonds
The Osmonds are normally ground zero if you’re looking for something corny. That’s not even an insult. Corny seemed to be what they were going for, and considering the number of duets that Donny and Marie Osmond did in their prime, it’s almost cute that they were trying their hand at rock and roll when little Donny’s voice was going through some changes. Then ‘Crazy Horses’ and everyone realised that this whole “edgy” album wasn’t actually a joke.
Compared to every single thing in the group’s catalogue, it’s almost an anomaly that something this heavy exists on one of their records. The guitar riff itself feels like something that could have come out of a Zeppelin tune, and since they didn’t have to rely on Donny’s high voice or potentially a truly epic vocal crack, giving the vocals to some of his other brothers led to the kind of throaty growl that is more commonly expected out of someone like Ian Gillan of Deep Purple.
Even kids at the time thought so, with everyone from guitar legend Paul Gilbert to Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott claiming that it was a phenomenal tune. Anyone wearing a Black Sabbath shirt may have had their asses kicked for saying that they liked anything close to The Osmonds, but in a funny way, the band of wholesome heartthrobs had some respect put on their name when those riffs kicked in.
‘Harder to Breathe’ – Maroon 5
The entire downward trajectory of Maroon 5 seems sad to dunk on these days. Everyone realises that Adam Levine has been phoning it in for the past few years, and there will come a time when all of their music will fade from memory and we will look at them in the same way that we once looked at other bands that stayed too long at the party. But the reason why it’s so heartbreaking is for those who know what the band sounded like when they were in their prime.
Make no mistake, the “heavy” side of Maroon 5 is pretty damn close to pop music, but ‘Harder to Breathe’ is one of the most unepected surprises of their early years. To their credit, they had been working with the producer behind bands like Faith No More on Songs About Jane, so hearing the strange distorted vocal effects on Levine’s voice and a bad-boy style guitar riff is actually a welcome change of pace, especially when paired with lyrics about two lovers who can’t work out their differences.
Sure, that scenario is practically 90% of Levine’s writing style, but the fact that he can sell it like a mother-approved version of Robert Plant speaks volumes. And since he has turned in time working with members of Guns N’ Roses and Pearl Jam, it’s a shame that this is the version of Levine that excels in every way but refuses to show his face all that often.
‘It’s A Raid’ – Post Malone
Ever since the late 2010s, Post Malone has practically been the ambassador for all his favourite bands. No one expected the same guy who sang the song ‘Rockstar’ to actually have the chops to pull off that transition himself, but since he managed to find his way into the world of country, who’s to say that he doesn’t have a rock album up his sleeve next? It certainly would sound halfway decent if it managed to be anywhere close to how ‘It’s A Raid’ turned out with Ozzy Osbourne.
While this is technically an Ozzy track in name, having Malone take a verse in the song is one of the highlights of the track. Everyone knew what ‘The Prince of Darkness’ was going to sound like before they had even hit play, but compared to the weird yodel that Malone puts on a lot of his pop hits, this is him hunkering down and delivering the kind of feral performance that wouldn’t feel out of place in a typical garage outfit.
Although Malone is far from the most commanding presence next to Osbourne, he does manage to pull it off a lot better than any rapper has the right to. Lil Wayne practically made the rapper-turned-rocker schtick obsolete, but while Machine Gun Kelly keeps trying and failing to make it work, it’s better to leave it to the people who have actually done their homework when it comes to rock stars.
‘Black Cat’ – Janet Jackson
There was a brief time when it felt like Janet Jackson was going to be living in the shadow of her brothers for the rest of her life. She had come into the equation relatively late in the game, and when she decided to go solo, most of her first two albums were made up of the kind of pillowy soft-rock that many of Michael’s early records fell victim to. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were right around the corner, but their unique flavour of R&B took a darker turn on ‘Black Cat’.
Most of Rhythm Nation 1814 was supposed to hit the listener like a slap in the face, but outside of the title track having the ability to crash someone’s laptop, ‘Black Cat’ was the transition into bona fide mullet rock. There were some rockers like Tina Turner and Joan Jett, but Janet sounded a lot more ferocious when saying her piece, spitting out every word with the kind of confidence many would expect from Steven Tyler.
In fact, this kind of move towards heaviness wasn’t completely out of the question. Michael had begun working on blending genres, and since Jam and Lewis had turned in time working with the musical chameleon we mere mortals call Prince, seeing them go into hard rock was simply them using another colour palette to work with besides the typical sweeping strings.
‘Bad Idea Right’ – Olivia Rodrigo
Being the latest pop star was never something that Olivia Rodrigo seemed altogether comfortable with. She had a lot more to offer than being the traditional pop star that the Disney Channel seemed to spit out like clockwork every time they start rolling out their next projects, and there were hints of the person that she could on her first album, Sour. But when she kicked off her next album cycle, ‘Bad Idea Right’ was a clear indication that the person behind ‘Drivers License’ wasn’t going to be around for long.
Compared to every other pop star that wants to make a rock song like Britney Spears’s cover of ‘I Love Rock n’ Roll’, Rodrigo was genuinely invested in some of the biggest names in rock and roll. She had grown up listening to people like Alanis Morissette and The White Stripes, and that’s clear from the moment that the chorus hits, as if she harnessed the power of a punk powerhouse while fitting into the norms that people would expect out of an Avril Lavigne-like singer.
Since the song also seems to be taking place in the present, it also becomes a bit like musical theatre after a while, to the point where the line ‘Fuck it it’s fine’ may as well be the kind of dialogue you’d hear in a coming-of-age teen movie. It’s not the most face-melting riff or anything like that, but what you can hear behind the pop window dressing is someone with genuine passion for the medium.
‘Happier Than Ever’ – Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish’s classification as a pop star has always had a slight asterisk next to it. She had plenty of opportunities to work in the alternative format, but even with her eclectic mix of sounds, there was always a core song behind all of the gothic aesthetic. That was only the first album, though. On Happier Than Ever, the title track starts as one thing and ends up in a completely different tonal centre.
If you were to listen to the first 30 seconds of this tune, it’d be easy to dismiss it as the same kind of soft-spoken tune that she is great at. But as soon as the final chorus kicks in, those booming guitars and her letting loose with her vocals are a lot closer to the raw energy that came out of alternative bands like Nirvana, only this time it’s through the same filter that one would expect to hear ‘Bad Guy’ from.
A lot of the album has the same kind of experiments that the title track has to offer, but the greatest strength behind it is that it allowed Eilish to find her voice a little bit more. ‘Birds of A Feather’ is the kind of powerhouse performance that no one would have expected out of her, and it turned out that to get to that kind of pop perfection, she had to go through a few shouting moments.
‘Speechless’ – Lady Gaga
Even by rock fan standards, Lady Gaga has almost had a strange seal of approval. She was never apologetic about her roots as a pop artist, but she also held onto her status as a major rock fan, and her performance with Metallica at the Grammys did earn her a lot of respect from metalheads, even if James Hetfield was muted during the whole thing. But from day one, Gaga was theatrical, and her best moments rocking out came when getting some spectacle behind her tunes.
While The Fame Monster was supposed to be a supercharged version of what her debut was like with a few extra singles, ‘Speechless’ is one of the biggest surprises of the new tunes. There had been a never-ending string of glitchy pop tunes, but this stately piano ballad about her leaving someone behind has all the hallmarks of a hair metal song, complete with the guitar lines that have enough bravado for Brian May to approve of.
Although Gaga has yet to commit to a full-on rock album, her proximity to people like Josh Homme in the industry feels like a turn to something heavy is almost inevitable. Because judging by the vocal performance that she gave singing ‘Black Dog’ on Howard Stern, who’s to say that Gaga can’t invent another alter ego Ziggy-Stardust-style and give the people a rock and roll classic?
