Some bands had the wrong members.
Some could barely play their instruments. Some were just too strange, too shy, too volatile, or too far ahead (or behind) of the curve to have any chance of mainstream success. On paper, these acts looked doomed — whether by lack of training, impossible temperaments, stage fright, or the sheer oddity of their sound.
And yet, here they are. Not only did they survive, they thrived. They bent genres, rewrote expectations, and in some cases changed the direction of popular music itself. These are the unlikeliest success stories of all: fifteen bands and artists who simply shouldn’t have worked — but somehow, gloriously, did.
15. The Byrds
When The Byrds stumbled together in Los Angeles in 1964, they weren’t exactly a powerhouse. Roger McGuinn had a 12-string Rickenbacker he could barely keep in tune; Gene Clark and David Crosby were earnest folkies with little rock pedigree. They tried Beatles covers, but the results sounded like a coffeehouse singalong with electric instruments.
And yet, with a little help from producer Terry Melcher, their version of Bob Dylan’s 'Mr Tambourine Man' crystallised something new: folk-rock. That single kickstarted a string of innovations — from psychedelia (Fifth Dimension) to country rock (Sweetheart of the Rodeo). The line-up never stopped feuding, members came and went, but the unlikely truth is this ramshackle crew launched at least three genres.
Did you know? On their breakaway hit, 'Mr Tambourine Man', only McGuinn actually played. The rest were session pros — yet it became their breakthrough hit.
14. Fleetwood Mac (Rumours era)
By 1976, Fleetwood Mac were a soap opera with instruments. Marriages collapsing, affairs spiralling, cocaine everywhere — and somehow, they were supposed to make a record. Logic suggested disaster. Instead, Rumours turned all that chaos into diamond-sharp songs. Lindsey Buckingham snarled through 'Go Your Own Way', Stevie Nicks conjured 'Dreams', and Christine McVie slipped heartbreak into deceptively smooth melodies.
Behind them, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie kept the groove going even as everything else fell apart. The contradictions — venom paired with sugar, wounds wrapped in gloss — made the album irresistible. Rumours became one of the best-selling albums ever, proof that sometimes, dysfunction doesn’t destroy a band. It defines them.
Did you know? The Rumours sessions reportedly burned through nearly a million dollars, much of it on studio time and cocaine.
13. The Police
At first glance, The Police looked like a Frankenstein creation. Sting was a former schoolteacher with a jazz fetish. Drummer Stewart Copeland had served in prog rock band Curved Air, while guitarist Andy Summers had played across a range of genres including rhythm and blues. To win over the punk crowd, they bleached their hair and pretended to be raw punks.
But beneath the disguise, The Police had real chops. By grafting reggae rhythms onto sharp, nervy rock songs, they stumbled onto a fresh formula. Hits like 'Roxanne' and 'Message in a Bottle' sounded both streetwise and sophisticated, and by 1983's Synchronicity they were one of the world’s biggest bands. By rights, The Police shouldn’t have fooled anyone — yet they conquered the ’80s.
- Synchronicity crops up in our list of the best 1980s albums
12. The Velvet Underground
1967 was the year of Sgt. Pepper and flower power. The Velvet Underground offered heroin, whips, drones, and feedback.
Lou Reed delivered deadpan tales of addiction and desire. John Cale brought the drones of the avant-garde. Moe Tucker played drums standing up, pounding toms instead of cymbals. It was as far from radio-friendly pop as you could get. Their debut with Nico sold pitifully — maybe 30,000 copies.
But, as Brian Eno famously quipped, everyone who bought one started a band. From punk to post-punk to indie, the Velvets’ strange alchemy seeded countless movements. Their success wasn’t commercial, but cultural — which, in the long run, matters more.
Did you know? The Velvets' first paying gig was at a high school dance in New Jersey. They were promptly fired after a few songs.
11. Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd in 1967 looked like Syd Barrett’s band. He was their singer, guitarist, songwriter, and madcap genius. Then he burned out, collapsing under LSD and mental illness. Most bands would have folded. Instead, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason stumbled towards reinvention. At first, they flailed (A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma are both patchy).
But by the early ’70s they had discovered a collective voice: widescreen soundscapes, existential lyrics, and concept-album grandeur. The Dark Side of the Moon became a juggernaut, staying in the Billboard charts for 741 weeks. That album, and its successor, Wish You Were Here, were arguably the greatest albums of 1973 and 1975 respectively.
Pink Floyd should have died with Syd. Instead, they became prog rock’s biggest survivors.
10. Nick Drake
Nick Drake was almost designed to fail. He hated performing live. He could barely talk in interviews. His music — hushed voice, intricate guitar — was too fragile for early ’70s rock radio. His three albums sold miserably, and he died in 1974, largely unknown, at just 26. And yet, slowly, almost imperceptibly, his reputation grew.
By the ’90s, when 'Pink Moon' was used in a Volkswagen ad, Drake was a cult icon, his songs worshipped by generations of songwriters. What made him commercially invisible in his lifetime — his fragility, his introversion — has become his timeless strength. Few careers illustrate the gap between success and significance better.
9. Talking Heads
In the mid-1970s, New York music venue CBGB was a parade of punk grit, leather jackets, and sneers. Into this unlikely environment walked Talking Heads: three art-school graduates and a frontman, David Byrne, so nervy and socially awkward he looked like he’d wandered onstage by mistake.
They were the opposite of swaggering rock clichés — all angular rhythms, stop-start grooves, and a sense of barely contained anxiety. Yet that strangeness became their strength. Their early songs like Psycho Killer sounded taut and twitchy, almost skeletal, but undeniably compelling. As the band evolved, they began injecting punk with funk, layering in Afrobeat, electronics, and conceptual ideas that might have looked forbiddingly cerebral on paper.
Yet, by the time of Remain in Light (1980), Talking Heads had managed to turn high-minded experimentation into something you could dance to. Byrne’s awkwardness became a persona: part prophet, part alien. They shouldn’t have fit anywhere. Instead, they fitted everywhere.
Did you know? David Byrne was so nervous at early shows he often sang with his back to the audience.
8. Captain Beefheart
Don Van Vliet couldn’t read music, often communicated his ideas in surreal imagery (“play it like a bat being dragged out of oil”), and treated his band like hostages in rehearsals. It should have been chaos. And it was — but somehow, from the madness came 1969's extraordinary Trout Mask Replica.
- We included Trout Mask Replica in our list of 14 gloriously weird concept albums
Produced by Frank Zappa, it mashed Delta blues, free jazz, and dadaist poetry into a record that critics called unlistenable — until decades later, when it was hailed as genius. Beefheart’s career never quite escaped his reputation for the bizarre, but his influence is everywhere: punk, new wave, experimental rock. Sometimes the most dysfunctional process yields the most unique results.
7. The Grateful Dead
The Dead were never slick. Their shows could be ragged, their singing ropey, their albums patchy. Drugs were omnipresent. Yet out of this mess came a culture unlike any other: the Deadhead community. Where other bands played songs, the Dead played journeys, stretching out improvisations for hours. Their 1970 albums Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty proved they could also write exquisite folk-rock tunes.
Commercial stardom largely eluded them — except for the late hit 'Touch of Grey', their only Billboard Top 10 single — but they became America’s great cult band, surviving for thirty years on sheer communal energy. By all logic, they shouldn’t have worked. But they worked like nobody else.
Did you know: The Grateful Dead are believed to have the most live concerts recorded and traded of any band in history — over 2,300 documented.
6. Creedence Clearwater Revival
How do four working-class Californians convincingly sound like they were raised in the deep Louisiana swamps? Creedence Clearwater Revival somehow pulled it off. John Fogerty’s snarling, gritty vocals channeled a Southern bluesman’s rasp, and his bandmates — Tom Fogerty, Stu Cook, and Doug Clifford — created a tight, churning groove that made the Bayou feel just a few chords away.
Songs like 'Proud Mary', 'Bad Moon Rising', and 'Fortunate Son' became instant classics, merging rock, blues, and a swampy authenticity that audiences believed completely. It was audacious role-play — none of them had Southern roots — yet it sold millions. For a few short years, CCR dominated the American charts and became one of the era’s biggest singles bands.
Behind the hits, internal feuds simmered, and by 1972, the band had imploded. But in their brief, intense career, CCR demonstrated that raw conviction and strong songwriting could convince the world you were someone you weren’t.
Did you know? None of the band had ever set foot in the Deep South when they recorded 'Born on the Bayou'.
5. Roxy Music
When Bryan Ferry, the suave ex-art teacher with a love of crooning and irony, teamed up with sonic trickster Brian Eno, a master of electronic experimentation, plus Andy Mackay, a saxophonist who looked like a glam spaceman, Roxy Music seemed almost designed to fail. They were too theatrical, too arty, too stylish — practically a parody of sophistication.
Yet, somehow, it worked. Their self-titled 1972 debut exploded with a mix of camp, glamour, and adventurous sound, signaling that rock could be both stylish and challenging. For Your Pleasure (1973) took the weirdness further, layering eerie textures and experimental techniques over Ferry’s smooth vocals.
By the time Avalon arrived in 1982, Roxy Music had perfected a sophisticated, romantic sheen that felt timeless. They occupied a rare space: too avant-garde for mainstream pop, yet too melodic for the art crowd. In the process, they became icons of both style and substance, proving that high fashion and high art could coexist in rock.
4. Black Sabbath
Critics sneered at Black Sabbath’s early shows. Too slow, too heavy, too crude — a band seemingly out of step with 1970 rock. What most didn’t realise was that Tony Iommi’s downtuned, razor-sharp riffs, born from an industrial accident, were forging something entirely new: the blueprint for heavy metal.
Ozzy Osbourne’s eerie, haunting vocals carried Geezer Butler’s apocalyptic, dystopian lyrics, while Bill Ward’s thunderous, jazz-inflected drumming added both groove and menace. Songs like 'Black Sabbath' and 'Iron Man' sounded ominous, almost otherworldly, yet irresistibly compelling. By sheer accident and stubborn persistence, the band invented a genre that would influence generations.
What critics saw as clumsy or crude became essential DNA. The very qualities that seemed inept in 1970 now define metal’s core, and Black Sabbath are rightly remembered as legends.
Did you know? Tony Iommi invented heavy metal’s downtuned sound after losing the tips of two fingers in a sheet-metal factory.
3. Iggy Pop (and the Stooges)
The Stooges were chaotic nobodies when they formed in Detroit in 1967.
Their records barely sold, their live shows often descended into chaos, and frontman Iggy Pop seemed almost determined to self-destruct onstage - shirtless, spitting and writhing with abandon.
Yet within that raw minimalism — tracks like 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' and 'Search and Destroy' — lay the blueprint for punk rock. Their aggression, stripped-down riffs, and nihilistic attitude were unprecedented, shocking audiences and critics alike. Iggy should have been a cautionary tale, a warning about excess and instability. Instead, he emerged as the godfather of punk, influencing countless musicians.
Against all odds, the Stooges survived long enough to cement their legacy, proving that chaos, when harnessed, can become cultural genius.
Did you know? During early shows, Iggy would sometimes stage dive into the audience covered in peanut butter. He claimed it was partly a 'protective coating' for his skin.
2. Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols weren’t musicians so much as a grenade lobbed at polite society.
Formed in London in 1975, they lasted barely two years, released a single studio album, and imploded in spectacular fashion. On paper, they should never have worked. Sid Vicious could barely play bass. Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) had a sneer instead of a voice, and Steve Jones and Paul Cook were scrappy, self-taught instrumentalists. Their gigs were chaos incarnate — riots, overturned equipment, and crowds spitting and screaming.
Yet Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977) distilled the rage, wit, and nihilism of punk into a single, terrifyingly effective blast. The record was short, loud, and unpolished, but it captured the anger of a generation that felt ignored by politics and culture. The power of the Pistols lay in what they rejected: prog-rock pretension, hippie optimism, and conventional professionalism. Their flaws were their strengths.
They weren’t supposed to succeed. That was the point. And in failing so spectacularly, they succeeded beyond measure, leaving a cultural imprint that still reverberates through punk, post-punk, and alternative music today.
1. The Beach Boys (post-Smile)
By 1967, The Beach Boys looked finished.
Brian Wilson, the band’s musical genius, had suffered a nervous breakdown that derailed Smile, the ambitious follow-up to Pet Sounds intended to outshine The Beatles. Their trademark surf-pop sound seemed hopelessly dated amid the psychedelia sweeping the charts. On paper, the band should have imploded under the weight of disappointment, mental health struggles, and shifting musical trends.
Yet they carried on. Albums like Smiley Smile and Friends were modest in scope but demonstrated resilience, with quirky arrangements and that unmistakable harmony still intact. The group toured relentlessly, keeping their name alive while Brian retreated from the public eye. Against all logic, they endured.
By the early 1970s, Wilson returned with flashes of brilliance on Surf’s Up, proving that the creative spark had not entirely extinguished. Over the decades, The Beach Boys adapted, survived personnel changes, and continued performing, becoming living icons of American pop. Their story is one of perseverance and miracle: a band that, despite breakdowns, unfinished masterpieces, and a shifting musical landscape, refused to sink — and somehow kept swimming, surfboards, harmonies, and all.
Pics Getty Images
