Promoted Fanboy / Music

• Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was a huge fan of indie rock music and his journals were filled with lists of his favorite bands and albums. After he became famous, he made sure to never go an interview without gushing over some obscure twee pop or punk band that he adored. In fact, his love of bands like The Raincoats, Beat Happening, Meat Puppets, Shonen Knife, Young Marble Giants, Melvins, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, Gang of Four and Millions of Dead Cops gained these bands (many of them long broken up) a major resurgence and increased album sales. His favorite band of all time, Scottish twee pop act the Vaselines, were signed to Sub Pop several years after they broke up for the release of a greatest hits album that was created solely from consumer interest spurred by Cobain's constant praise of the band. He even named his daughter after their guitarist Frances Mckee.
  • Cobain also averted this trope by auditioning to play bass for the Melvins before Nirvana was formed. He was so nervous that he forgot all their songs and ended up settling for being a sometimes roadie for them until his own success. Cobain later co-produced the Melvins' only major label album, Houdini, in 1993.
  • Apparently, Courtney Love managed to convince Kim Gordon to produce the first Hole album by sending her a letter about how much they admired her work and in particular "the SST album" ^note Which one of Sonic Youth's two albums for SST was never specified.
  • Dave Grohl. And he still somehow manages to convey a "Gee! How lucky am I?" rock geek persona after winning numerous Grammy awards and playing to sold out stadiums (including Wembley!) with Foo Fighters, occasionally with his musical heroes from bands like Led Zeppelin, Queen and Motörhead joining him on stage. Yeah, Mr Grohl has this trope down pat.
    • The whole concept of Grohl's Probot project was working with the metal vocalists he idolized as a teenager (such as Max Cavalera, King Diamond, and again, Lemmy). He also got to play on Killing Joke's 2003 Self-Titled Album after being a longtime fan ^note  Yes, the same Killing Joke who once sued Nirvana due to "Come As You Are" sounding too similar to their own "Eighties", and apparently declined to be paid for it.
    • And now, having said that The Beatles were responsible for him wanting to be a musician in the first place, he has recorded jam sessions and performed concerts with Paul McCartney!
    • He's passing the love forward too. In 2015 he saw fan Anthony Bifolchi holding up a sign saying "It's my birthday, can I play drums?", and invited him up on stage to jam to Big Me.
  Dave Grohl: If you suck on the drums, I will personally tar and feather your ass backstage
• Tommy Thayer of KISS. He started off in a band called Black N' Blue, who opened for Kiss in 1985-86 and had Gene Simmons produced two of their albums. When the band broke up, he formed a Kiss tribute band. In the mid-1990's, he became Gene's personal assistant. When Kiss' classic lineup reunited in 1996, he became their road manager and was assigned to help Ace Frehley re-learn his guitar parts. When Ace quit the band in late-2002, Tommy took over as lead guitarist and wearing Ace's iconic "Space Man" outfit and makeup. He's been there ever since.
• Russian keyboard player and Yes fan Igor Khoroshev got to do session work, and then became a full-time member of Yes (1997 - 2002) as a result of sending them a demo tape. Come to that, The Buggles (vocalist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes) were both Yes fans (they also shared a manager, Brian Lane), were both pleased when they were asked to contribute to the group, and both stunned to find out that they were to replace the departed Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman.
  • Inverted by Trevor Rabin when he was putting together a band called Cinema which gradually had more and more members of Yes join. He never wanted the band to be called Yes and did not want to be seen as Steve Howe's replacement. And then Jon Anderson joined, and Cinema became the next lineup of Yes.
  • Fly from Here itself would feature an Promoted Fanboy in the form of Benoît David, a Jon Anderson-soundalike (and lookalike) Canadian member of a Yes tribute band called Close to the Edge that formed in 1994. The album would feature the song The Buggles sent to Yes to record, expended into a lengthy epic, and would mark the return of Horn (as producer and guest vocalist) and Downes (as keyboardist), ironically enough replacing Anderson and Wakeman for the second time!
• Dan Whitesides, current drummer of the Alternative/Punk rock band The Used, was reportedly a big fan of the band since its debut album and was thrilled to be let in as the drummer.
• Also the case for Steve Mazur, who became Our Lady Peace's guitarist in 2002.
• So is the case of former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted. Unfortunately, his reception had been rather lukewarm, especially considering his replacement of the late great Cliff Burton, and he eventually left the band due to, among other things, never completely fitting in with them.
• And then there's Zak Starkey, who was a childhood pupil of Keith Moon, and grew up to take his place in The Who for their tours in the '90s and 2000s.
  • Keith Moon is almost an example himself: he was in the audience at one of the Who's early gigs, marched up onto the stage after their set finished, and announced that he could drum better than their (soon to be fired, as it turned out) drummer could. He was invited to prove it, and did.
  • At the opening concert of The Who's Quadrophenia tour, after playing 70 minutes into the set, Keith Moon passed out (and then a half hour later, after being revived, passed out once more). So the story goes, after playing through one more song without Moon, Pete Townsend famously asked, "Can anybody play the drums?" Enter one Scot Halpin, age 19 who had not played the drums in over a year but got up on stage at his friends' insistence. He finished up the show with them, competently playing three numbers before taking a bow with the band and being taken backstage and given a Who concert jacket (which was unfortunately stolen later that night).
• Mark Webber, the secretary for the fan club of British alternative rock band Pulp became the band's guitarist in 1995.
• The ultimate promoted fanboy in music is probably Tim "Ripper" Owens of Judas Priest, Iced Earth, Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force, and Beyond Fear. He was a singer in a Judas Priest tribute band, and took over as lead singer after Rob Halford left the band.
  • Later, after being fired from Judas Priest to make room for Halford, he joined Iced Earth, another band he is apparently a fan of. He was then fired from Iced Earth to make room for the returning Matt Barlow. Later, he lampshaded his tendencies to get fired from bands in an interview with That Metal Show by joking that he started his solo project so he could have a band he couldn't get fired from.
    • Which was then further lampshaded by another member of the band, who said "Actually, we were gonna fire him after the festival".
• Quite possibly surpassing Ripper Owens is Henry Rollins. Rollins was a Black Flag fan who, while watching a show, was invited to go up onstage (or simply jumped onstage and the band just went with it, depending on who you ask) and sing "Clocked In." Eventually, he was offered an opportunity to be the band's fourth singer and he accepted. Rollins was the longest-serving and the most well known Black Flag vocalist.
  • Rollins had a standup bit about desperately trying not to fanboy out upon learning that he'd be working in the studio with Adrian Belew (as part of the William Shatner song "I Can't Get Behind That").
• Arnel Pineda was asked to join the hard rock band Journey after Neal Schon (guitarist) saw some of his vocal covers on Youtube.
• Travis Warren of Blind Melon has a similar story. Originally brought into the studio to record a solo album with two of the founding members of Blind Melon, Warren was heavily influenced by original frontman Shannon Hoon (so much so that he has Hoon's likeness tattooed on his back). As a way of breaking the ice, Warren suggested singing a few Blind Melon songs he knew by heart. He did such a good job that they reunited the band and went back on tour.
• A lot of modern pop-rock bands stem from this. A major example is the group Panic! at the Disco, who stalked Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy on the internet before Wentz signed them to his label.
• Wisconsin musician Sean Carey joined Justin Vernon's solo project Bon Iver after approaching Vernon during Bon Iver's first show. Carey had "learned all of the drum parts and all of the harmonies," and ended up touring with Vernon for over two years.
• One can only imagine how awesome Lim Jeong-hyun, a.k.a. Funtwo (of "Canon Rock" fame, the dude in the Youtube video simply titled "guitar" and arguably the first Youtube celebrity) must have felt when he got to play a live concert with Joe Satriani.
• The members of Disturbed are all massive fans of Pantera. Imagine their suprise when the Abbot brothers joined them on-stage to perform a cover of Walk for the first time (this became a semi-tradition whenever the Abbots were nearby).
• Not exactly a literal example, but it still fits: The Beatles were working on the song "Across the Universe", but John Lennon wasn't satisfied with how it was turning out. Paul McCartney suggested they bring in two female fans loitering around Abbey Road Studios, Lizzie Bravo and Gayleen Pease, to do backing vocals. While their backing vocals did end up on the original version of "Across the Universe", Lennon wasn't satisfied with this development. Phil Spector later erased the backing vocals for the version that ended up on Let It Be, replacing them with a choir.
  • A slightly better, though still-not-quite-right example: Jimmy Nicol got to be a Beatle for about two weeks when, during a tour, Ringo Starr had to be hospitalized with tonsilitis.
  • Ringo Starr joining the band in the first place was both an example and an inversion of this. Starr was a fan of the Beatles in their prefame days and sometimes filled in for Pete Best (their original drummer); but at the same time, Paul and George saw Ringo—then drummer for a more popular band called Rory Storm and the Hurricanes—as cool older kid (by a couple of years, anyway) coming down from on high to help them out. When he finally joined, everyone was happy... for a few years, anyway.
  • Mark Lewisohn went from winning a Beatles trivia contest, to writing the officially-sanctioned book The Beatles Recording Sessions, to writing liner notes for Beatles CDs, to working directly for Paul McCartney.
• Dan Aykroyd was a huge fan of Chicago blues music, and ended up introducing his friend John Belushi to the genre (Belushi's previous musical interest tended toward heavy metal and southern rock). The two ended up forming The Blues Brothers band as a sideline, and as a result revitalized interest in the blues as a musical form when The Movie was released.
  • Later he helped found the House Of Blues. A chain of restaurants that featured live blues concerts.
• Brian Nelson became a fan of Alice Cooper in the early '70s and owned a huge collection of Alice related stuff before even meeting the man. He eventually got hired as Alice's personal assistant in the early '80s and kept the job until he passed away in 2009. He never stopped collecting and was generally considered to be the biggest Alice Cooper fan in the world.
• Jon Stewart is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, was overjoyed to have the chance to interview him on The Daily Show in 2009. Later that year, Stewart gave the presentation speech for Springsteen at the Kennedy Center Honors.
• A dual-sided example: Carlos "Indio" Solari, better known in Argentina as the lead singer of the band Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota, is a self confessed fan of Andres Calamaro, calling him a "winner" for persuading a major label for releasing a five-side, 100-song album (2000's El Salmón) to the point of even recording a Cover Version of the title song of said album in a tribute Cover Album. Calamaro, from his part, also loves Solari's work on both his solo career and with his former band. He was invited by Solari to sing on his own album, and then to sing said song, the Cover Version and other songs in a pair of gigs.
• Zakk Wylde was an enormous Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath fan who got hired to Ozzy's band partly for knowing practically every Ozzy and Sabbath song released at that point. He often cites former Ozzy guitarist Randy Rhoads as his hero and the reason he plays the way he does and he is so devoted in his worship that he played the same model and color guitar as Rhoads (which he had his now trademark black bullseye painted on so the imitation wouldn't be so obvious to Ozzy fans), spent every hour he could mastering Rhoads' songs until he could hit them note by note, even built a shrine to Rhoads in his closet and eventually named his kid after him! To this day he still enthusiastically expresses his love for Rhoads and has a few custom built replicas of Rhoads' other guitars. As for the gig with Ozzy, it lasted for 20 years (with a few breaks) and Ozzy is the godfather of his kids.
• Trey Williams was a drummer for a couple of lowly Baltimore-area death metal bands, and the high points of his career at that point were a brief Canadian tour and opening for Fetus a few times. That all changed when he received a call from Sean Beasley asking him if he wanted to join and become their new drummer shortly after Duane Timlin left. Trey even acknowledged that he was flabbergasted by how much of a leap it was.
• Helen Love is a bubblegum pop-punk band that writes about almost nothing but the lead singer's crush on Joey Ramone. Joey Ramone did guest vocals on their song "Punk Boy".
• Ron Wood has stated that when he first saw The Rolling Stones, he said to himself that he wanted to be in that band someday. Years later, he became their lead guitarist.
• Rob Sheridan, current art director for Nine Inch Nails, was lucky enough to be spotted and hired by Trent Reznor thanks to his fansite dedicated to the band.
  • Speaking of Reznor, he's a big fan of David Bowie, and was influenced by the album Low when recording The Downward Spiral. NIN would later tour with Bowie in 1995, and Reznor himself would feature in the video for "I'm Afraid of Americans", which was based around one of his remixes.
• Ed Crawford was a fan of the Minutemen who heard a false rumor that the band were looking for a new guitarist and vocalist after D. Boon's death, found Mike Watt's phone number, and called to express his interest in trying out. In fact surviving members Watt and George Hurley were still too despondent over Boon's death to even consider continuing to make music. However, Crawford and Mike Watt kept in contact with each other through mail, and Crawford's persistence in wanting the two to keep making music eventually paid off in a big way: He made an unannounced trip from Ohio to California and convinced Watt to let him "audition". He then became the guitarist and vocalist of fIREHOSE, Watt and Hurley's next project.
• Goth chanteuse Jarboe first heard the band Swans on an Atlanta-area college radio station in the early '80s and liked them so much that she went to the radio station and stole their copy of the record. She later joined the band herself. Swans disbanded in 1997, but reformed in 2010. She was not included in the 2010 lineup, so does that make her a Demoted Fangirl as well?
• AFI guitarist Jade Puget was originally a fan of the band.
• Frank Iero of My Chemical Romance. When MCR started, he was in his own band (Pencey Prep), but was such a fan of MCR that he sold merch for them, shared a practice space with them, helped book their first shows, shared his band's van...and eventually he became their second guitarist (and he still claims to be MCR's biggest fan).
• Da Yoopers, a Michigan-based comedy band, frequently lets local musicians get guest parts on their albums. One of them, "Cowboy" Dan Collins, was promoted to an official member for a few years.
• Yuri Chinen of Johnny's Entertainment's Hey! Say! Jump! auditioned for the jimusho because he was a huge fan of Satoshi Ohno and wanted to be leader of a Johnny's group like his hero. The two have had photo shoots together in which Ohno looks decidedly uncomfortable with Chinen's way too happy smile◊
• NRBQ fan and hobby drummer Tom Ardolino sent a fan letter to the band, which led to a lengthy correspondence with keyboardist/singer/songwriter Terry Adams. When the band's then-drummer Tom Staley elected to sit out the encore at a show that Ardolino attended, Adams invited Ardolino to fill in. When Staley quit in 1974, the others invited Ardolino to replace him full-time, and Ardolino stuck with them for the next three decades.
• Current Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato and drummer Billy Rymer were both originally fans of the band before being invited to join.
• Suffocation has been around for so long that the bulk of the band is made up of these. Derek Boyer had been a fan since his early teens (and had once managed to get himself in trouble at school for carving the band's logo into a desk), eventually got to join in their reunion era, and managed to stick around for long enough to achieve band veteran status of his own, while Charlie Errigo and Kevin Muller were kids from their home area who idolized them as hometown heroes and later became good friends with the band. Meanwhile, Eric Morotti was a referral from Alex Erian, but he himself had been a longtime fan of the band even before Erian sent him their way.
• Jane Wiedlin was a fan of Sparks as a teenager, and supposedly was even president of an unofficial Sparks fan club. Once she became well-known in her own right as part of The Go-Go's, she also got to duet with Russell Mael for two songs on Sparks' In Outer Space - "Cool Places" and "Lucky Me, Lucky You".
• Jeremy Deller collaborated with the Williams Fairey Brass Band to create the album Acid Brass, consisting of brass band covers of classic acid house and techno songs. One of the songs they covered was The KLF's "What Time Is Love". When Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of the KLF heard the acid brass version of their song at a live performance, they liked it so much that they contacted Jeremy Deller so they could incorporate it into their satirical comeback performance "Fuck the Millennium". Then when they released the "***k the Millennium" CD single, the acid brass version of "What Time Is Love" was included as a b-side.
• Neil Finn was a huge fan of his older brother's band Split Enz, and when Phil Judd left he was invited to join.
• Leon Russell was a major influence on Elton John's piano playing, singing and songwriting, and Leon was an early supporter of Elton's career. Elton returned the favor in 2010 by collaborating with Leon (then frail and struggling to make it in the club circuit) on The Union (featuring Leon originals and songs co-written by Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin), an album that essentially revitalized the careers of both Elton and Leon.
  • Before, Elton, a childhood fan of the football club Watford F.C., used his riches from the 1970s to buy the club. His work as honorary chairman led to Watford becoming a first-division team by the mid-1980s.
• Rappers Kid Cudi and Big Sean, as well as singer Estelle, all first came on industry radars by bumping into Kanye West and handing him their demos. Within 5 years, the former 2 are members of West's collective GOOD Music, and Estelle is a close friend.
• The members of Avenged Sevenfold are all fans of Dream Theater. Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater had offer to fill in for the recently deceased Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan for the recording of Nightmare and the following tour.
  • Arin Ilejay, in turn, has been a long-time fan of Avenged Sevenfold — and The Rev, in particular. He was the official replacement for The Rev, but sadly never really managed to fit in the band (he described his experience as "being inside but really outside at the same time") and was replaced after four years by Brooks Wackerman. He immediately found a new job, however, with another band he was a fan of, Islander.
• Devo "Session Drummer to the Stars" Josh Freese learned to drum to Devo's Freedom of Choice album. When Devo reunited in 1996, Freese was behind the kit, and has been their regular drummer since.
• The Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch was a long time fan of Bad Brains - when the self-titled Bad Brains album was reissued on CD, the packaging included a quote from Yauch calling it "the best punk/hardcore album of all time". Yauch ended up becoming a friend of the band and produced their 2007 album Build A Nation (as well as playing percussion on some tracks). After Yauch's death, Bad Brains paid tribute with a song called "MCA Dub".
• Mike Doughty needed a vocalist to do harmony on his song "Holiday (What Do You Want?)". He called up Rosanne Cash (daughter of Johnny), and to his surprise, she said yes without hesitation. Turns out, they're fans of each other. Rosanne has since worked with Mike again, on his cover of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads".
• Actress Tilda Swinton is an avowed David Bowie fan, dating back to her first viewing of his acting breakthrough The Man Who Fell to Earth. In 2013, she got to play his wife in the music video for "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)", which came complete with references to the movie!
• In 1968, Tim Staffell and a friend formed the band Smile. Another friend of his (and fellow Ealing Art College student), Farrokh ("Freddie") Bulsara, became one of the band's greatest fans, soon pestering the band with suggestions for their shows and repeatedly stating his wish to become a rock star himself. When Staffell left the band, Smile was about to disband. Bulsara stepped in and, changing his name to Mercury, persuaded the remaining Smile members to 1) continue, 2) allow him to join as lead singer, and 3) change the band's name to Queen.
• Jason Martin of Starflyer 59 has long been a fan of Daniel Amos, citing their album Vox Humana as one of his all-time favorites. Eventually, he got to work with DA's frontman Terry Scott Taylor. First, Taylor produced Sf 59's 2001 album Leave Here a Stranger. Then, Martin conducted an interview of Taylor which appeared on DA's collection When Everyone Wore Hats.
• Record producer Stuart Price (aka Jacques Lu Cont) cited the Pet Shop Boys as an inspiration for getting into the music industry. PSB turned to him to produce their 2013 album Electric.
• Duke Ellington has been on both sides of this.
  • Duke greatly respected Louis Armstrong and wrote a song, "Azalea", in hopes that Louis could someday sing it. Several times, Duke and Louis crossed paths, but events conspired to prevent them from recording together each time. Duke despaired of working with Louis and tried to record "Azalea" with other jazz singers, but none of them could do the song justice. Finally in 1961, Duke and Louis got a two-day recording session together and recorded "Azalea", as well as enough other material for two LPs.
  • Duke Ellington and Count Basie were both fans of each other—but Basie practically revered Ellington. They and their big bands recorded an album together in 1962. On the first take of "Take the 'A' Train" (the Ellington band's Signature Song), Duke suggested that Basie play the piano intro. Basie panicked and fled from the studio.
• Yolanda Saldivar was such a huge fan of the Tejano pop singer Selena that she pestered the singer's family to start a fan club; she then worked her way up from fan club president to manager of Selena's boutiques and paid personal assistant to the singer. She was considered a close friend of the family by the time all hell broke loose.
• Niall Horan from One Direction went from being a fan of Justin Bieber to being a friend of his, to destroying his career.
• After Bernard Butler was kicked out of Suede, the band recruited Richard Oakes, a teenage fan who'd sent them a tape of him playing their songs on guitar.
• When Joe Boyd played John Cale Nick Drake's first album, he was so impressed with his songwriting that Cale played on a few tracks on Drake's next album, Bryter Layter.
• Electric Light Orchestra's lead singer Jeff Lynne conceived the band's idea with Roy Wood to be a sort of sequel to The Beatles, taking rock music in the direction "that The Beatles had left off." He later worked with former Beatles members on various projects, including The Traveling Wilburys and producing the "Threetles"^note the nickname given to The Beatles minus John Lennon, who went back into the studio together for The Beatles Anthology to record a few new singles singles "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love".
• Once upon a time, a high school student posted trap covers of Vocaloid songs on Nico Nico Douga under the handle Piko. Not only does he now have his own singing career, he also now has his own Vocaloid.
• After the death of original Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak, the band auditioned new guitarists until they discovered John Frusciante, a teenager who knew how to play every single one of their songs and was quite skilled on his own. He joined the band and was an integral member for many years before leaving to work on his solo career. Today, he is hailed as one of the greatest guitarists in the history of music.
• Thirty Seconds to Mars' guitarist Tomo Milicevic was a fan of the band before joining up and got the job due to his talent...and due to camping out on Jared Leto's lawn for a whole week. He was also the main person responsible for updating the band's website during "A Beautiful Lie"'s album cycle.
• When Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead reunited to form Furthur, the latest post-Jerry Garcia Dead project, in 2009, they recruited longtime Deadhead John Kadlecik on lead guitar. To be fair, by this point JK had already becaome fairly well known in jam band circles with his own band Dark Star Orchestra. Given the fact that DSO is a Grateful Dead tribute band, it fits the trope.
• After firing original lead singer Scott Weiland, Stone Temple Pilots hired longtime fanboy Chester Bennington, of Linkin Park fame, to become their new singer.
• Billy Joel took a lot of influence from Ray Charles, calling him an icon since his childhood. He even partially named his daughter (Alexa Ray) after him. They met while recording "We Are the World" (Quincy Jones introduced Billy as the guy who wrote "New York State of Mind," which was a big Ray Charles homage), hit it off, and recorded "Baby Grand" together a year later. It gets better, though: when Billy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, Ray gave the induction speech.
  • Mike Delguidice has been a lifelong fan of Joel himself, who started a tribute band named Big Shot in 2000 and has included Joel's lead guitarist Tommy Byrnes and drummer Chuck Burgi at times. In 2013, the Piano Man himself invited him to join his touring band as rhythm guitarist and backup singer.
• In one Green Day concert, Billie Joe Armstrong saw a teenage fan in the audience holding up a sign that said "I can play every song on Dookie!" So Billie Joe pulled him up on stage and handed him the guitar. He played "When I Come Around" with the band and nailed it. He continues to bring in audience members to play guitar during certain songs.
• Similarly, The Killers were performing in Falkirk when Brandon Flowers spotted long-time fan Kyle Grieve holding up a sign asking, "Can I drum?" Flowers shot him down, saying, "If you want to play on this stage, you have to mean business". The following night, Grieve returned with another sign reading, "Tonight I mean business", and that time, he got his wish.
• Domenic Romeo was a teenager growing up in Canada in the 1990s who used to go to his friend's house to use his internet and listen to tracks from Victory Records artists on the site's audio player. After hearing Integrity, he was hooked, and upon finding Integrity mainman Dwid Hellion's email address in the liner notes of Humanity Is the Devil, he would email him with in-depth questions about the band every day, and his persistence eventually won over Hellion and kicked off a longtime friendship that culminated in Hellion doing a great deal of work for A389 (Romeo's record label) and Romeo joining Integrity and writing and recording 2017's Howling, for the Nightmare Shall Consume with Hellion.
• How about an example for an entire country? Since 1983, Australia has broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest, and it's always been a big event, to the point of being referenced in the contest proper. In 2015, to reward them for their longtime loyalty, Australia were selected as a one-off wild card participant to celebrate the contest's sixtieth anniversary. Since then, they were allowed to return for the following year (with a great force even, as Dami Im came second that year), and now are the contest's regulars (despite having to be invited by the EBU to continue participation as they are, well, not a country in Europe).
• Like most young Britons at the time, Phil Collins was a huge fan of The Beatles. He was part of the audience in A Hard Day's Night (though his close-up ended up getting dropped from the film), and he later worked as a session musician with George Harrison on All Things Must Pass.
• R&B duo Chloe x Halle started out covering pop songs on YouTube until their cover of "Pretty Hurts" caught the attention of the original artist, none other than Beyoncé. The sisters were then featured in Lemonade (2016) and were the opening act for her Formation World Tour.
• Amy Lee of Evanescence has always been a huge Korn fan, and covered their song Thoughtless while on tour in 2003-2004. Well, not only did Jonathan Davis praise the cover in an interview, but Evanescence got to go on tour with Korn in Europe – according to Davis, Evanescence were supposed to headline over Korn, but Amy Lee made Korn headline instead out of respect. Flash forward to 2006 and Lee sang a duet with Davis on Freak On A Leash for Korn's MTV Unplugged live album.
• Michalina Malisz started a YouTube channel dedicated to covers on her hurdy-gurdy. She started playing the instrument because of Eluveitie, which apparently caught the attention of bandleader Chrigel, who contacted Michalina after Anna Murphy left the band. Michalina is now their new hurdy-gurdy player, while still doing her YouTube channel on the side.
• Carl Magnus Palm, previously well-known for writing perhaps the most comprehensive book on ABBA's recording sessions in 1994 was later hired by Polar to write CD liner notes for that group in 1999.
• Many of the Latin Boy Band Menudo members had been fans before they auditioned. In Talking Heads interviews featured in the docuseries Menudo: Forever Young, they admitted to having all the records and knowing all the songs.
• Two examples from BABYMETAL:
  • Former member, Yui Mizuno, was a fan of Suzuka Nakamoto's former girl group Karen's Girls and wanted to be an idol because of them, leading her to audition for Sakura Gakuin, which also happened to have Nakamoto in the group. Her audition song was Karen's Girls' "Over the Future". Later on, the group BABYMETAL was formed and during a concert, she was able to perform "Over the Future" with Nakamoto.
  • When former Sakura Gakuin member, Momoko Okazaki, was asked what club she wanted to join in, she said the "Heavy Music Club", which was the club BABYMETAL originated from. Cut to years later, she joined BABYMETAL as one of the three dancers in rotation. In 2023, after four years of being a backup dancer, she was promoted to full member.
• Little Boots is a huge fan of Jean-Michel Jarre to the point of having her own laser harp, one of his trademark instruments. She was invited by Jarre himself to a collaboration for his Electronica project, ending up amongst downright music legends.
• YouTuber Ola Englund covered Machine Head songs "Davidian" and "Old" on his YouTube channel. In 2022 when Machine Head perform at Sweden their invite Ola to play "Davidian".
• For his 20th anniversary, Jonny Jakobsen, a.k.a. Dr. Bombay released a new single with an accompanying music video, "Stockholm to Bombay". Said video was made in thanks to two fans who were just kids when they first were exposed to his music.
• Russian YouTuber Ai Mori^*real name Olga Zimina is a long-time fan of Linkin Park. During Mike Shinoda's contest for the chorus to his single "Open Door", Ai Mori was chosen as one of the finalists and she was featured on the official release alongside the other winners.
• Zhenya Ivanova, a superfan of singer Elvira T, now works for her directly as her videographer. Zhenya even received tutelage from Alexei Malakhov, Elvira T's best friend and former^note He recently moved to the US. videographer.
• Although all of the members like TWICE, Felix of Stray Kids loves them. Not only is he in the same company as them (and did at least 2 TikTok videos with Nayeon), he got to participate in a song from Nayeon's 1st solo album!
• Fear Factory vocalist Milo Silvestro. The band found him due to him being a fan who uploaded vocal covers of Fear Factory's songs on the internet.

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