We often see professional athletes who want a new challenge in their life and try to pursue different careers. Many sports stars change their career of choice, especially after they retire or no longer have the performance needed for their sport. We’ve seen many athletes who became actors, marketers, and even singers.
Usually, most sports stars, after they retire, they go for a career that is directly connected to their past. For example, many athletes become coaches or start professional clubs. However, some are brave enough to go for a completely different career and start singing.
Some of them are trying new things in life just as a challenge, but some even went deep enough and decided to launch music careers as a way to pay their bills.
In today’s article, we will highlight some of the biggest sports stars that tried to launch music careers.
1. Roy Jones Jr
Jones Jr was the biggest name in boxing in the late 90s, and very few people were brave enough to challenge him in a fight. At the time, he was in all the leading boxing odds and considered as a winner before entering a boxing match. However, his success in boxing doesn’t translate to his music career.
After his popularity, he decided that he wanted to become a hip-hop artist. Unfortunately, his skills from boxing didn’t transfer to rap.
He launched an album back in 2002 called Round One, and his lyrics featured breaking down his in-ring achievements. He possessed a clunky off-rhythm flow, which is the reason for his unsuccessful career change.
2. Andy Cole
Now we go to soccer as the Manchester United striker that had a flawless Premier League goalscoring record decided to try his hand at singing. Obviously, he chose to pursue his rap career which didn’t go well.
First of all, his lyrics were amateur and had a painfully awkward delivery, which resulted at the end of his career.
3. Shaquille O’Neal
Shaq was one of the stars topping NBA odds charts for a long time, until he retired. And, if you visit website BetAmerica.com, you still find lots of references to Shaq O’Neal as one of the best players ever to grace the game.
The NBA legend tried many things in his life. Apart from acting in some big movies, he is also one of the most successful rapping athletes of all time.
Throughout his singing career, he released over four albums across the 90s and worked with many of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time such as Biggie, Warren G, Jay Z and many more.
However, his lyrics were probably ghostwritten, but he had the same magnetism on the mic as in an NBA match. He had great delivery and many people loved his music.
3. Caroline Wozniacki
Caroline was the world’s number 1 female tennis player that wanted to scare a Grand Slam with a different career of choice. She started singing at the end of her tennis career, and to be honest, all of her songs don’t sound really well. She had a strange style of adding synthetic effects wrapped around her voice which made the songs pretty weird.
4. Petr Cech
Apart from being an incredible goalkeeper for Chelsea, Petr is working on building his drummer career at the same time. He has been playing drums for most of his life and he is actually rather good.
That’s why he jammed with Queen’s Roger Taylor in the past, and he is even thinking about releasing YouTube covers for Foo’s fingers and Coldplay tracks.
He is not a singer, but definitely a professional athlete that loves his music.
5. Deion Sanders
The professional American football player Deion Sanders falls in the same category as all of the mentioned above, who cannot sing very well. Not to be brutal, but he is the most talentless member of the bunch when it comes to music.
He released his rap album back in 1995 called “Prime Time,” and if you listen to it, you’ll get mixed emotions. First of all, he is not singing and not even rapping. His songs are basically talking about how much money he has.
At least he had a good career in the field.
6. Tony Parker
We have another NBA legend in the bunch that wanted to start a singing career. The Spurs guard could easily be mistaken for a French pop star judging from his music. He released an R&B album called TP, and one of the tracks went No. 1 in the French charts for an entire week at one point.
It is a great success to come up with an album that will go to No. 1 on the charts. Maybe Tony Parker is good at many things apart from being an NBA guard.
7. Barry Zito
Singing careers are not just popular for NBA athletes. Here we have an American former professional baseball pitcher that wanted to take a different route in life. Zito had always shown interest in playing guitar and making covers of some popular song.
When it comes to his music, he isn’t really good, to be honest, which is why he decided to abandon his professional music career and continue to play the guitar and sing as entertainment.
8. Bronson Arroyo
Here we have another professional baseball pitcher coming to take the lead as a singer. He was so into the music that he released an album titled “Covering the Bases” when he still played for the Red Sox back in 2005.
Just because of the die-hard Red Sox fans, his album was relatively popular. He wasn’t hitting the charts, but at least he gathered an audience big enough to make a live appearance.
When it comes to his music, most of the songs of the album are rather good. In fact, he sounds just like professional musicians that spend years in the music industry.
Final Words
These are some of the biggest sports stars that wanted to become musicians. This proves the fact that if you are good at one thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be good at everything else you try in life.
Most of their careers, if not all, were unsuccessful and it would have been a better idea to stick with the sport they are playing.