"It's impossible to be Actual* Pop and Actual Rock simultaneously!"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the lex just claimed this: is he korrekt?

my response = it is NOT COMMON CERTAINLY but it has happened, like a kind of harmonic convergence within recorded music after -- with things after never the same as before

for example:
i. stones
ii. sabbaf
iii. slade/pistols (=essentially the same thing anyway)
iv. pulp fiction inspired resurgence of SURF sound

obv plenty of bands have been one then the other but not simultaneously, and some have even switched back again

*note use of ACTUAL here must not be employed in any kind of essentialist slipperiness, bcz that kind of behaviour is INDIE

Comments

Context of Pop Rock Abundance

[koganbot]

But to answer the original assertion, not a rare phenomenon at all, cf. all the answers citing glam and hair metal. In addition to those:

The Rolling Stones "I Wanna Be Your Man," the Beatles "Money" and "You Can't Do That," the Animals "It's My Life" and "We Gotta Get Out of this Place," the Yardbirds "Heart Full of Soul," Bob Dylan "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Positively 4th Street," the Byrds "8 Miles High," Vanilla Fudge "The Beat Goes On," Jefferson Airplane "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit," the Doors "Light My Fire," Jimi Hendrix "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze," Deep Purple "Hush" (which steals the chords to "Hey Joe"), the Bob Seger System "Ramblin Gamblin Man," Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels "Devil with a Blue Dress On," Blues Magoos "Ain't Got Nothin' Yet," Sly & the Family Stone "I Wanna Take You Higher," the Velvet Underground "I Heard Her Call My Name," Iron Butterfly "Inna Gadda Da Vida," MC5 "High School," Alice Cooper "I'm Eighteen," the Grateful Dead "Casey Jones," Derek and the Dominoes "Layla," Allman Brothers "One Way Out," ELP "Ooo What a Lucky Man He Was," whoever it was who did "White Bird," Led Zeppelin "A Whole Lotta Love," Lynyrd Skynyrd "Sweet Home Alabama," Uriah Heep "Easy Livin'," Temptations "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," Isaac Hayes "Shaft," Miles Davis "Rated X," James Gang "Funk #49," Grand Funk "We're an American Band" and "Locomotion," New York Dolls "Personality Crisis" and everything else they ever recorded, Nazareth "This Flight Tonight" and "Love Hurts" and "Morning Dew," Creedence, Yes, Argent, KISS, Guess Who, BTO, Heart, Move, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, ZZ Top, Brownsville Station, Patti Smith "Because the Night," Ram Jam "Black Betty," Funkadelic "Funky Dollar Bill" and "Get Off That Ass and Jam," Kraftwerk "Autobahn" and "Trans Europe Express," those idiots who did "Warm Leatherette," Adverts "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," Stevie Nicks "The Edge of Seventeen" (which invents dark metal), the Jimmy Castor Bunch "Troglodyte," Boney M "Still I'm Sad," Umlauthead "Ace of Spades," The Treacherous Three "The Body Rock," Run DMC "Sucker MCs," the Eighties in toto, Toto, Michael Jackson "Dirty Diana" and "Smooth Criminal," New Order "Blue Maundering," Flipper "Sex Bomb," Hüsker Dü "Sunshine Superman" and "Pink Turns to Blue," Teena Marie "Lips to Find You," Public Enemy "Bring the Noize" and "She Watch Channel Zero," Schoolly D "Signifying Monkey," Depeche Mode "Personal Jesus," Leftfield "Open Up," Sheryl Crow any single through 2000, Everclear all of So Much for the Afterglow, Alanis Morissette "You Oughta Know" (ha ha I have finally learned how to spell her name), Tiamat and the Gathering and Lacuna Coil and every dark metal band ever, Lucyfire, Green Day, Rancid, Hole "Celebrity Skin," Hardknox "Come In Hard (I Don't Like Rock 'n' Roll)" and every other big beat song ever, Missy Elliott f. Nelly Furtado "Get Ur Freak On Remix," Electric Six "Gay Bar," "Courtney Love "Mono," Montgomery Gentry "Free Fall," Big & Rich "Rollin' (the Ballad of Big & Rich)," Ashlee "Autobiography" and "Shadow" and "I Am Me," Lil Wayne "The Greatest Rapper Alive," Drive-By Truckers (!) "Don't Be So Easy." Also see pp 1-287 of Stairway to Hell (updated version).