return-to-our-roots records where the idea went so wrong that it opened up a new space in the artist's music

american idiot is a great suggestion imo

Graceland was both different (so, not a return to form) and good (not wrong).

The sequence When I was Cruel / Delivery Man / Momufoku might serve

Yeah I'm not sure Graceland was billed or received as a return to anything, save chart success - wasn't it much more "Paul Simon reinvents himself with a totally new sound and his best batch of songs since forever"? I suppose the waters could be muddied also by artists returning to their "roots" but not their own earlier sound, more "I'm getting in touch with the music that inspired me at the very beginning!" e.g. Billy Joel on An Innocent Man, etc. Then there's the "left turn that nonetheless seems to grow out of something that was in the earliest records" like Sleater-Kinney on The Woods.

Some of Jeff Lynne's various productions might count - Petty on Wilburys and Full Moon Fever, or McCartney on the self-consciously backwards-looking Flaming Pie? Subtle "new spaces" in all cases but still, not exactly what the artist had sounded like before.

oh yeah, jeff lynne productions are def like... ppl trying to access an earlier version of themselves and getting it fascinatingly not quite right, prob bc of all that reverb. mystery girl qualifies too imo

Rick Rubin has kind of made a career of this, no?

i guess i'd argue that rubin doesn't really open a new space in the music of the artists he produces, just laser-focuses on a particular element of their past

I'm not sure this quite fits, but when Alan Jackson made Like Red From a Rose it was supposed to be a bluegrass detour. Producer Allison Krauss convinced him to record a set of torch songs that sound like the kind of thing he should have been doing all along. I think his core audience must have hated it though, since the promo campaign for his next record was all about "I'm back to doing the kind of songs you like."

huh, i like that!

I'm not sure this quite fits, but when Alan Jackson made Like Red From a Rose it was supposed to be a bluegrass detour. Producer Allison Krauss convinced him to record a set of torch songs that sound like the kind of thing he should have been doing all along. I think his core audience must have hated it though, since the promo campaign for his next record was all about "I'm back to doing the kind of songs you like."

― President Keyes, Tuesday, June 20, 2017 12:27 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can confirm this was not a favourite at the time. The album still sold well but you can see it in that Good Time had 3 #1 (country) singles and from Like Red From a Rose he only released 2 singles and neither went to #1. His album before LRFaR was also not as great for singles so I think LRFaR totally revitalized things for him despite its failures. Also it was Krauss during the height of her powers so I am sure it rubbed off a bit.