Replacement Singers Who Just Didn’t Work Out

Choosing a replacement singer for your band isn’t easy, and for every Brian Johnson in AC/DC, there’s a Blaze Bayley in Iron Maiden.

When Iron Maiden replaced a departing Bruce Dickinson with Blaze Bayley, it wasn’t that Maiden chose a terrible singer — they just chose a singer with the wrong vocal range and tone. Compared to Dickinson’s soaring tenor and piercing air-raid siren screams, Bayley was more of a baritone with a rounded croon. Some of the Bayley era was decent, like “Sign of the Cross” or “The Clansman,” but when it came to singing songs like “The Trooper,” Bayley simply fell short.

There are two things in life that never last — a charge on a phone battery, and a vocalist in L.A. Guns. Combining the singers in each version of L.A. Guns, you’ve got over a baker’s dozen of vocalists. Some only lasted a couple months, like Rock Star: Supernova contestant Dilana. When she joined Tracii Guns’ L.A. Guns in September, she would be out of the band by the end of the year. Some of the footage of her onstage with L.A. Guns is legitimately uncomfortable, with Tracii Guns staring a hole into Dilana as she attempted to wave him off. Check out that footage below.

How do you replace an iconic singer like Jim Morrison? You don’t. The Doors famously continued on after Morrison’s death with keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger handling lead vocals themselves. Neither musician was a bad singer at all, but two backing vocalists attempting to carry the weight of a rock ’n’ roll superstar just didn’t do the job.

Check out these replacement singers who just didn’t work out in the Loud List below.