5 Classic Rock Bands Who Went Mainstream With A Pop Hit

The famous commercial for the "Monster Ballads" CD compilation declares that "every bad boy has his soft side," and that's absolutely true — even the hardest headbangers feel the siren call of mainstream listenability from time to time. We've talked about the times prog bands went mainstream with a pop hit, so what about the straight-ahead rockers? 

That poses a follow-up question: What is pop music anyway? It can't just be a loosely defined term for mainstream success or else AC/DC's "Back in Black" and Guns n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" would easily qualify. So for this, our criteria are rock bands that completely shed all the accouterments of hard-edged artifice and released tracks that could sit comfortably alongside Seal and Barry Manilow with nothing seeming amiss. From piano ballads by makeup-clad monsters to English royals going adult contemporary, here's to the classic bands that took time away from rocking stadiums to gently sway in the background at your dentist's office. 

As much as Kiss are standard bearers for classic heavy metal, their all-time biggest hit, "Beth" off of 1976's "Destroyer," is an unabashed pop piano ballad. More significantly, it was the band's highest- charting single on the Billboard Hot 100, where it reached No. 7, as well as No.14 on the Adult Contemporary chart. 

Sung by drummer Peter Criss, the track is a reflective, orchestral affair that consciously sheds the rock god swagger for a simple and relatable lament from a world-weary musician longing for his lover and acknowledging the strain his professional life is putting on their relationship. It's a high watermark from a band relentlessly willing to tinker with their hard rock bona fides if it meant achieving mainstream success. They've been one of those bands that lost the plot chasing a new sound on more than one occasion, be it with disco on 1979's "Dynasty" or theatrical progressive rock on 1981's "(Music From) The Elder." 

But what makes the "Beth" experiment a success is its willful lack of grandiosity. That is made all the more profound when we consider the source: Kiss had staked their claim to rock stardom on an image so larger-than-life that they were marketed as being from other planets. By stepping down from their self-proclaimed status as kings of the nighttime world and acknowledging the simple human strain of separation, they crafted something gentle, relatable, and, above all, palatable for a mainstream pop audience. 

As The Rageaholic (aka Razörfist), YouTube's resident motor-mouth music historian, astutely asserted, Queen would have played polka music if it got them paid in the '80s. "Under Pressure," an outgrowth of the period that produced decidedly pop-oriented Queen albums such as 1980's "The Game" and 1982's "Hot Space," is a prime example of that. A collaboration with fellow British rock icon David Bowie, "Under Pressure" was eventually included on the aforementioned "Hot Space" but was released beforehand as a standalone single.  

The band sheds arena-rocking guitar riffs and operatic theatricality for soft rock keys, gentle guitars, and one of the most infectious basslines in history. That centering of the bass is understandable given that the track was written by Queen's most underrated member, John Deacon, who also composed the equally bass-centric "Another One Bites the Dust." Bowie and Mercury play off one another well — their voices blend together so smoothly that they often sound like a single person — and the two dynamic personalities are able to be flamboyant in their own ways without upstaging one another.

The song was a top 40 hit, reaching No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100. That was a moderate showing for the band accustomed to much higher numbers, but "Under Pressure" would go on to become another shining gem in Queen's crown of beloved classics. Its legacy in pop culture was further secured when rapper Vanilla Ice sampled the iconic bassline for his hip-hop earworm, "Ice Ice Baby." 

The minimalist acoustic guitar ballad "More Than Words" is so pop that it barely seems fit to call it an Extreme song. After all, the band's ultra-tight rhythm section of bassist Pat Badger and drummer Paul Geary isn't even on the track. Dazzling shredder Nuno Bettencourt is reduced to acoustic singer/songwriter fingerpicking, and howling wild man vocalist Gary Cherone sheds his Robert Plant affect for gentle crooning. 

"More Than Words" occupies an odd place in the timeline of music history, but that also makes it an artifact of a brief and interesting musical era. By 1990, the popularity of hair metal was waning, and the culture at large was casting about for the next big sound. In hindsight, that was a moment poised for Nirvana and company to kick down the doors with grunge, but in the meantime, it saw the hair bands maturing as their membership and audience aged. 

The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June of 1991, a little over three months before Nirvana threw the music world into upheaval with the release of "Nevermind." For the funk-metal mavens, it was a brief, though uncharacteristically mellow, moment in the sun. 

By now, "You're the Inspiration" seems like an established and beloved part of the Chicago back catalog, but that wasn't always the case. In actuality, the soft rock power ballad was the result of an extended period of career uncertainty. The story of Chicago is marked by tragic real-life events, not the least of which was the untimely passing of guitarist and vocalist Terry Kath. With his unexpected death in 1978, the band was adrift both creatively and commercially. 

Chicago attempted to soldier on without Kath, but record sales floundered as it became increasingly apparent how difficult it would be to fill the void he'd left behind. Knowing that dramatic changes were needed, the group recruited the Grammy-winning Bill Champlin on vocals and keyboards and producer David Foster. The latter leaned on the group to focus on songcraft over jamming. The end result was a return to hitmaking with 1982's "Chicago 16" and their most commercially successful album to date, 1984's "Chicago 17." Their second album with Foster, it featured "You're the Inspiration."

Though the record was massively successful, some of the members were initially ambivalent about the results, especially the pristine, ultra-slick adult contemporary sound. Speaking to VH1's Behind the Music, keyboardist/vocalist Robert Lamm lamented: "It's really a shocking thing to have once been considered avant-garde, almost, and now be dismissed as kind of wimpy." It's a fair observation: Under Kath, the band had been progressive jazz-fusion innovators infused with hit singles and hard-rock guitar. Their new incarnation was a profound shift but one that pulled the band back from the brink of extinction.  

When Sugar Ray released the peppy hip-hop-inflected "Fly" to pop radio in 1997, those discovering the band for the first time could be forgiven for not realizing the group had started out as hard-edged alternative metal. Their 1995 debut "Lemonade and Brownies" is full of the swaggering funk-metal grooves and braggadocious vocal delivery more closely associated with 311, Clutch, and Rage Against the Machine. While it might seem ill-advised to shift away from that surefire sound just as nu metal was poised to take over the world, opportunity knocked with "Fly," and singer Mark McGrath and his instrumentalists answered the call. 

The group's sophomore effort, 1997's "Floored," continues in the tradition of its predecessor, with one aggressive, post-grunge bravado punk/hardcore-infused mosh-pit rocker after another, and "Fly" as the lone exception. The difference between those lacerating bangers and the laid-back single is enough to make a listener wonder if a stray Jimmy Buffett track got pressed onto the CD by mistake. That bewildering stylistic difference was especially apparent to McGrath, who nearly quit the band when presented with the song. 

The singer's reservations notwithstanding, "Fly" became a massive hit. Happy in their new lane, the group followed "Floored" with "14:59" in 1999, an album focused on their newfound identity as party-pop purveyors. Hit singles "Every Morning" and "Someday" soared up the Billboard charts, giving Sugar Ray staying power. That success contradicted the album title, which was meant to suggest their 15 minutes of fame were almost up.