Sometimes, the best albums to come out of the music industry are ones that never actually come out. The list of the greatest albums of all time is vast and ever-growing, but sometimes, it's unreleased albums that carry just as much of an enduring legacy. Missed opportunities, after all, come with the magic of promise and none of the distracting drawbacks that come with release.
The tales behind unreleased albums and why they were never released are often mythical. Why the albums never released often comes down to a simple set of reasons: internal conflicts between studios and creators, perfectionism of said creators, or just a pivot in creative direction. In some cases, finished tracks are released that offer a hint of what could have been, and feed into why music fans still clamor to hear these albums.
10 Camille by Prince
A Prince Album Without Prince's Name On It
The number of albums shelved by Prince deserves a documentary all to itself, but few have as much of a historical legacy as Camille. Prince recorded Camille 40 years ago, and imagined it as an 8-track story centered around a woman named Camille, who Prince embodied by distorting his voice to sound more feminine. The concept would've toyed with the androgynous presentation of Prince on a symphonic level never before seen. He planned to go a step even further by releasing the album under the pseudonym of Camille rather than his own stage name.
Understandably, Warner Bros. may have been skeptical about how well an anonymous album without Prince's name attached would have done, sales-wise, contributing to why it was shelved weeks before release. Camille wouldn't be axed entirely, though, as some tracks wound up on Sign 'o the Times.
9 Cigarettes and Valentines by Green Day
A Scrapped Album with a Silver Lining
After the 2000 release of Warning, Green Day was ready to work on their seventh album. Under the title of Cigarettes and Valentines, the band started crafting a faster, rock-driven pace compared to their previous effort. "Cigarettes and Valentine," the single, has since been released while "Youngblood" - also produced among the album's tracklist - wound up on the Revolution Radio album.
Not much is known about the exact circumstances of Cigarettes and Valentines, only that the master tapes were supposedly stolen by the studio and in a vault somewhere today. Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt both said to NME they want to look forward, so it's not likely they will ever have it released from the vault. That mentality led to them crafting their most successful album to date, as scraping Cigarettes and Valentines entirely allowed them to work on American Idiot.
8 Kendrick/J. Cole Untitled Collab Album
The Collab That Fans Are Still Begging For
Long before J. Cole got in the middle of the Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar beef, he and the latter were great friends and collaborators. Early into their careers, they became fond of each other and their artistry enough to want to produce an album together. Despite teases for it in their songs and interviews, plans for the collab album would be canceled as a result of timing. Their immense success paralleled each other at the same time, and thus, they never had the time to sit down and plan out their project.
However, through his podcast, J. Cole has unveiled unreleased tracks that he and K. Dot made together, reviving fan excitement for a project that more than likely will never come to fruition.
7 Eros by Deftones
Scrapped Due to Tragedy
Deftones began working on what would've been their sixth studio album in 2008, preparing for a 2009 release. The album was never finished and the chances that they ever finish it are slim out of respect to the late Chi Cheng. In the midst of the band's recording, in November 2008, Chi Cheng was involved in a devastating car crash that left him hospitalized and in a coma. While Cheng was in hospital, Sergio Vega of Quicksand fame would fill in for Cheng, intended to be temporary until Cheng was ready to perform again.
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Cheng's condition remained largely the same with no significant improvements until his injuries contributed to a 2013 heart attack that would sadly claim his life. Out of respect for their fallen comrade, Deftones' Eros was scrapped indefinitely, with the band instead starting to work on and release Diamond Eyes in its place.
6 Heltah Skeltah by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube
An Album and Concept Stolen
The formerly estranged members of the N.W.A. reunited for the 1994 vehicle, "Natural Born Killaz." The song was featured on the Murder Was the Case soundtrack, but was originally intended for a collab album the two West Coast legends hoped to conceive together. The album would have been called Heltah Skeltah. As evident by its would-be single, Heltah Skeltah had less to do with Charles Manson and more with the idea that horrible things happen for no reason. Think "Helter Skelter" by The Beatles, but with more gangster rap and overt nihilism in its sound.
Unfortunately, these plans would manifest as Death Row labelmate D.O.C. was becoming disenfranchised with the company, thanks to not receiving any payment for his ghostwriting on songs like those he wrote for Heltah Skeltah. He exited the label in late 1994, and to beat Dre and Cube to the punch, D.O.C. took the name and concept for his second album, Helter Skelter.
5 The Paper Kingdom by MCR
The Album That Almost Killed the Band
As of this writing, My Chemical Romance have not released a new album since their much-hyped reunion. It's understandable, in some respects, considering the kind of mental toll that attempts to craft their last album contributed to killing their band a decade ago. After Danger Days, My Chemical Romance started working on The Paper Kingdom, which was planned to be the band's finale to their discography before disbanding.
Writing for the album forced Gerard Way into a dark place, particularly one song revolving around a parental support group grieving with their children. A concept for a song like that alone is a heavy one for any mind, so one can only imagine what the rest of the album could have covered. Understandably, the band opted to stop working on the album while they were ahead.
4 Songs from the Black Hole by Weezer
A Rock Opera That the 90s Wasn't Ready For
The follow-up to Weezer's 1994 breakout album was always going to have expectations thrust upon it, but Weezer were ready to go all in. Songwriter Rivers Cuomo proceeded to write and record demos for what would have become Songs from the Black Hole. As implied in the title, Cuomo wrote this in a dark space, conflicted about the wealth and fame that Weezer as an album (not to be confused with their other self-titled album that everyone hates) provided himself and his friends.
In addition to those emotions, Cuomo wrote these songs in a space-themed rock opera featuring a plethora of characters and storylines. While the demos released for the project have kept fans intrigued, Cuomo gave up on the project following leg surgery, instead turning his attention to what would become Pinkerton.
3 Detox by Dr. Dre
A Legendary Rap Album That Never Was
Hyped as the "most advanced rap album ever," Detox has built a reputation as the best rap album that could've been. Dre started working on his album at about the turn of the century, all around the concept of a hitman whose story is told through each track. It was an ambitious and deeply experimental rap album, but one backed by the support of rap's most thunderous voices at the time, including Snoop Dogg and Eminem.
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Dre would keep himself busy from working on his album in favor of producing other rappers and their albums, but even then, once the album saw a semblance of completion, Dre decided to lock it away in a vault forever. Simply put, he wasn't happy with the album and didn't think there was any way for him to salvage it. As much hype there was surrounding Detox, the album failed to live up to the hype in the N.W.A. founder's eyes.
2 Electric Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen
The Greatest Demo Tape of All Time
Some are still clamoring for Bruce Springsteen's scrapped album from 42 years ago to be released four decades after the fact. While never the name of an actual album, Electric Nebraska refers to the recording sessions for a demo tape that would eventually become Springsteen's sixth studio album, Nebraska. Out of 15 tracks produced in that time, nine would wind up on Nebraska, while the other six would be fleshed out and saved for Born in the U.S.A.
Springsteen and co. originally considered releasing Nebraska as a double album featuring the demo versions recorded in these historic sessions, but it was decided that the official tracks couldn't live up to the rawness of the demos. This was still enough to spark fan interest that persists to this day.
1 SMiLE by The Beach Boys
The Greatest Album Never Made
SMiLE has a reputation for being the greatest album to never be released. The legacy in the making of a lot of the albums that never were to be on this list have spawned lives of their own, but none as infamously as the Beach Boys project. The state of the infamous Smile Tapes was chronicled in the Disney+ documentary, revealing that numerous factors played a part in 50 hours of recordings being shelved to the wayside.
The perfectionism of Brian Wilson and legal battles with Capitol Records ultimately prevented SMiLE from seeing the light of day. The closest that listeners have gotten to hearing SMiLE was the scaled-down Smiley Smile album and a select few track releases for songs that would have been in the tracklist. Based on what listeners have heard from the Beach Boys experiment, SMiLE may truly be the best music album never made.
Source: YouTube (NME)
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