In an ideal world, an album is composed, recorded and released to anticipating fans. In reality, though, some projects never get to see the light of day, for different reasons, be it the artist’s dissatisfaction with the material or objections from the record label. If they’re lucky, they resurface as bootlegs or ephemeral files knocking around online. If not, they’re doomed to spending the eternity locked up in a vault, never to be listened to again. The Beach Boys’ Smile, for many years the most legendary unreleased record, was eventually treated with an official release. And so was Donna Summer’s I’m a Rainbow, albeit with much less fanfare. Still better than her mid-70s phantom LP Love Machine which turned out to never have existed at all! Below are ten albums that do exist, but somehow never made it out of the recording studio.

 

Jeff Beck — 1970 album

photo: Barrie Wentzell

In 1970, Jeff Beck and drummer Cozy Powell flew to Detroit to collaborate with the local group the Funk Brothers. They were aiming for a Motown sound-influenced rock album. Blending two different musical worlds sounds like a brilliant idea, but unfortunately, the collaboration didn’t run smoothly. “What the hell was I doing taking a rock drummer (…) into Motown? They hated us right away”, Beck reflected. “We got further and further away from the rock part, because they didn’t understand that”. Despite the bumpy start, nine or ten songs came to fruition, some of them written by the hitmaking team Holland–Dozier–Holland. Still not satisfied with the result (“a total missed opportunity”), Beck decided not to release the tracks. After many years, he admitted that one copy of the material still exists on a cassette, but didn’t seem keen on releasing it.

 

Neil Young — Chrome Dreams

By mid-70s, Neil Young was reaching his creative peak and had as many unreleased albums as his official discography. Recorded over the course of two years, Chrome Dreams was planned for release in 1977, but for an unknown reason was shelved in favour of the underwhelming American Stars ‘n Bars. Although many of the songs were recycled on subsequent albums (often with only minor changes), the original set remains unreleased, excluding various bootleg forms. In 2007, Young gave it a nod by titling his new album Chrome Dreams II. With his ongoing archival release series, which saw the long-anticipated official release of Homegrown in 2020, chances are that this lost album will also have its turn.

 

Grace Jones — Black Marilyn

In 1993, Miss Grace Jones was busy working on her 10th studio album, reportedly titled Black Marilyn. Its first taste was the industrial electro single “Sex Drive”, with a feminist rant “Typical Male” as the B‑side. Both tracks signalled return to form after Grace’s overly commercial (yet still enjoyable) output in the late 80s. Slated for release in 1994, the CD promised an edgy techno/house sound, with Grace gracing the cover stylized as Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately, what could have been a much-needed brilliant comeback, for an unknown reason never materialised, even though the lead single did well in American clubs. Another track intended for the project, “Volunteer”, leaked on the Internet in 2007. Several years later, a rumour had that Jones was planning to release the album independently. This is not likely to happen now that she’s focused on recording new material, but at least the full “Sex Drive” maxi-single was released digitally in 2016.

 

David Bowie — Toy

After mixed reactions to his 1990s albums, Bowie looked back on the early years for inspiration. Toy consisted of re-recordings of his lesser-known songs from the late 60s and early 70s as well as three new tracks. When Virgin Records refused to release the set, David was reportedly so hurt that he left the label and signed a new deal with Columbia Records. Intended for release in 2001 or 2002, Toy was eventually shelved. Some of the tracks still made their way onto Bowie’s next album, Heathen, and B‑sides of the accompanying singles. The full album eventually leaked online in 2011. Three years later, several more tracks got the official release on the Nothing Has Changed retrospective.
Update: Toy was officially released in November 2021!

 

Green Day — Cigarettes and Valentines

In mid-late 2002, Green Day were recording an album with the working title Cigarettes and Valentines. Scheduled for a 2003 release, it reportedly consisted of “quick-tempoed punk” songs, in the vein of some of their early albums. But the nearly completed set was to never see the light of day after the master tapes mysteriously disappeared from the studio. Instead of trying to recreate the lost material, Green Day went on to make what would become a worldwide number 1 smash, American Idiot. So the incident may have been a blessing in disguise. Some of the lost songs ended up as single B‑sides. The title track was even performed live in 2010 and subsequently released on a concert album. The band eventually recovered the material and discussed it in an interview. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said that the album is “pretty much in the vault right now. I don’t know, we’ll see if any of that stuff ends up seeing the light of day”. Bassist Mike Dirnt left even less hope: “There’s always a lot in the vault, but we tend to look forward rather than reaching back”.

 

Mandaryna — Third Time: Mandaryna 4 You

This dancer-turned-singer launched a successful music career with catchy dance tunes in 2004, only to have it shattered a year later by an unfortunate festival performance. Nevertheless, she set out to record another album in 2006. After teasing several tracks live and releasing two singles (one of which, “Heaven”, was panned as a rip-off of Madonna’s “Jump”), the album rollout came to a halt. Constant delays were blamed on Mandaryna’s infamous manager, Katarzyna Kanclerz, known for sabotaging artists’ careers. The full tracklist of her third album, aptly titled Third Time: Mandaryna 4 You, was revealed by a prominent gossip website in late 2007. The set repeated the successful formula of dance covers shuffled with original songs. And although January 2008 was slated as the release date, no one has heard of the album again. Individual tracks have since leaked online, but due to rumoured legal disputes, the whole album is not likely to ever see the light of day.

 

Amy Winehouse — Stronger

In 2008, her fame and personal problems escalated in equal measure. So at the end of the year, Amy Winehouse took a much-needed respite in St Lucia. The Caribbean island so enchanted the singer, that her Christmas getaway eventually turned into an eight-month residence. Looking happy and carefree, with her black curls let loose, Winehouse seemed to be back on track: not only has she come out of her addiction (she was reportedly “done with drugs” at that point) but also started recording a much-anticipated follow-up to her breakthrough album Back to Black. Media circulated news about such song titles as “Gutter”, “Detachment” and “Our Souls Ain’t Sold”, and Wikipedia briefly rumoured Stronger as the title of her third LP. Reggae-influenced material recorded with Salaam Remi was confirmed by credible sources. Shamefully, Island Records would turn down new recordings in 2009, fearing that such a radical departure from her trademark 60s soul-oriented sound would not repeat the success of Back to Black. Any hopes for a third, posthumous album were crushed after Amy’s passing in 2011, when Island Records executives announced that a dozen unreleased songs will be kept in the vault forever.

 

Sugababes — The Sacred Three

The original Sugababes line-up reformed in 2011 as Mutya Keisha Siobhan. Newly signed to Polydor Records, the trio started collaborating with such names as Emeli Sandé, Dev Hynes and Sia, and the new album was officially confirmed as completed in August 2012. Several tracks were teased online, followed by the first official single “Flatline” in the summer of 2013. Although praised by critics, the song flatlined in the charts, which must have complicated the roll-out of the album. Other tracks started to pop up online in subsequent years, such as the brilliant “Back in the Day” in 2015. Then, an album’s worth of songs leaked in late 2016. This forced the trio to completely abandon the project (reportedly titled The Sacred Three) and start working on new material. Having reclaimed the name Sugababes, they resurfaced again in 2019, but put their comeback on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Update: ‘Babes officially released it as The Lost Tapes in December 2022!

 

Carly Rae Jepsen — Eternal Summer

photo: Celebzz

Carly is known for being extremely prolific. Before she delivered 2015’s highly acclaimed Emotion, she had written around 250 songs for the album. Not everyone knows that the synth-pop masterpiece originally started as an indie folk project. It was recorded in New York between 2013 and 2014 with duo Tegan and Sara, and possibly called Eternal Summer. No doubt it was great, but she thankfully changed the direction in favour of the 1980s pop sensibility which made Emotion the modern classic that it is. Carly has described the indie folk material as “weird music” that “probably no one will ever hear”. It’s yet to leak onto the Internet.

 

La Roux — 2015–17 album

If recording Trouble in Paradise was “excruciating”, then which word would she use to describe the making of its follow-up? In early 2015, Elly Jackson started working on a “futuristic and innovative” third album which she later described as “more earthy, more organic, more soulful [and] even warmer” that the predecessor. And although she assured that recording was “coming along nicely” in early 2016, the album was taking ages to materialise. The partnership with her mysterious collaborator turned into such a toxic experience that Jackson refuses to discuss it in interviews. The singer found that she was repeating negative patterns from the past. Anxiety, lack of confidence and the breakup of her long-term relationship only added more pressure and led Elly to abandon the largely finished material in 2017. She started from scratch the following winter – on her own terms, in her own kitchen. The result was Supervision. There is a glimmer of hope that we’ll get to hear at least some of the ditched material, though. “It was a good record, and there are things in it I may extract at some point”, she said.

See also: 10 Legendary Unreleased Albums Part 2