Ever since the dawn of entertainment, the concept of lost and unreleased media has been a concept yearned for by adoring disciple-esque fans of said content. Prior to the internet, these lost relics were considered myths amongst fans and their fanclub newsletter — however with the rise of internet and social media, groups rose dedicated to finding this content. This idea is most prevalent in the realm of TV and gaming, however it does indeed exist in its own form in the concept of music.
Album announcements typically come with waves of excitement and speculation from fans of the artists. The extent of the hype of a release could go from something as simple as people speculating features or the content of the album — all the way to the artist holding multiple stadium listening parties to generate hype for the release. In the normal fashion, these announced releases will have a set date and they will release on said date — however this is not typically always the case.
An early example of the phenomenon of unreleased albums is Weezer’s Songs From The Black Hole, a follow up to the band’s hit self titled. The album was supposed to be a ‘space rock opera’ about a trip to space, however due to personal events in the lead singer’s life — the album was scrapped and reworked into a new work. However, Weezer’s massive fanbase and fan club at the time would not let the concept of this album die quietly. It was common for fans to bring it up at shows, siphon info out of people that were involved in the process of this album’s release, and would often sell and leak unreleased tracks to appease the unending hunger of content. This case of fan’s hunting down info on unreleased content is the most linear and the most baseline. This album, unlike many others, had a clear reason for being unreleased — the band did not want it.
Some albums do not see the light of the day due to something going wrong in the due process of musical production. Cigarettes and Valentines by Green Day was a highly anticipated album by the band in the peak of their career. Twenty songs were finished on this album and the band was prime and ready to release the content, the master tapes were robbed from them and the band decided to not rework everything. Further down the line, in 2011, during the central blast of dubstep (an electronic genre focused solely on production mixed with hard hitting bass) – Skrillex was slated to release his highly anticipated untitled album. This album was being worked on for months on edge, before his “[two] laptops and both [his] harddrives [were] stolen out of [his] hotel in Milan Italy”.
While some artists have legitimate reasons to not release an album or to hold one so close to their chest – some artists are Kanye West. With his own fandom page having a list of albums that did not release, Mr. West sits proudly on sixteen albums that were announced – yet none of the sixteen dropped. West has a tendency to announce an album without it being finished and to set a very close release date – with the most infamous example of this being the (lack of a ) release of Yandhi. Kanye, after hyping the album up and getting fans more excited than they had been for a release, confirmed to TMZ that the album did not release because he did not finish it. Unapologetically, this has been the case multiple times. In the build up to his highly anticipated 2020 album, Donda: With Child, West held multiple listening parties at Mercedes-Benz stadium. After the first listening party, in response to fans saying the album felt unfinished – even with the redone cut songs from Yandhi (which still felt very undercooked), Kanye decided to stay multiple nights living in a small room in the stadium – only working on the album, for the small price of according to NPR, “one million dollars per day”. The album was eventually released – completely different than the one announced, lacking many songs that were promised and now sporting a shorter title: Donda.
There are endless examples of albums being not released or withheld for varying reasons, these are just a few notable ones to myself and ones that I find interesting. The concept of being an electronic artist and not having back ups for your audio files is hilarious to me and thought it should be worth sharing, I am an avid Green Day fan, and an avid listener to a few Kanye albums. Releasing music is not an easy task, but when you make a promise – you are supposed to keep the promise – or just set realistic expectations for yourself. You do not need to be a world famous artist to have realistic boundaries for yourself.
