Wild colors and shaved heads, oh my! Many of today’s most famous musicians have quite the penchant for making daringly drastic adjustments to their hairstyles — whether it’s to usher in a new era of music, accompany an avant-garde photo shoot, or just to try something new.
In some ways, musicians are just like many of us: using hair as a means of both self-expression and self-reinvention. Unlike the general public, however, celebrities’ cosmetic changes are put on display for the whole world to see, critique and copy. And sometimes, an artist’s hairstyle is so singular to a specific time that it becomes a part of their iconography.
When Swifties think of 1989, for example, they’re instantly taken back to the sleek, chin-length bob Taylor Swift sported from 2014 to 2016. Fans of The Weeknd can count the moment he parted ways with his iconic dreadlocks as the beginning of his Starboy era, while Billie Eilish admirers will forever equate bleach blonde tresses to her sophomore record Happier Than Ever.
Other times, though, an artist may change up their look for much more personal reasons. Take Demi Lovato, for instance, who cut off her long brown waves because it helped her recover from years of body image issues. And when Halsey got a buzz cut, it was symbolic of their journey toward self-love and accepting their biracial identity.
From Doja Cat’s head shave to Halsey’s ever-changing tresses, keep reading to see which modern pop stars have had some of the biggest hair transformations.
Doja Cat
Doja Cat shocked the world when she revealed on an Instagram Live that she’d shaved off her full head of hair — before proceeding to do the same exact thing to her eyebrows. Though it received a bit of backlash, the “Woman” rapper fiercely stood by her new look and posted multiple photos demonstrating how she’s rocking it: with colorful, painted-on brow art in place of where her eyebrows used to be.
“I feel like I was never supposed to have hair,” she said at the time. “I don’t like having hair. I cannot tell you one time since the beginning of my life that I’ve ever been like, ‘This is cool.’ I just do not like to have hair.”
Billie Eilish
From cool silver to cobalt blue, neon green to Barbie blonde, Eilish has gone through many drastic color changes in a short amount of time. The young singer-songwriter has said that switching up her hair color from one shocking shade to another is one of her favorite ways of expressing herself, though she did go back to black in early 2022.
“My hair, it has randomly been the thing in my life that I change a lot,” she said while filming her self-care routine for Vogue in July 2022. “I didn’t even know that was a part of me, I just did it. Black is kind of what feels most like me, weirdly … It’s much easier to go out the world and be a normal person with a normal hair color. It’s kind of a life changer. When I had green hair I couldn’t do s–t. I couldn’t go anywhere.”
See our gallery of the “Bad Guy” singer’s hair transformation.
Taylor Swift
Swift has had not one, but two major hair changes that have sent shockwaves through the Swiftieverse. The first came in 2014 — just a few months before her 1989 era began — when she chopped off her famous long blonde curls and traded them in for a short, sleek bob. The cut was such a momentous occasion that dozens of her friends and Red tour crew looked on as it went down, captured by Swift herself in a now-deleted Instagram video.
Swift shook up her look a second time in 2016 when she debuted a bright platinum hair color she named “Bleachella” at that year’s Coachella festival. That style was short lived, however, and she later hinted in her Reputation track “Dress” that it represented a rough time for her.
“Flashback when you met me, your buzz cut and my hair bleached,” she sings. “Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me.”
Harry Styles
A few months after One Direction split up and almost exactly one year before his debut solo album dropped, Harry Styles severed ties with his distinguishing mop of long, dark, curly hair. The “As It Was” singer has kept it pretty much the same short — but still fluffy — length since then, but his tousled, lustrous mane will never be forgotten by hardcore fans of his “Hairy” Styles days.
Karol G
Karol G had pretty much become synonymous with her sea-foam blue waves of locks before switching them out for a searing shade of cherry red, which she unveiled in August 2022. She explained at the time that the change represented her stepping out of one musical era and moving on to the next.
“I want to thank everyone who loved this era,” she said shortly before revealing her blazing new look. “All of you who lived it with me, and everything I evolved and learned from it. I’m definitely ready for what’s to come. The next level is unblocked. And no, I don’t have blue hair anymore but I know we will all love what’s to come.”
Ariana Grande
Though special shout-outs go to her temporarily pink and silver hair colors, Ariana Grande’s biggest hair change came when she finally said goodbye to the bright-red dye job she sported for four years while playing Cat Valentine on Nickeoldeon’s Victorious and Sam & Cat.
When the “Thank U, Next” vocalist reverted back to her natural brunette shade and adopted a slicked-back high ponytail, it not only became her signature look that inspired girls everywhere to try it out themselves, it also represented the monumental shift in her career when she went from children’s TV network actress to internationally acclaimed pop star.
Ironically, though, it was her time as a redhead that necessitated the iconic ponytail Grande popularized. “I had to bleach my hair and dye it red every other week for the first 4 years of playing Cat…as one would assume, that completely destroyed my hair,” she explained in a 2014 Facebook post. “My real hair is back to brown and I wear extensions but I wear it in a pony tail because my actual hair is so broken that it looks absolutely ratchet and absurd when I let it down.”
Lorde
There was a time when Lorde’s most dramatic hair transformation was when she cut her famous dark, wild curls short in 2017, kicking off her Melodrama era with a fresh new look. That all changed in 2022, when she surprised her audience at Glastonbury by coming out onstage looking unrecognizable with bright blonde hair.
Machine Gun Kelly
Machine Gun Kelly spent much of his earlier career as a blond bad boy, but once he was one album into his genre shift from rap to rock, he dyed his hair a punk shade of pink. The color change came just before he dropped his 2022 album Mainstream Sellout, after which he starred in a documentary about his life titled Life in Pink.
Zayn Malik
Zayn Malik has surprised his fans with new hair colors several times, going pink in 2016, blue in 2021 and back to pink in 2022.
Demi Lovato
Demi Lovato came into stardom with long, wavy brown hair. But in November of 2020, the “Cool for the Summer” vocalist chopped it all off in favor of a pixie cut, which they sometimes dye different colors, grow out into a mullet or shave off.
“I feel so free,” Lovato said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show after the major hair cut. “I feel more authentic to who I am, and I also feel like I used to hide behind my hair. I’ve talked a lot about my past, being in recovery from an eating disorder, and I used to use my hair to hide behind — it would cover my body.”
“When I started doing all this work on myself I thought, ‘What is something that I’ve been holding on to my whole life that I need to let go of?’” they added. “I feel more like myself now.”
Check out our gallery of Lovato’s hair evolution.
The Weeknd
There was a time when The Weeknd could be recognized instantly just for his distinctive dreadlocks, which stood upright and tall on their own, and hung over the “Blinding Lights” singer’s forehead. But in 2016, ahead of the release of his album Starboy, he chopped it off in favor of a shorter style, a decision he later explained to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.
“The vision wasn’t there anymore,” the Grammy winner said of cutting his hair. “It was the greatest feeling of all time. It was so good. I could sleep better, I felt lighter, and when I perform, I perform better and feel better, it’s cool. … The best part about all of it is I get to wear f–king hats again. Wear a f–king cap and walk into a restaurant and nobody knows it’s you.”
Bad Bunny
Bad Bunny spent a large chunk of his career sporting buzz cuts, sometimes dyed different colors and often with a V shape shaved in the front to frame his natural widow’s peak. But around 2020, he switched gears and started growing out his natural, dark curls.
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus used to be known for not one, but two hairstyles at the same time: her own brunette waves and the artificial straight blonde highlights she wore over her natural hair while playing the title character in Hannah Montana. But once she ditched the wig and the G-rated Disney Channel persona, one of the first — and most major — steps she took to reinvent herself into the brash, shock factor-loving star she is now was cutting off almost all of her hair and shaving the sides of her head.
That look became synonymous with Cyrus’ Bangerz era, back when she proudly challenged listeners by releasing social boundary-pushing singles such as “We Can’t Stop” and twerking on Robin Thicke during their much-talked-about 2013 VMAs performance. Ah, memories.
J Balvin
Any misconception that buzz cuts have to be boring is easily debunked by J Balvin. The Latin music super star’s hair was comparatively long until around 2017, when he started keeping it (mostly) buzzed and brightly dyed, often with eccentric, colorful patterns.
Halsey
Halsey’s hair seems to change more often than the seasons, as she’s not afraid to grow it out, dye it different colors or shave it off completely at a moment’s notice. From beautiful braids to multi-color dye jobs, fans are used to seeing the “Without Me” singer play around with her hair, but the standout hairstyle Halsey sported when most of the star’s listeners discovered her was aquamarine waves.
Another of the notable hairstyle changes for Halsey, however, was when they shaved it all off in 2015, and again in 2020. “Hair has also been a big indicator of racial issues in my life,” she explained in 2016. “It’s one of the ultimate symbolic struggles for women of color. Shaving my head was important to me because I needed to be able to prove that I could still love myself if I did it.”
Source:billboard.com