Musicians Who Soared To Fame After They Got Divorced

Sometimes personal issues, conflict, and distress can hold a person back from really going for their dreams. Just look at the many famous rock and pop stars who only found mega-stardom and platinum-level success after a divorce. It can take years for a musician to reach a state of fame, fortune, and arena-headlining status. Just living a life with all of its ups and downs can also help songwriters learn about love, heartbreak, and human nature. As a result, they've maybe got quite a few potential classic and highly relatable songs ready to go by the time they get their big break as a solo artist or part of a band. And painfully or arduously, they've also got a failed or truncated marriage to their names.

Throughout rock history, some of the biggest names in the game went through a reality-altering divorce — before they even experienced the benefits and burdens of fame. Here are four icons who went to the top following the breakup of a marriage.

Ric Ocasek was something of a late-blooming rock star. When "Just What I Needed" became the first single by his Boston new wave band, The Cars, to Billboard's Top 40 in the United States in 1978, he was 34 years old. He'd done a lot of living before then, playing in several bands throughout the 1970s, including Milkwood and Cap'n Swing, before the story of The Cars began and the group adopted a punchy guitar rock and keyboard sound.

The Cars' hit-making era (which also included "My Best Friend's Girl," "Shake it Up," "You Might Think," and "Drive") began seven years after the end of Ocasek's first marriage. In 1971, Ocasek filed to divorce Constance Campbell when she was about three months shy of giving birth to the couple's second kid. He very quickly married wife No. 2, Suzanne, and then ended that marriage in 1988 after falling for model Paulina Porizkova, his costar in The Cars' music video for "Drive." The song hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's biggest hit ever.

It took John Mellencamp more than a decade to break through into the rock mainstream, and throughout that entire time, he was in a marriage that wouldn't last into his first brushes with fame. At age 18, Mellencamp was living in Indiana and in a relationship with 21-year-old Priscilla Esterline. When she discovered that she was pregnant, the couple decided to get married and eloped to Kentucky, because in Mellencamp's home state, marriage at his age at that time required parental permission. That union lasted until 1981, ending when Mellencamp moved on romantically. He'd grown besotted over bit actor Victoria Granucci, and they married and had a daughter together that same year.

Meanwhile, Mellencamp was still enduring industry manipulation before he was finally able to release the authentic, heartland rock he wanted to make and find a huge audience for it. While singing '50s and '60s covers as Johnny Cougar, the singer didn't resonate. Then he enjoyed a couple of minor hits in the late '70s and early '80s, and in 1982, Mellencamp — still billed as John Cougar — hit No. 2 and then No. 1 in rapid succession with "Hurts So Good" and "Jack & Diane," respectively.

In 1996, 21-year-old Detroit musicians John Gillis and Megan White got married. The groom took the bride's last name, and, paired with a variant of his first name, established his stage name: Jack White. And then, Jack and Meg White became The White Stripes, a bluesy garage rock duo that recorded a couple of independently released albums.

In 2001, The White Stripes fell under the purview of national label V2, which rereleased its LP "White Blood Cells." The band became one of the most celebrated of the era, and its single "Fell in Love with a Girl" became a hit. The way the act was marketed and presented also factored in its success. Not only did Jack and Meg White use a red-and-white color scheme in almost everything the group did, but the musicians also claimed that they were brother and sister. Shortly after the duo's rise to fame, the Detroit Free Press shattered that illusion when it discovered the pair's marriage certificate. The outlet also revealed that Jack and Meg White had not only been a married couple but they were also divorced. The Whites legally divorced in 2000, one year before The White Stripes became a sensation and one of the most important rock bands of the 2000s. 

Pat Benatar's historical tie-in with MTV, along with her opera-ready, drama-bringing singing chops and hard rock sensibility, made her a star in the 1980s. She also benefitted from collaborating with Neil Giraldo, her preferred songwriting partner, keyboard player, and lead studio and touring guitarist since the late 1970s and her husband since 1982. With Giraldo's accompaniment, Benatar scored her first of 15 Top 40 singles in 1980 with "Heartbreaker," the same year she divorced her first husband.

In 1972, 19-year-old Patricia Andrzejewski quit college during her freshman year and married high school boyfriend and U.S. Army serviceman Dennis Benatar. The next year, she started singing in clubs and with lounge acts, and by 1975, she'd left her band Coxon's Army behind in Virginia and headed to New York City to try to make it in that city's much larger music scene. Leaving everything and everyone behind proved pivotal, and in due time, Benatar found a manager and a deal with Chrysalis Records.