the biggest curveballer, frank zappa.
his first album, freak out, huge curveball. then a few albums that built a little following, in 1968 when everything was really "heavy", he released "cruising with rueben and the jets" which was a doo wop album. then after a couple more albums, broke up the mothers at the height of the "popularity". in the early 70's, releases a big band album, "the grand wazoo". in the 80's releases an album of chamber music composed by a distant relative from the 1600's performed on synclavier (electronic keyboard/device), and on and on. no one in contemporary music could throw the curve like frank, no one. in fact he threw curves so often it really hurt his career over and over, but that is one of the things that made frank great.

Cloudbuster said:

This instantly came to mind

I would mention Axl Rose.....had he released the music he was working on after he left Guns & Roses. I heard a clip on Howard Stern a few years ago and it was singlehandedly the most frightening piece of music. It was like electronica meets disturbed death metal. It was fucked up but fierce as hell. Wonder if he'll ever release that music.....

theAudience said:

That's the first thing I thought of anyway.

How did Marianne Faithfull go from "As Tears Go By" to the "Broken English" album? Can someone explain that?