What Could Have Been / Music

This was going to be his final concert tour.
And then he died.

• David Bowie originally planned, among many other things...
  • ... to have a Cover Version of Chuck Berry's "Round and Round" as the fourth track of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, to complement the Ron Davies cover that followed, until Executive Meddling made him replace it with "Starman." Best not to dwell too hard on that one!
  • ... a stage musical based on the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but failed to get the copyright. Instead, he took most of the songs he'd written for it, such as "1984" and "Big Brother", and wrote several new songs (most famously "Rebel Rebel") to accompany them in a story of The Apunkalypse in "Hunger City"; the result was the Concept Album Diamond Dogs.
  • ...to write "Golden Years" for Elvis Presley to sing. Bowie ended up singing it himself after Elvis turned it down.
  • ... to write a three-part (possibly five-part) cycle of annual Rock Operas beginning with 1. Outside, but at nearly fifty could not return to an annual release schedule and instead moved on to other projects.
  • ... to record one more album after ★, as the result of a sudden change of heart just one week before his death. Apparently, he thought he'd have a few more months to live than he actually did. Sadly, this proved to be Tempting Fate.
  • ... to have the already Epic Rocking-length title track to ★ be over 11 minutes long. Bowie was adamant that the song be the album's lead-off single, and upon learning that it's iTunes' policy not to allow individual downloads of songs over ten minutes long, he had it edited down to 9:57.
• Pete Townshend's original plan for the album Who's Next was an elaborate Rock Opera called Lifehouse, about a futuristic dystopia where people live in pods and only experience life through a virtual mainframe. But suddenly, an old man teaches a group freedom fighters about rock 'n' roll (which had faded out of memory), and the fighters put on a concert that transforms the world and wakens those from their Matrix-esque prisons. It was going to involve direct participation from the audience by them inputing biographical data into a computer which would be written into the songs during concerts, effectively changing the music to fit in with those hearing it, hopefully resulting in a "perfect chord" that would allow the participants to transcend to a higher state of nirvana. It eventually fell apart, mostly due to no one else involved in The Who having a bloody idea what he was talking about; instead, we only got one of the greatest rock albums of all time; Townshend gathered the best songs he had prepared for the project, and they became the centerpiece for Who's Next. Pete Townshend eventually completed Lifehouse and released it in 2000.
• In the period between 2003's The Golden Age of Grotesque and 2007's Eat Me, Drink Me, Marilyn Manson recorded an album that he ultimately scrapped. It was intended for a new era for the band, to be called the "Celebritarian Era", which was also never implemented. Elements of the album were eventually were used on the 2012 album Born Villain. Fans believe the Eat Me, Drink Me song "Mutilation is the Most Sincere Form of Flattery" was once part of the lost album as well. Additionally, after 2000's Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death), there was supposed to be an orchestral instrumental album (yes, you read that right) called "The Factory". It too was finished but never released.
  • Holy Wood itself is the source of several instances of this trope. First off, it was supposed to have an accompanying movie, called "Holy Wood" and the album was to be called In The Shadow of the Valley of Death, which is just the album's subtitle now.. This was scrapped. There was also supposed to be the book Holy Wood, which was finished but, you guessed it, never released. Additionally, there were somewhere between 70 and 100 songs recorded but not used for the album. A few fragments were released of three, and a few others, including a cover of Elvis' "In The Ghetto" and Charles Manson's "Sick City", have surfaced.
  • Additionally, Manson was originally to score the film From Hell, but never did. On top of that, he was the first choice for playing The Scarecrow in Batman Begins.
  • Also, the 1996 album Antichrist Superstar was originally far different sounding, more rock like the early Spooky Kids material, and there were several songs drastically altered or scrapped. An early version of the song Astonishing Panorama of The Endtimes was a part of it, with mostly different lyrics, and several songs were cut up and had parts put into several songs. Additionally, there was to be an updated version of the Spooky Kids song "Suicide Snowman", which was also scrapped. Lucky for us, Daisy Berkowitz later released all this stuff online.
  • The 1998 album "Mechanical Animals" was supposed to be a total collaboration with The Smashing Pumpkins. Seriously. It sadly never happened, although there were a few tracks written for it.
  • Twiggy Ramirez was never supposed to leave after Holy Wood came out. He was sacked from the band after he grew a beard, which clashed with how Manson's planned look for The Golden Age of Grotesque.
  • After seeing the video for "The Beautiful People", David Bowie wanted to work with Manson, but nothing ever came of it.
  • Two songs were cut from Born Villain for time reasons. There was supposed to be a special edition with new art and those songs, but Manson never did it, and as he's his own label now, nobody made him.
  • Manson's first recorded song is a rap song called "No Class/Styrofoam Raps". Imagine if Manson ended up being the first edgy popular white rapper instead of Eminem.
  • Additionally, there was supposed to be the "Triptych Tour", in which Manson was to play his three concept albums, Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death), Mechanical Animals and Antichrist Superstar (they were released in opposite order, but the three go in that order for the story as they're all concept albums), in their entirety, live. However, this never happened because four hour long shows are insane and a bad plan.
  • J-Devil, aka Jonathan Davis of Korn, was supposed to be the opening act for Manson and Rob Zombie's Twins of Evil tour.
  • Marilyn Manson and Shirley Manson of Garbage recorded a song together, but it was never released.
  • Marilyn Manson has said that Nirvana is the only grunge band he thinks is good and he wishes that Kurt Cobain was alive, because he would have loved to work with him. Imagine two of the biggest rock stars of the 1990s, working together on anything.
  • Twiggy Ramirez joined the band because their previous bassist, Gidget Gein, had a non-fatal heroin overdose in 1993. Ramirez left his then-current band, Amboog-a-Lard, while they were recording their debut album. Had he not, Amboog-a-Lard may have went somewhere. Additionally, he discontinued his band Goon Moon in 2008 to rejoin Marilyn Manson. He also used to date Courtney Love, which he considers a huge mistake and is deeply embarrassed by. Gidget, meanwhile, died of another OD in 2009.
  • Had Manson listened to the warnings given to him by everyone that knew him, he would have never married Dita von Teese. Had this happened, the "Celebritarian Era" wouldn't have been scrapped, and Eat Me, Drink Me, The High End of Low, Born Villain and the next album would have never happened, nor would have his relationship with Evan Rachel Wood, so he wouldn't have "aged" (actually scars, not wrinkles, from cutting on Christmas, one for every unanswered phone call to her that day in 2007, equaling 158) so suddenly or gained weight (he's a stress eater and, as he's not a cokehead anymore, he doesn't just drop pounds).
  • Marilyn Manson wanted to play Willy Wonka in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but didn't get the role. Johnny Depp, however, based his portrayal on his best friend since the 1980s... Marilyn Manson.
  • A relatively minor one, but in 1998, Marilyn Manson was asked to appear on the Depeche Mode tribute album For The Masses, and intended to cover "Personal Jesus". Due to scheduling conflicts, this didn't happen... but in 2004, a version of the song was recorded for the Greatest Hits Album Lest We Forget. Since the lineup of the band had changed significantly over the course of six years, a "Personal Jesus" cover recorded around the same time as Mechanical Animals might have sounded different from the one that was eventually released.
• Merle Haggard: The former ex-convict-turned-country-music-superstar was almost talked into escaping prison with a fellow inmate, Jimmy "Rabbit" Hendricks" (as Haggard was serving 2-1/2 years for burglary). Haggard declined but Hendricks made good on his plans, and during a subsequent crime spree, killed a California Highway Patrol state trooper. Had Haggard tagged along, instead of turning a promising talent into a legendary career would have likely been serving a life sentence or perhaps sent to death row for being an accessory to murder. As it was, Hendricks was captured and eventually sentenced to death for the murder. Haggard reflected on his friendship with Hendricks and wrote the haunting "Sing Me Back Home," which became one of his best-known hits.
• According to Lana Del Rey, her song "Brooklyn Baby" was originally a duet with Lou Reed, but Reed died before he could record his part.
• Weezer's second album was originally going to be an ambitious Rock Opera with a science fiction backdrop, entitled Songs From The Black Hole. It was hinted that this was scrapped because Matt Sharp's side project The Rentals released their debut first, and the two albums would have sounded too similar to each other due to prominent use of moog and female vocals. Some of the material intended for Songs From The Black Hole worked well enough out of context to become Pinkerton album tracks ("Tired of Sex", "Getchoo", "No Other One" and "Why Bother?") or b-sides - For instance the b-side "I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams" was meant to be sung by a female character in the story, which is why the officially released version had Rachel Haden on lead vocals. The rest of the material was never recorded by the band, though it was all sketched out in home demo form by Rivers Cuomo. These demos are being gradually portioned out in Rivers Cuomo's Alone solo releases, and for a spell he even took to posting lyrics and sheet music to unheard songs from the project online so fans can do their own versions.
  • In general, Rivers Cuomo seems to have a habit of building up a lot of material before an album, then ultimately rejecting most of it and starting anew, but at least fans often get to hear the songs: During a 2000 summer tour, they were playing fourteen new songs, only three of which ultimately ended up on an album ("Hash Pipe" on The Green Album and "Dope Nose" and "Slob" on Maladroit). Similarly, leading up to Maladroit and Make Believe, the band were posting MP3's of demos to their official website: A lot of the posted songs weren't on Maladroit and none of them were on Make Believe.
    • The band were reportedly discussing a guest appearance by Axl Rose on "Mo' Beats", an unusually Rap Rock-influenced pre-Make Believe demo. "Mo' Beats" was among the demos that the band leaked online, but of course this was a version without Axl.
  • Homie was supposed to be a side-project for Rivers Cuomo: Many songs intended as Homie material were played live by his other side project The Rivers Cuomo Band, but only "American Girls" ever officially saw release, and that was actually performed by an entirely different lineup than the album was going to have.
  • Spike Jonze had Weezer record a version of "Happy Together" by The Turtles for Adaptation., but rejected it in favor of the original because it was "too sad". They were playing a version of the song live around the same time, but all signs point to this being an entirely different arrangement. The band re-recorded "Happy Together" for The Teal Album in 2019.
  • When asked for material to give Ozzy Osbourne for an album in 2000, Rivers offered a demo version of "Hash Pipe", later to become the lead-off single for Weezer's 2001 self-titled album - "Hash Pipe" had a more heavy metal / hard rock feel than anything Weezer had released up to that point, which is why they thought of giving it to someone else.
  • Conversely, Rivers wrote and sang the hook for "Magic" by rapper B.O.B., but had originally written it as a Weezer song. Weezer's "Angel And The One", which was technically released first, even uses "I got the magic in me" as a recycled lyric.
• Pink Floyd originally planned their followup to The Dark Side of the Moon to be something called Household Objects where they would play things like saucers and pieces of string as instruments. They abandoned it after only a few recordings, with the only recording making it onto Wish You Were Here (1975) being the recording of tuned wine glasses that appears at the beginning of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". Another possible follow up to Dark Side was the soundtrack to an Alejandro Jodorowsky-helmed Dune film that never saw the light of day.
  • The Immersion boxed sets from 2011 feature several pieces from the Household Objects sessions. The wine glasses piece (under the title "Wine Glasses") appears on the WYWH box and another track called "The Hard Way" appears on the ''Dark Side" box set. A third track, title unknown, has yet to see release.
  • Alan Parsons later explained in a radio interview that the main reason the Household Objects idea was dropped was that after three or four months of work in the studio, they had less than two minutes of usable material to show for it, and quickly concluded that if this kept up they would all go mad long before they could finish a single track, let alone an entire album.
  • Later on, Roger Waters' original plans and demos for the epic The Wall included the album filling out three LP's and a worldwide tour in "a giant inflatable slug", according to Nick Mason's book on his time in the band, Inside Out. Ultimately, due to financial reasons and the sheer insanity of Waters' ambitions, the album's length was cut by a third and the tour only consisted of a string of residencies in New York City, Los Angeles, and London (which still ended up losing the band money because of the previously-unheard-of expense of the shows).
    • Waters presented a very long acoustic guitar demo of songs he was gathering from 1978-79 featuring two projects: The Wall and The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking. The band were in serious debt as their managers squandered all their money and the band was living as tax exiles. As their next project was to be do-or-die, they felt The Wall had more commercial potential. The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking wound up becoming Waters' debut solo album.
    • Pink Floyd went in the studio in 1982 to record new songs for the movie version of The Wall. When new music wasn't needed, Pink Floyd intended to release a project called Spare Bricks featuring unused Wall tracks. The Falklands War inspired Waters to write the next Floyd album, The Final Cut, incorporating Spare Bricks.
  • While the band (minus Roger Waters) was recording A Momentary Lapse of Reason, producer Bob Ezrin suggested that they would rap some of the lyrics. That Is All.
  • Syd Barrett wanted to bring a saxophonist and 2 girl singers into the band.
• Freddie Mercury had a lot of those: in mid-70's, there'd been plans for a singing trio called Nose, Teeth and Hair including Elton John, himself and Rod Stewart, but it never happened (he once jokingly stated they could never agree on the order of the words). He'd also been scheduled to appear on Thriller and to sing with Michael on "State of Shock" (there's even a demo of the latter) as well as doing the title track of the Victory album (which remains unreleased). Freddie was replaced by Mick Jagger for the final recording. Michael was supposed to guest on Freddie's solo song There Must Be More to Life Than This (again, there's a surviving demo).
  • Speaking of Queen: "Another One Bites the Dust" was supposed to be about cowboys (there's also a legend that John wrote it for MJ, but it's a lie), "Prophet's Song" was supposed to be a guitar extravaganza, not a vocal one, "Procession" was to include timpani and orchestral cymbals, etc.
  • As Brian May and Roger Taylor have observed, there are also numerous tracks from The Miracle and Innuendo which would have been good Audience Participation Songs if Freddie hadn't become too sick to perform live by 1989. As well as that, there was the persistent rumour in the mid-nineties that George Michael could be the new singer for Queen.
  • Brian May has expressed regret for not pushing for releasing a Highlander soundtrack album instead of A Kind of Magic and has stated that he hopes to put together an album featuring Michael Kamen's score as well as the songs recorded by Queen.
• Lynyrd Skynyrd was effectively struck down in their prime due to a plane crash that killed lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, backup singer Cassie Gaines, and three other people (two pilots and a tour manager), and left many of the others with lasting physical and psychological damage; while some of the surviving band members did try to put some semblance of the band back together, it was never the same. Who knows what the band might have gone on to become had that plane landed safely at its destination.
• Michael Jackson's song "Is It Scary" was recorded in 1993 as a tie-in to Addams Family Values, complete with a video (with a plot he hashed out with Stephen King) in which he faced a Torches and Pitchforks mob. The video made it to the editing stage, but due to contractual difficulties the release was cancelled. He revived and refilmed the project in 1997 as the 38-minute video Ghosts, which added two more songs and dropped the Addams Family tie-in.
  • His death prevented his This Is It tour from being finalized, with the film of the same title consisting of rehearsals and special effects footage prepared for them. An interesting What Could Have Been question is whether he would have completed the run of 50 shows had he lived, given his tendency to not fulfill contracts and obligations. Had he failed to do so, the fallout would likely have been catastrophic, given that it was a last-ditch effort to salvage his finances.
  • Thriller was originally called Starlight.
  • MJ's song "Bad" from Bad was originally supposed to be a duet with Prince. Rumored explanations for why Prince didn't participate abound: he felt the song was excellent with just Michael singing; he wasn't terribly enamored of the song's opening line, "Your butt is mine..."; he knew a duet would make it obvious to all audiences that Jackson was significantly taller than him, etc.
  • Michael Jackson and Run–D.M.C. worked on a number for 1987's Bad, "Crack Kills", but it didn't pan out. Christopher Andersen's biography Michael Jackson Unauthorized claims that the two entities lacked chemistry together, while Joe Vogel's Man in the Music claims that Jackson was worried that rap would never catch on. Quincy Jones' comments on the making of the album support the latter explanation.
  • Jackson tried to enlist first Barbra Streisand, then Whitney Houston, for the duet "I Just Can't Stop Loving You".
  • Decade, a Greatest Hits Album with some new tracks, was supposed to be his first album after Bad. Putting the project on ice had disastrous consequences for an endorsement deal he'd inked with shoe company L.A. Gear: They launched a Jackson-branded shoe at the time the album was supposed to come out. Since he wasn't on the minds of potential buyers, the shoes flopped.
  • "In the Closet" from Dangerous (Album) was originally planned as a duet with Madonna. The story given in Michael Jackson Unauthorized is that she pressed him to write a genuinely sexy, erotic song, and this was what he came up with — when she heard it, she was appalled by its quality and turned it down flat.
  • Jackson was rehearsing a special for HBO, One Night Only, in late 1995 when he collapsed and had to go to the hospital days before it was supposed to be taped; although the show had been widely advertised and he later claimed he was thinking about restaging it in South Africa, it never came to pass.
  • In her Oprah interview, J. K. Rowling revealed Jackson once approached her, wanting to do a musical version of Harry Potter. She turned that down.
  • After he was declared not guilty of child molestation and related crimes in 2005, he tried to get on the bill of the Live 8 charity concert later that summer, but was turned down.
  • In the oral history I Want My MTV, director Tarsem Singh recounts meeting with Michael Jackson, who wanted him to direct one of his videos in The '90s. Singh was so alarmed by Jackson's face that he came up with a concept where Jackson would be behind a tree the whole time, with the viewer only seeing his arms and legs in motion. Jackson didn't get it, so it didn't work out.
• Entirely averted by Johannes Brahms, who burned all the drafts of his music before publication.
• The Beatles
  • "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" were recorded in Sgt. Pepper sessions and planned to release them on the album. However, the record company wanted a new single in the meantime. The Beatles didn't release singles prior to them appearing on an album, so they were left off. George Martin later viewed this as a mistake. And he was quite right.
  • In fact, "Strawberry Fields Forever" stopped another What Could Have Been: The Beach Boys' album Smile. Brian Wilson worked so hard on the album, which was supposed to be like "Good Vibrations" except much, much more...and then he heard the Beatles' song in his car and halted work on the project. This also might have been one of the causes of Brian Wilson's mental issues. In 2004, Wilson released a newly recorded solo version of the album which was critically adored. What was recorded of the actual Beach Boys version was released in November 2011, roughly 45 years after its initial planned release.
  • Pete Best's ENTIRE LIFE can basically be summed up by this trope.
    • Ditto Stu Sutcliffe. Although he died less than a year after leaving the band.
  • John Lennon originally wanted to make Billy Preston a full-fledged member of the band after his affable personality in the studio greatly smoothed troubled waters. Harrison and Starr were perfectly willing to add him, but McCartney pointed out that it was hard enough to come to decisions with four of them, let alone a fifth.
  • Let It Be was originally supposed to be a return to the band's original sound, recorded alongside a documentary, and culminating as a live album. Instead, the documentary was less of the creation of an album and more the end of a band, the live show was filmed on a rooftop, and the tapes were given to Phil Spector, who added strings and his trademark lush sound.
  • Let it Be... Naked is Paul McCartney's reworking of the album that removes the Spector element.
  • The B-side of the "Help!" single was originally intended to be a song called "Eight Arms To Hold You." It went unrecorded, demo or otherwise, so "I'm Down" was quickly made to replace it.
  • For 1971's The Concert for Bangladesh, the original plan included having all the Beatles join George Harrison, reuniting in concert. Out of the remaining three, only Ringo Starr accepted; Paul still had lingering bad feelings from the legal ramifications of the breakup, and John backed out at the last minute, supposedly after getting into an argument with Yoko Ono. While all four of them were still alive, they've all contributed to two of Ringo's albums, albeit not in the same sessions.
• Back in 1980, Paul McCartney spoke to John Lennon about doing a new song together for the Christmas charts of that year, but the recording studio they where going to use was fully booked. John stayed in New York that year, essentially providing the opportunity for his murder to happen.
• An interesting version of What Might Not Have Been: If a stomach injury hadn't killed Till Lindemann's potential Olympic swimming career, Rammstein might never have formed.
  • In a similar vein, Robert Schumann would have spent more time performing on piano and less time composing if he hadn't injured his finger in an effort to make it more flexible.
• Patty Smyth almost became the lead singer of Van Halen but decided not to accept the offer due to her being pregnant at the time.
  • According to Valerie Bertinelli (Word Of Wifey?), Eddie Van Halen wanted Patty as VH's new lead singer (he even made a few live appearances with her band, Scandal), but Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony voted against it.
  • Smyth was Eddie's first choice. But he also had talks with a wide array of potential vocalists such as Ozzy Osbourne, Steve Perry of Journey, Darryl Hall of Hall and Oates and Sebastian Bach of Skid Row. He didn't even consider eventual pick Sammy Hagar until his mechanic (who was also Hagar's mechanic) suggested him.
  • In 2000, there was an attempt at reuniting the original line-up on studio, only for complications with David Lee Roth to ruin things. (this was the last time all four men got together again, as it was followed by a "Van Hagar" reunion and Roth rejoining with Wolfgang Van Halen replacing Michael Anthony) Some of the resulting demos were dug up to be reworked for A Different Kind of Truth a decade later.
  • In 2020, Van Halen were considering a "kitchen-sink" reunion tour with Sammy Hagar, Gary Cherone, and Michael Anthony rotating their respective vocalist and bassist duties with David Lee Roth and Wolfgang Van Halen. Sadly, in October Eddie Van Halen succumbed to an insurmountable and permanent state of contractual obligations commonly known as death.
• Barry White claimed in a mid-90s interview that he and Marvin Gaye had been planning to collaborate on an album before the latter's untimely death. Such a record would likely have kickstarted another baby boom.
• Following the end of TheYardbirds, Jimmy Page scouted for singers in the new band he was forming. One candidate was Steve Marriott, frontman for TheSmallFaces. The Small Faces' manager, Don Arden, responded by asking Page if he wanted to play guitar with ten broken fingers. After another candidate, Terry Reid, turned Page down, he recruited Robert Plant, and the resulting band was known to the world as LedZeppelin.
• Hendrix, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, anyone? By 1970, when Keith Emerson and Greg Lake were looking to complete their lineup, Jimi Hendrix was tired of the whole Experience thing and looking for something different. He started discussions with them after they tried to headhunt his drummer (they later recruited Carl Palmer from Atomic Rooster). We can only speculate where things might have lead if Jimi hadn't died soon afterward.
  • Allegedly, John Paul Jones also tried to recruit Greg Lake as a keyboardist.
  • There are reports that ELP tried to recruit Trevor Rabin for a new album in the mid-90's, shortly after he left Yes. Rabin presumably turned this down to pursue a career in film scoring.
• Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine once offered Dimebag Darrell Abbot a spot in the band as lead guitarist. Dimebag turned it down, as he wouldn't play without his brother, Vinnie Paul Abbot, and the position of drummer in Megadeth was already filled. Dime and Vinnie Paul carried on with their own band, Pantera, who is often named as the only band that carried heavy metal through the days of grunge.
  • Also, Dave Mustaine and Cliff Burton remained good friends even after Mustaine was fired from Metallica. While unlikely, it's theoretically possible that Mustaine could have convinced Cliff to quit Metallica and play for Megadeth. This, plus the above possible inclusion of Dimebag and Vinnie Paul, would have resulted in quite possibly the greatest metal band ever.
  • On the subject of Cliff Burton, one must wonder how far into the Progressive Metal direction he was leading Metallica in would they have traveled had he not died in a literal Bus Crash.
  • Metallica originally wanted John Bush to be their vocalist, but he declined since his band Armored Saint was essentially made up of his childhood friends (he did later answer Anthrax's call after losing Joey Belladonna).
  • Before Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction was released, Slash spent a lot of time hanging out with Mustaine. They smoked crack and wrote music and Slash joining Megadeth was a serious possibility for a brief period of time.
  • An unknown but highly talented teenaged guitarist from Wisconsin auditioned for Megadeth shortly after Jeff Young was thrown out; while impressed by his performance, Mustaine felt that he was too young and had too little life experience to be a wise choice, and so he had no choice but to turn him down and wish him luck with his future endeavors. That guitarist's name? Jeff Loomis.
  • After Burton's death, Les Claypool auditioned to play bass with Metallica. James Hetfield would later say he didn't get the job because "he was too good" and "should do his own thing". Les' distinctive Funk Metal style and joking suggestion that after his audition they should "jam on some Isley Brothers tunes" didn't jibe well with Metallica. That said, Les did end up briefly joining a bay area metal band: he played on Blind Illusion's 1988 album The Sane Asylum alongside future Primus guitarist Larry LaLonde.
  • Whilst not being tragic a loss to the history musically, it recently came up in interviews that Hulk Hogan attempted to audition for the part. Even more surreal is the fact he later tried to do the same with The Rolling Stones.
  • Also on Metallica, there are two originals from S&M ("No Leaf Clover", "Minus Human") and a soundtrack song called "I Disappear" which show an interesting future. But then came Napster, Jason Newsted's departure, and the mother of all Creator Breakdowns...
  • The Garage Inc. liner notes revealed Metallica had considered three songs to cover on Garage Days Re-Revisited, Bow Wow's "Signal Fire", Gaskin's "I'm No Fool", and one that the band was actually trying to learn, Paralex's "White Lightning", when Kirk Hammett started playing the riff to "The Wait" and the others decided to go along with that Killing Joke song.
• Anthrax's comedic rap metal crossover "I'm the Man" was, according to a Songfacts interview with drummer Charlie Benante, supposed to be a collaboration with the Beastie Boys. Unfortunately, the two groups were never able to meet as the Beasties' popularity increased and their schedules filled up really quickly.
• X Japan has a lot of these:
  • What if the band hadn't been (allegedly) sued by the American band X in their first attempt to break into the US rock scene in 1991? Would they have been dismissed as just another hair metal flash in the pan (and one that couldn't sing in the best English at the time)?, Would their American career still be hampered by confusion with the American band, who were still fairly popular? Would they have been absorbed into the American metal scene of the time as it was about to tank?, or would they have somehow overcome the language barrier and would Visual Kei have began to develop in America 10 to 14 years before it actually ended up doing so?
  • What if Taiji Sawada hadn't been kicked out of the band in 1992 and had stayed on as the bassist?
  • What if they had been able to debut Art of Life at Madison Square Garden?
  • What if Taiji's solo career had been as overwhelmingly successful as hide's? Or hide's failed as badly as Taiji's?
  • What if hide had lived rather than died in 1998, and what if, had he lived, he had gone on to front X Japan as the vocalist replacing Toshi in 2000, as had been planned?
  • What if Miyavi had been chosen as the new lead guitarist rather than Sugizo?
  • What if Toshi had gotten free from Home of Heart earlier? Or for a more horrific version, what if he had not gotten free from Home of Heart...
  • What if Taiji had lived and came back to the band, and they'd become a double bassist band? The band's only glimpse of this, with him at Yokohama in 2010, was one of their best shows since reuniting...
• After Parsifal, Richard Wagner planned to spend the rest of his life composing symphonies. Unfortunately, he did not live that long.
• Several future music notables auditioned for The Monkees, including Stephen Stills (who recommended his buddy/lookalike Peter Tork), Danny Hutton (of Three Dog Night), Paul Williams (who would later compose the flopped Monkees single "Someday Man") and Van Dyke Parks. The urban legend that Charles Manson auditioned isn't true, though. He was in prison at the time. Stills figures into another What Could Have Been scenario with The Monkees: Peter Tork asked him if he wanted to produce their Headquarters album and he agreed, but they found out that Michael Nesmith had beaten them to it by hiring Chip Douglas.
  • About Charlie Manson: He did actually want to get into music, and even wrote and recorded a song with the Beach Boys. The Boys' producer Terry Melcher turned him down, but his song was later retitled and submitted on an album. In fact, Charlie murdered Sharon Tate and co. as a twisted revenge ploy against Melcher since Sharon was living in Melcher's former house. (All this generates more What Could Have Been speculation regarding Sharon Tate. Nice going, Charlie.)
  • The Monkees were later offered the chance to record "Sugar Sugar", but collectively hated the song and refused. This is a claim backed by the group's then-manager, Don Kirshner, who claimed Nesmith so hated the song, he put his fist through a hotel wall in defiance. The claim is denied by the song's co-writer, Jeff Barry, who says the song hadn't even been written yet, at the time Kirshner says the incident went down.
• There's a deleted scene from the They Might Be Giants documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns discussing the possibility that Elvis Costello might have produced the Apollo 18 album. Depending on who you want to believe, either Costello accepted the offer only to have the Johns change their mind, or the Johns briefly tossed out the idea but weren't really serious about it and their record label misunderstood them.
  • The band had originally intended Joe Strummer of The Clash to sing on the bridge of "Cyclops Rock", but for some reason or another, Strummer wasn't able to make it to the studio on time. The band instead asked Catatonia singer Cerys Matthews (who was recording elsewhere in the studio) to sing it instead.
  • There were plans in the late 90's for a compilation called Superfueled Freaksickle - it basically would have compiled their Elektra-era B Sides the way Miscellaneous T did for the b-sides from first two albums. John Flansburgh claims it was axed because they didn't think there would be much fan interest, as well as citing concerns about "flooding the market" (both this album and the two disc compilation Then: The Earlier Years would have been released in the same year). Now that TMBG are no longer recording for the Elektra label, a belated official release seems pretty unlikely. However, fans have put together track-lists and artwork to make it easier for one to track down the material themselves and make their own version of the album.
• Green Day had recorded an entire album, Cigarettes and Valentines. Then the master tracks got stolen. They decided not to recreate the thing, instead creating their New Sound Album American Idiot.
• How Black Sabbath's second album came to be called Paranoid is complicated. The band originally wanted the album to be titled War Pigs, named for the first track of the album and explaining why the cover art has a knight with a pig mask sporting a sword and shield. What happened after that has been under debate. In some accounts, both Vertigo Records (the Sabs' British label) and Warner (Bros.) Records (their US label) were worried that the title and lyrical content would provoke supporters of The Vietnam War, which was still going on at the time of release, thus killing any hopes of the record selling well. However, Ozzy Osbourne disputes that legend, instead insisting that both labels felt that "Paranoid" would be a more marketable title than "War Pigs," as the namesake single had been selling in exceptional numbers. Either way, the deadline had already passed to make any changes to the album artwork, much to the band's disgust.
  • When Ronnie James Dio first left the group in the early eighties, Tony Iommi received demo tapes from various singers looking to join the group - according to him, one such applicant was Michael Bolton; however, while Bolton does have a background in singing Hard Rock, he's denied the story. Sabbath's Geezer Butler has also said he has no recollection of this happening and suggested Iommi had been joking.
• In the months before John Lennon's death, The Beatles had been teasing in interviews about the band reuniting for a Reunion Tour. That's right, the Beatles were planning to reunite in 1980. Then along came some arsehole who read The Catcher in the Rye way too much...
  • According to one urban legend, when Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles $3000 to appear on Saturday Night Live (and later sweetened the pot to $3200) John Lennon and Paul McCartney actually considered taking him up on his offer. Blogger MightyGodKing provided a detailed speculation of what might have happened if the Beatles had reunited on SNL. Among other things, The Beatles agreed to appear on an episode of The Muppet Show during its fifth season and spent much of December 1980 in London where the show was produced. Not only did his being in London avert Lennon's assassination, but working with the Beatles revived Jim Henson's creative juices; instead of going off the air that year, the Muppet Show would go on for a total of 12 seasons. What could have been indeed!
  • There is evidence that Mark David Chapman considered murdering David Bowie, performing in The Elephant Man on Broadway at the time. He apparently made a choice between killing Bowie or Lennon — what if he'd gone with the former? Or much worse, decided to kill both men?
• In the late '80s, there was talk of youngest Gibb brother Andy Gibb joining The Bee Gees, making them a quartet for the first time since their late 60s harmonic rock period. Andy's untimely death at the age of 30 in 1988 meant this would never come to pass.
• Sufjan Stevens' album Illinois! was originally conceived as a double album, but he scaled it down to one disc pretty early in the creative process. He ended up releasing all the unused songs on The Avalanche anyway, but one can't help but imagine what the double-album version would have been like: How would all the songs been arranged as a cohesive whole? What would the Avalanche tracks have sounded like with all the musicians from the Illinois sessions playing them? (It probably wouldn't have had three different versions of "Chicago" on one disc.)
  • Following the release of Illinois, Stevens said he would continue his 50 States Project with a third volume, focusing on either Oregon or Rhode Island. This never came to fruition, and Stevens later claimed he only intended to do albums on Michigan and Illinois.
• Around 1989, before Oasis formed, Noel Gallagher had auditioned to become the vocalist for fellow Manchester band Inspiral Carpets after original lead singer Stephen Holt left. Gallagher was rejected in favour of Tom Hingley, but he worked as a roadie for them for the next two years.
• Lady Gaga:
  • As shown here, a then-unknown college girl named Stefani Germanotta had a chance to be the next Sara Bareilles or Norah Jones. She turned it down in favor of taking a ride on your disco stick, having a puh-puh-puh-poker face you can't read, following you until you love her, wanting your love, and wanting your revenge.
  • She also worked with Britney Spears on two or three songs for her Circus album. These where cancelled or left to become b-sides (Amnesia). "Telephone" ended up on The Fame Monster.
  • Michael Jackson wanted to work with her before he died.
  • The Fame Kills was a cancelled tour that would've featured Kanye West.
  • "The Edge Of Glory" had a cancelled music video.
  • Just Dance was supposed to be a rock song.
  • She recorded two albums' worth of material for her 2013 album Artpop and planned it to be a two-part album with the second part coming out in 2014 but due to the album not being a big hit like her previous albums as well as collaborating with Tony Bennett on the album Cheek to Cheek, the second part's planned release was scrapped as a result.
  • Just as her career was taking off, Gaga wanted to collaborate with Calvin Harris, who declined and felt her stage name was ridiculous.
• Ronnie James Dio had plans to make a sequel to his 2000 album Magica, but had opted to temporarily put it on the back burner when he was reinvited to Black Sabbath so he put his entire focus on The Devil You Know. Unfortunately, this will never happen for obvious reasons.
• Saint Etienne's Foxbase Beta (a remix/re-recorded album of their debut album Foxbase Alpha) bears this as an actual credit (What Could Have Been: Brian Cant). Richard X, who was remixing (or as he put it, re-producing) the album, wanted children's television presenter Brian Cant to do some narration, but it never happened.
• Another example of What Might Not Have Been: If Waylon Jennings had not graciously given up his plane seat to a sick Big Bopper, country music would not have been the same.
  • Had Ritchie Valens survived, we could have had a Hispanic Revolution instead of a British one in the sixties.
• Martina McBride has said that she thinks her breakthrough album The Way That I Am would've been even more successful had "Strangers" been released after her Signature Song "Independence Day" instead of the back-to-back duds "Heart Trouble" and "Where I Used to Have a Heart." She even included "Strangers" on her Greatest Hits Album.
• Jason Aldean:
  • He was briefly signed to Capitol Records in 2001 but never released anything. Would he have been able to find his style in a time when the landscape of country music was considerably different?
  • Barely averted with his second album Relentless The studio where he recorded the album caught fire, but stopped before reaching the room where the masters were stored.
• After Greg Lake left King Crimson, among those auditioning as the band's new lead singer were several (then-) unknowns: Yes singer Jon Anderson, future Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry and a session pianist and struggling songwriter known professionally as Elton John. The part was eventually given to singer-songwriter Gordon Haskell, but Anderson gives us a peep of what it could have been like, he sings on "Prince Rupert Awakes" from the resulting album, Lizard.
  • Furthermore, while they were taking In the Court of the Crimson King on tour, Robert Fripp actually offered to resign from the group to settle the creative bustups they were having. But Michael Giles and Ian McDonald rejected this offer and resigned themselves. Also, Greg Lake actually quit to join ELP before recording started on In the Wake of Poseidon, and appeared on the album as a session vocalist only. So if Giles or McDonald had accepted Fripp's resignation, Anderson, Ferry or Elton could have ended up running King Crimson.
  • That wasn't the first time Fripp had played chicken with What Might Not Have Been. He joined Crimson precursor Giles, Giles and Fripp after responding to an ad for an organ-playing vocalist - Fripp could do neither, but they took him on anyway because nobody else turned up. Later, when he recommended his friend Greg Lake to the band, he suggested that Lake replace either himself or Peter Giles - Giles, while seeing this as a political manoeuvre by Fripp, opted to leave anyway, disillusioned by lack of success.
  • Elton John also auditioned to be Gentle Giant's vocalist, but was turned down again.
  • In 1974, Ian McDonald attempted to return to King Crimson and played on few tracks on album Red. One can only wonder, how the Crimsos would have progressed from there if Fripp didn't nuke the band.
    • In fact, Fripp didn't even want to disband in the first place. He had been going through a spiritual crisis at the time, which affected the recording of Red (he largely took a backseat during the sessions, leaving John Wetton and Bill Bruford to run the show). He intended to depart the band after the album's completion, suggesting Steve Hackett of Genesis as his replacement alongside the returning McDonald (who would have filled in for both Fripp and the recently-departed David Cross). Management did not want a Frippless Crimson, so the group instead disbanded entirely.
  • After Robert Fripp produced Daryl Hall's Sacred Songs solo album in 1978, he was so impressed by Hall's voice and versatility that he asked Hall to be the lead singer of Discipline, a project he was putting together that would eventually evolve into the 1980s iteration of King Crimson. Hall was more interested in sticking with Hall & Oates, though. So imagine life with Daryl, instead of Adrian Belew, as the lead singer of King Crimson — what musical direction the band would've taken with a blue-eyed soul guy in front, as well as having Hall & Oates miss out on their most commercially successful period (which began in 1980 and reached its acme in 1983 ["Maneater", "One on One", "Adult Education", "Say It Isn't So"]).
  • The 1980s quartet (Fripp, Belew, Bruford, and Tony Levin) recorded an album in January 1983, but this attempt was shelved and the recordings went unreleased until The Champaign–Urbana Sessions in 2002 (with two additional tracks included on the "Fragmented" disc of 2016's On (and Off) the Road box set). Notably, none of this material would appear on Three of a Perfect Pair—recorded at the end of '83—or even be played live at any point.
  • Similarly, the "Double Trio" lineup of the '90s (the above quartet plus Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto) attempted to record a followup to THRAK in 1997, but tensions (mainly between Fripp and Bruford) led to the band aborting the attempt and instead "fraKctalising" into the four improvisational "ProjeKct" subgroups (with ProjeKct One being Bruford's final involvement with the band). The unused material was released as Nashville Rehearsals in 2000.
  • Speaking of the ProjeKcts, a KC show in Alexandria, Virginia, on 3 March 2003 had to be cancelled due to Adrian Belew suddenly falling ill that night. However, rather than cancel the event outright, the band decided to offer attendees two choices: get a refund, or witness the brief revival of ProjeKct Three (Fripp, Gunn, Mastelotto), which had previously only played five shows in '99. The result was a special, improvised show that even included a Q&A session at the end.
  • In 2006 Fripp mentioned plans for a ProjeKct Five, which would have been distinct from the then-current lineup of him, Belew, Levin, and Mastelotto. Despite nothing ever coming of these plans, the next subgroup was still titled ProjeKct Six (which was Fripp and Belew opening for Porcupine Tree later that year), and nothing about the mysterious P5 was ever elaborated upon in the future.
  • Yes wanted Fripp to be their new guitarist after Peter Banks was fired in mid-1970. He turned the gig down. Additionally, he was also rumored to be Genesis's new guitarist after Steve Hackett left in 1978.
• Continuing on with Yes, Vangelis was offered a spot in the group. However, he turned it down to go solo. Had he accepted, we probably would have never gotten the scores to Chariots of Fire or Blade Runner.
  • It probably would have also resulted in a very different Yes, if his album 666 is any indication.
    • It seems he failed to get the gig because he spent most of his audition time playing percussion instruments. The band opted for Swiss keysman Patrick Moraz instead.
    • He might also have been done with bands altogether after what happened to Aphrodite's Child even though Yes would have been a band that he wouldn't have had to drag into Prog Rock.
  • At least he did occasionally collab with Jon Anderson. The latter appeared as a credited singer before they formed the on-and-off synthpop supergroup Jon & Vangelis. Albums like The Friends Of Mr Cairo may give you a remote idea how Yes may have sounded with Vangelis.
  • Also auditioning, albeit much later (for 90125), were Eddie Jobson (Curved Air, Roxy Music) and Ken Elliott (Seventh Wave). Jobson was actually briefly in the band, and can be seen in the original (long) edit of the “Owner of a Lonely Heart” music video.
• Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" was originally written with The Ramones in mind. His manager Jon Landau convinced him to record and release it himself, in part because Springsteen compositions had been hits for other artists in the past ("Blinded by the Light" for Manfred Mann's Earth Band and "Because the Night" for Patti Smith) and Landau was annoyed that Springsteen kept giving his best songs away. "Hungry Heart" indeed became a hit for Springsteen, and one wonders if it would have become one for the Ramones - who never had a Top 40 hit - had they gotten a chance to record it.
  • He also wrote a song for the first Harry Potter film called "I'll Stand By You Always", inspired by his reading the books to his son, but J.K. Rowling made a stipulation not to use any commercial songs in the movie so it was never released until the 2019 movie Blinded by the Light, where it was called "I'll Stand by You."
• Beck was originally slated to sing on one track of the Melvins' The Crybaby - next to tool he would have been the biggest name on the guest-appearance-heavy album. Beck reportedly expressed interest in doing it ^note he's apparently somewhat of a fan, as he sampled The Melvins' "Hog Leg" in "Beercan" and got Buzz Osborne to make a cameo in the video, but some record label issues prevented the collaboration from happening.
• Memphis Soul managed to survive the death of Otis Redding and the original Bar-Kays, thanks largely to the Wattstax event (which was the national debut for the new Bar-Kays). But Al Green's leaving the industry to dedicate himself to the church seemed to rip the soul (pun not intended) out of the city's music industry and Memphis Soul never regained its prominence.
  • Around the time of his death, Otis Redding was supposedly planning a Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds-style album consisting of songs in the mould of "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay". If this had gone ahead, it's entirely possible that soul might not have lost as much ground to funk in the 1970s.
• The supergroup that was formed to portray the wizarding group The Weird Sisters in the film version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire- which included members of Pulp and Radiohead - originally planned an entire album of in-universe music rather than the two songs they provided for the soundtrack. Alas, an obscure real-life group from Canada named the Wyrd Sisters took issue, claiming that Warner Bros. legal department wrote to them, asking them to sign an agreement regarding the fictional group's name in exchange for (initially) CAD$5000, and the idea had to be scrapped.
• Billy Corgan was once working on backing music for a Shaquille O'Neal rap album (At his own publisher's suggestion). Around the same time, David Lynch wanted a new Smashing Pumpkins song for Lost Highway, but didn't like their original contribution, "Tear". So Corgan took the electronic instrumental he intended to submit to the Shaq album, built it into a more-electronic-than-usual Smashing Pumpkins song, and the resulting song "Eye" appeared in Lost Highway instead. Would Adore still be a New Sound Album if "Tear" was released on the Lost Highway soundtrack and was less well received than "Eye" was? Perhaps more importantly, what on earth would "Eye" sound like with Shaq rapping over it?
• When Chris Thompson left Manfred Mann's Earth Band in 1980, several singers were auditioned to take his place. Among them: Paul Young, Graham Bonnet (who had just left Rainbow), Brian Johnson (who would later take the reins as another band's lead singer), and Huey Lewis.
• Britney Spears was going to do a Jazz/Rock singer/songwriter record called Original Doll in 2005 before it was cancelled by the record company. Fans still feel they're owed that!
  • The original concept for Britney was to be a more R&B, darker and generally more personal album called Shock Your Mind which she wrote most of the tracks except for one. Jive Records decided they'd rather have another Max Martin-focused album and nixed the idea.
  • The "Everytime" music video was supposed to feature Britney's character commit suicide instead of accidentally drowning but her record company vetoed the idea pretty quickly.
  • "Gimme More" was originally going to be a video where Britney dies and another Britney comes and laughs at her grave or funeral. Jive nixed that idea in the bud.
  • "Radar" got released due to some technicalities in the legal level making of Blackout, from the album "Circus". It was an awkward bonus track and very tacked on final single for the album.
  • One outtake of Circus, "Whiplash", was eventually recorded in 2011 by Selena Gomez + The Scene.
• "Fall to Pieces" by Velvet Revolver was a decent hit from their debut, with Scott Weiland on vocals. Apparently the song was originally going to be a Guns N' Roses song, that could have had Axl on vocals instead. It would have doubtlessly been a bigger hit if this had happened.
  • Velvet Revolver always had Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum involved, but went through a few changes before their first album, especially in the vocal department - the project evolved out of a one-off benefit show with Buckcherry members Josh Todd and Keith Nelson on vocals and guitar respectively, and both were in a few rehearsals with the band before being booted - Nelson is credited with cowriting "Dirty Little Thing" from their debut Contraband. Before ultimately hiring Scott Weiland as vocalist, auditionees included Sebastian Bach and Days Of The New's Travis Meeks - Ian Asturbury, Myles Kennedy, and Mike Patton all turned down the opportunity to audition. Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was also associated with the group for a very brief period of time.
  • Scott Weiland initially wasn't keen on joining the band because he didn't like the first demo CD Duff had given to him - evidently their early sound was more Blues Rock influenced, as Scott compared the demo to "Bad Company gone wrong". A second demo sent out a few months later was better received by Scott, and included an early version of their single "Slither".
• McFly's 5th Studio album could have been a lot different. According to one interview, a whole album's worth of songs had been written, only for them all to be scrapped, instead starting from scratch to create their New Sound Album, Above The Noise.
  • Not only that, there were plans to release a science-fiction themed album!
• In the early 80's, Slash auditioned for Poison, but was rejected. He went on to be one of the founding members of the much more successful Guns N' Roses.
• However much Creator Backlash the Beastie Boys have for the lyrical content of Licensed to Ill, imagine how much worse they'd feel about the album today if their label had let them call it Don't Be a Faggot.
  • There were originally plans for an alternate version of their instrumental album The Mix Up featuring guest vocalists on every song - rumored contributors included M.I.A. and Jarvis Cocker. This of course never ended up happening.
  • There were two scrapped Beastie Boys film projects over the years: The first would have been a 1980s slapstick Horror Comedy titled Scared Stupid - this was partially quashed by their falling out with Rick Rubin - Rick held the rights to their music at the time, so it would have ended up being a Beastie Boys movie without any of their actual music. The second was We Can Do This, which was worked on in the mid-90s, and would have sort of built off the music video for "Sabotage", in that it would be directed by that video's director (Spike Jonze) and feature the band members as multiple comedic alter-egos.
• Beck recorded a somber, acoustic folk album as his major label followup to Mellow Gold, then decided to scrap the material, collaborate with The Dust Brothers and release the much more eclectic Odelay instead. Two songs from those sessions, "Brother" and "Feather In Your Cap" saw release as b-sides, while another, "Ramshackle", actually appeared on Odelay itself. Still, the most critically and commercial successful Beck album almost didn't happen.
  • He also had the idea of getting David Eggers and Spike Jonze to do a "commentary track" for the entirety of The Information. This is what led to the recording of Eggers and Jonze having a strange conversation at the end of "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton".
• Voices: WWE The Music, Vol. 9, was originally planned to be a sequel to WWE's 2002 album WWE Anthology, titled WWE Anthology II. WWE Anthology II was going to be a three-CD set that would have had new music and alternate mixes of older material. It was also going to have unreleased music as well. Among the older material, it was reported that Demolition's theme and Slick's "Jive Soul Bro" would be included.
• After Jim Morrison's death, there was talk of Iggy Pop joining The Doors, replacing him as lead singer.
• Before Simple Minds ended up recording it, "Don't You (Forget About Me)" was shopped to Bryan Ferry, Cy Cumin from The Fixx, and Billy Idol, all of whom turned it down. Simple Minds themselves actually turned it down at first too, which is part of why it got some Creator Backlash for a while. As a nod to what could have been, Billy Idol later recorded a version in 2001 for a Greatest Hits Album.
• The Minutemen intended to put out a triple album called 3 Dudes 6 Sides 3 Studio 3 Live, which was to consist of three sides of new studio material and three sides of live songs (with the songs to be included for the live portion voted on by fans). D. Boon died in a car accident before the studio material could be recorded, so the band released the live half as Ballot Result and broke up.
• The Crystalline Effect created an EP called Do Not Open, which was leaked before official release. As a result, the EP underwent major changes (half the songs were scrapped and replaced with tracks from their forthcoming album, and it was renamed) and they had to rewrite a large amount of the next album, which became Identity.
• The Prodigy's "Narcotic Suite" could have had Ian Anderson playing flute on it. Liam Howlett had sent him a letter asking him to either play an already written part or to give permission for them to use samples of his playing. Anderson didn't see the letter until the album was already out, and in the meantime Howlett had Phil Bent play the pre-written flute part instead.
• There was a urban legend going around that N.W.A and Guns N' Roses were gonna make a song together.
• Supposedly Tupac Shakur was going to semi-retire after his contract was up with Death Row records. Afterwards he was going to release only high concept albums every few years.
• Steely Dan has a few of these:
  • For the first couple years of the band's existence, when there were still official band members other than Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, David Palmer was added as a singer (he sang lead vocals on "Dirty Work" and "Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)" from Can't Buy a Thrill). This was because Donald Fagen had terrible stage fright, and didn't want to sing in concert.
  • A ton of their demo material has been leaked, and in some cases officially released; some are early versions of songs that would appear on later albums, like "Parker's Band" and "Everyone's Gone to the Movies," while others are unique compositions. However, most of it is of varying quality. It's maddening to try to imagine what "Old Regime" or "Mock Turtle Song" would've sounded like if it was produced with the Dan's trademark studio perfectionism.
  • During the troubled production of Katy Lied, a song called Mister Sam was recorded, but due to sound processing issues wasn't considered in good enough shape to be released, and was cut from the album.
  • A version of it from the sessions was leaked and it sounds great, if a little trebly.
  • During the even more troubled production of Gaucho, a technician accidentally erased most of the master recording of the first song completed on the album, "The Second Arrangement". Attempts at re-recording were apparently unsuccessful, and to this day the song has never been performed in concert or (officially) released.
    • However, this ended up being somewhat of a good thing, as it led to the writing of "Hey Nineteen", which is regarded as a classic. Fagen noted that they threw it together quickly. Some sources say "Third World Man" is the replacement in question, but they actually had worked on it during the Aja sessions under the title "Were You Blind That Day".
    • The Second Arrangement was finally performed like in 2011 at the band's rarities night. Mentioned then was the fact that Fagen has a backup copy of the final take, but the sound quality was supposedly not as good. Knowing his reputation - see his comments on the noise reduction on Katy Lied - the lapse in quality is unlikely to be discernible to the average listener.
    • In 1986, Becker and Fagen reformed Steely Dan and wrote some new songs together. Among these were "Snowbound", which ended up on Fagen's next solo album Kamakiriad, and an original reggae song, which was rewritten years later to become "West of Hollywood". Demo recordings from this period would be intriguing to hear.
    • The band's 1996 tour included three new songs "Jack of Speed", "Wet Side Story" and "Cash Only Island", but only "Jack of Speed" made their next album. Studio recordings of the other two songs have never been released, despite the fact that "Wet Side Story" is highly regarded by fans.
    • "Fall of 92" was originally considered a Steely Dan song and the first to be sung by Walter Becker, but this didn't end up happening, possibly because of the lyrics. It ended up appearing on an extremely rare Becker promo CD.
    • "What I Do" was originally considered for Everything Must Go, but Becker didn't like it, so Fagen used it on his solo album Morph The Cat instead. If a Steely Dan version had been recorded, it would have fit in nicely with "Things I Miss the Most".
• Bob Dylan allegedly considered following up 1969's Nashville Skyline with an album where he would be backed by frequent Dylan-coverers The Byrds. It's not clear how serious the infamously fickle Dylan was about this, however. Bob Johnston had produced the most recent albums for both artists and would have been the producer for this project, but Johnston didn't get along with The Byrds and never produced anything else for them, which may have helped kill the album. Dylan wound up recording the audience-alienating album Self Portrait instead.
  • According to Record Producer Glyn Johns, Dylan once proposed the idea of a collaborative album with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, with Johns producing. Johns' idea for the sessions would be to "pool the best material from Mick and Keith, Paul and John, Bob and George, and then select the best rhythm section from the two bands to suit whichever songs we were cutting". Johns got in contact with both bands, but they ultimately didn't go through with the idea because not every member of either band was on board: Being big fans of Dylan's work, Keith Richards and George Harrison were enthusiastic about it, but Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger turned it down. No exact date has been given for when this idea was proposed, but signs point to it probably being 1969, around the same time Dylan would have started working on Self Portrait. Of course, Harrison and Dylan would end up in a different supergroup together almost 20 years later.
• In the mid-90's Steven Spielberg approached British alternative rock band Supergrass and proposed that they work with him on an Monkees-esque television series after seeing the music video for "Alright". They turned the offer down, and instead focused on writing and recording their second album In It for the Money. This choice proved to be a wise one in the long run, as In It for the Money is regarded as their best album.
• Purportedly Radiohead had initially planned to film a music video for every song on OK Computer, the possibility of a cinematic release in mind; the idea had been scrapped because of financial constraints. An video for "Let Down" had already been filmed but never released. Radiohead revisited this idea on subsequent albums; Kid A was promoted through short videos called "Blips" for its songs, while 24 short films were made for Hail to the Thief and were collected on the DVD release The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time.
• In 1981, Jimmy Page, Chris Squire, and Alan White got together as the band XYZ (which stood for "Ex Yes and Zeppelin"). They wanted Robert Plant to complete the lineup as a singer, but after he watched a rehearsal he decided he didn't like the direction they were going in. Due to not having a strong vocalist, as well as some debate over who would manage the group, they split up before getting very far. Demos of four songs surfaced though, two being instrumental and the other two featuring Chris Squire on vocals. Three of these four songs ended up being reused for another project in some form: Yes remade "Can You See" as "Can You Imagine" and reworked an untitled instrumental into a section of "Mind Drive". Meanwhile, Jimmy Page's next project, The Firm, turned a different untitled XYZ instrumental into the intro to their song "Fortune Hunter". Alan White has said that other material originally written for XYZ became songs for 90215 by Yes, but didn't specify which songs.
• Steve Perry left Journey in 1987 and the band went on hiatus for nearly ten years. However, Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain tried to find a new lead vocalist to front the band and record a new album, and the most likely candidate at the time was none other than Michael Bolton. When they were unsuccessful, most of the songs they'd written ended up on Bolton's album The Hunger.
  • Prior to Steve Perry joining as Journey’s frontman, the band toured with singer Robert Fleischman in 1977. Video exists of Fleischman singing some Infinity-era material with Fleischman on lead vocals (he co-wrote “Wheel in the Sky” and “Anytime”).
• When Anneke van Giersbergen left The Gathering in 2007, her band mates were almost completely surprised by her out of the blue decision, while she also had a pack of songs already written and waiting to be recorded (the songs would ultimately compose her solo debut Air). Almost, because they already knew that she felt under pressure by the constant tours and wanted to start a solo project, to the point that they offered her full freedom to pursue her aims and return to record with the band only when she would have felt ready, but they didn't know that she would have decided to depart from the band. One wonders what would have happened if instead she decided to still stay in the band while also pursuing a solo career, or even what if she proposed her songs to the band for a new album.
• Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe were close friends and - sensing a change in Kurt's demeanor in early 1994 - Stipe insisted that Cobain come down to Georgia to record with him. Kurt apparently strongly considered it, but never did due to his suicide that spring. Many rock music journalists have speculated that this recording-session-that-could-have-been could have resulted in a Kurt Cobain solo record.
  • Nirvana's final new recordings - "You Know You're Right" and "Sappy" in particular - point the way towards what a fourth Nirvana album would have sounded like.
  • Courtney Love had a recording of her band Hole performing "Asking for It" with Kurt on backing vocals. This was planned to be released as a single, but dropped after Cobain's death. You can still find it online, but the there's a fuzzy noise throughout, and it remained un-mixed/produced.
  • In 1990, Nirvana were planning on releasing a second album for Sub Pop called Sheep: Once they signed to Geffen and Dave Grohl replaced Chad Channing as a drummer, this was scrapped in favor of Nevermind. A lot of the material that was considered for Sheep was re-recorded for Nevermind, and early demos of "Lithium", "In Bloom", "Polly", "Stay Away", and "Breed" ^note the latter two were titled "Pay To Play" and "Imodium" at the time give us some idea of what Nevermind might have sounded like without Dave Grohl and with a recording budget comparable to that of Bleach. It's mainly interesting to think about because Sheep might have increased their cult fan-base, but most likely wouldn't have had the impact of Nevermind... Especially because one of the main reasons the band did leave Sub Pop was that they weren't keeping up with market demand for Bleach, and fans were having trouble locating copies to purchase. Another interesting tidbit is that "Dumb" was one of the songs being considered for Sheep, but wouldn't be recorded until 1994's In Utero.
  • Prior to Kurt Cobain's death, Nirvana wanted to release a live Distinct Double Album called Verse Chorus Verse, with one disc being their 1993 MTV Unplugged performance, and the other being a compilation of electric performances from various other recorded concerts as picked by the band themselves - the remaining members didn't feel up to compiling the electric half, so the single album MTV Unplugged in New York was released instead, with the 1996 Live Album From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah becoming the equivalent of the second disc.
  • The song "Talk To Me" was performed a few times in 1991 and 1992. Nirvana themselves seemingly never recorded it in a studio, but Hole attempted it during the early sessions for Live Through This, and later Courtney Love offered it to Iggy Pop, as he had been one of Kurt's favorite musicians; Iggy turned it down because, while he was a fan of Kurt's music, he was only interested in recording his own original songs at the time.
• Big L had just completed a deal to become a part of Roc-A-Fella Records before he was brutally gunned down in Harlem.
• Trey Songz originally wanted to become a rapper, but when people heard his singing skills they urged him to become a singer instead.
• Delta Goodrem has at least a couple EP's worth of music for her Fourth record. All either cancelled or not picked to be on her fourth album. For one reason or another.
  • Also her self titled third album has lots of held back material before she got into the groove with The Elements, a group of songwriters led by her boyfriend at the time and a few of his friends.
• Christina Aguilera's original idea for Bionic was originally supposed to be more modern and more fitting to promote theme (cutting edge electropop). The rumour is that her recording company refused to put the more abstract and creative songs on the album, most notably two songs she co-wrote with the members of Ladytron, which wound up as bonus tracks.
• Genesis was briefly considering replacing Steve Hackett with either Jeff Beck or Steely Dan session guitarist Elliot Randall, before deciding to be a three-piece and use Daryl Steurmer on guitar/bass and Chester Thompson on drums live.
  • Also, Phil Collins had briefly considered changing the band into an instrumental band after Peter Gabriel left.
  • Among those who auditioned as the replacement for Phil Collins, Fish from Marillion was briefly considered and David Longdon (who eventually joined Big Big Train in 2009) was a finalist before Genesis decided to use Ray Wilson of Stiltskin.
  • Among those auditioning to replace Peter Gabriel in 1975 was a Norwegian singer, Jahn Teigen, then in a similar band called Popol Ace. When the band opted to promote drummer Phil Collins to lead singer, Teigen’s career went in a much different direction.
  • The band's 2006-2007 reunion tour, Turn It On Again: The Tour, was originally conceived as a reunion of the entire The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway lineup (Gabriel, Collins, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, and Steve Hackett), with each show on the tour consisting of the Lamb album itself being performed in its entirety. Gabriel initially agreed, but ultimately backed out, rendering Hackett's participation moot, and the "three-piece" era was revisited instead.
• Devo have claimed that before they recorded their first album, Richard Branson tried to convince them to let John Lydon become their new singer. They were fans of the Sex Pistols, but they still thought the idea was ridiculous and politely turned it down. Given the Post-Punk style of Public Image Ltd., formed shortly after this proposal, the pairing actually could have worked better than the members of Devo originally thought.
• According to vocalist Jaz Coleman, Killing Joke originally wanted their 2003 Self-Titled Album to feature "three of our favorite drummers": Dave Grohl, System of a Down's John Dolmayan, and tool's Danny Carey would have played on different songs. Dave Grohl decided that he wanted to play on the whole album instead, and that's what ended up happening.
• tool's singer Maynard James Keenan and King Crimson's mastermind Robert Fripp joined to form a project called, The Human Experimente, which would have involved also artists like Anneke van Giersbergen, Jeffrey Fayman, Dann Pursey and John Wetton. They only recorded a cover of 21st Century Schizoid Man before suddenly closing the project.
• The song "Chicken Fried" by the Zac Brown Band was subject to this twice:
  • Back in 2006, the ZBB had already achieved local fame in Atlanta with "Chicken Fried", but were largely unknown outside that city. Another Atlanta-based band called The Lost Trailers had expressed interest in covering the song on their first major-label album. Zac Brown himself agreed on the condition that the Trailers not release their version as a single. Although the Trailers themselves obliged, the label overruled them and announced that it would be a single; while it hadn't officially been released yet, enough stations had already leaked the song that it entered the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts for a couple weeks. When Brown found out, he called an executive at the label and successfully demanded that they withdraw it. The Lost Trailers' version became a Missing Episode, the album on which the song would have been flopped, and they would become a One-Hit Wonder only a year later with the markedly different "Holler Back".
  • Shortly afterward, Alan Jackson expressed interest in recording "Chicken Fried" himself but ultimately declined because he felt he had too many songs that mentioned food in the lyrics. It all worked out in the end; after signing to Atlantic Records in 2008, the Zac Brown Band had a Breakthrough Hit with a Popularity Redo of "Chicken Fried", the first of many #1 country hits for them. Brown said that he would have been fine with this due to his respect for Jackson's style, and the two would collaborate on "As She's Walking Away" two years later. (Incidentally, ZBB's first three albums were all produced by Alan's longtime producer Keith Stegall.)
• Blake Shelton's debut single could have been the Country Rap "I Wanna Talk About Me" (written by Bobby Braddock — yes, the same Bobby Braddock who wrote the classic country Tear Jerker "He Stopped Loving Her Today), but label execs thought it was too risqué for a debut single. It went to Toby Keith instead, whose version went to #1. Not that Blake suffered; his debut single "Austin" did likewise, and Shelton would go on to become a country superstar over the next two decades.
• Kryst The Conqueror, a planned band/project by The Misfits bassist Jerry Only, shortly after Danzig quit the band and royally screwed the rest of the band over. The project came to a halt when Jerry let James Hetfield listen to early demo material... only for Metallica to rip off the music for their own albums. This, coupled with Danzig's mistreatment of his former band, as well as Hasbro ripping off the Misfits band name for a doll line, resulted in Jerry Only not coming back into prominence again until the late 1990s when the courts finally gave him full ownership of the Misfits band trademarks.
• "Start All Over" and "As a Blonde" were written, but unreleased by Canadian rock singer Fefe Dobson, before female Disney artists Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez respectively made them popular.
• The Red House Painters album Rollercoaster was originally supposed to be a double album with the songs that originally appeared on Bridge mixed into the sequence of Rollercoaster. One has to wonder how the album would have sounded being twice as long and possibly twice as depressing.
  • Songs for a Blue Guitar almost ended up being changed completely into a more commercially accessible album. Kozelek refused Ivo Watts-Russel to control his vision and was thrown off the record label due to his inistance of not letting it get changed.
• tool and Rage Against the Machine worked together on a song for the movie Judgment Night (fitting the soundtrack's theme of Rap Rock or Rap Metal collaborations). Neither band were satisfied with the track, so they opted not to submit it, leaving it unreleased. A poor quality bootleg of the song, which has no official title but is usually called "Revolution" or "You Can't Kill The Revolution" due to its chorus, did eventually surface. Rage Against The Machine would rework the song's instrumental coda into the chorus of their song "New Millennium Homes", and A Perfect Circle's "Thinking Of You" used a similar rhythm to the verse sections.
• Skrillex AKA Sonny Moore has an entire concept album that was never released; titled "Bells", it was a mish-mash of unnerving 'glitch' tracks reminiscent of Aphex Twin, as well as him playing the guitar and singing. After he left From First To Last, he started releasing music under the name "Sonny", but after his first album ("Gypsyhook") got a medicore reception, the label locked away the demos for "Bells". A livestream and tweets by friends of Moore indicate the album might not be gone forever, but had it seen release as scheduled, his career could have taken a very different direction.
• "Feel Good Time", P!nk's song from the Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle soundtrack, was originally intended to be a Beck song. Beck and producer William Orbit worked on the track for a solo album by the latter, and someone involved with the film heard a working version of the song and wanted it to be a lead-off single for the soundtrack. Beck turned it down, primarily because he prefers to lend his music to more artistic movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - the fact that "Feel Good Time" could not be further from the mood of the Creator Breakdown album Sea Change, released just one year earlier, may have also been a factor. Meanwhile, Pink and Orbit started collaborating on a different song for the same soundtrack - she heard the "Feel Good Time" demo from him and expressed interest in doing a version of that instead. Once permission from Beck was confirmed, she recorded her own vocals over the original track and her version became the lead-off single. William Orbit would later leak an MP3 of the Beck version of "Feel Good Time" - aside from having Beck's vocals, the original included a lead guitar part that was omitted from the P!nk version, but otherwise had the exact same backing tracks.
• In response to the rumor that 311 was named for the Ku Klux Klan ^note supposedly, since "k" is the 11th letter of the alphabet, 311 would mean "3k", or "KKK", they started writing a song entitled "Fuck the KKK". This eventually morphed into the song "Electricity", which is a cry for tolerance and unity. The opening lyrics explain why:
  This song started as a rant against haters,
  But that'd be giving in to the instigators
• The Duran Duran song "Wild Boys" was supposed to be part of a much larger project Russell Mulcahy (who was a frequent collaborator with the band) had planned — a film version of the William S. Burroughs novel of the same name, with Duran Duran providing the entire soundtrack. When the deal fell through, the band tacked it onto the end of their live album Arena and that was that. If Mulcahy had gotten to do such a project, that would've meant the band would've worked through the 1984 - 1985 period that became their hiatus (the only track they worked together on during that period was the Bond theme "A View to a Kill"). They might have never splintered into Arcadia and Power Station, since Power Station would've never happened Robert Palmer (who was a blue-eyed soul guy in the late '70s with a couple of hits ["Bad Case of Loving You", "Every Kind of People"]) might've never gotten a second wind career-wise and the world may have never known such songs as "Addicted to Love", "Simply Irresistible", and his version of "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On", the band might've never broken up, they probably wouldn't have developed a new sound (as they did when Warren Cuccurullo [a Frank Zappa band vet] joined the band), and they may have fallen into the trap of being an '80s nostalgia band as a result.
• Bon Jovi's "Who Says You Can't Go Home" was originally supposed to be a duet with Keith Urban, who was also to play six-string banjo on it. However, Jon Bon Jovi thought that Urban's voice was too similar to his own, so he asked Mercury Records to recommend a female artist; the result was Sugarland lead singer Jennifer Nettles. A good choice, as it made Bon Jovi the first rock act to top the country charts.
• Speaking of Keith Urban, he originally planned to release "You Look Good in My Shirt" as the fifth single off his 2002 album Golden Road in 2004. The label instead went with a lead single from a new album ("Days Go By" from Be Here), but a few stations played "Shirt" anyway and it became a concert favorite. Urban finally re-recorded "Shirt" for a 2008 Greatest Hits Album, released it as a single, and sent it to #1.
• Run–D.M.C. wrote a song called "Slow And Low" while working on their album King of Rock, but ultimately discarded it as an outtake. Then The Beastie Boys, who were also on Def Jam at the time, heard a demo of the song and asked to do their own version, which appeared on Licensed to Ill - the Beastie Boys made a couple of slight lyrical changes to put a bit of their own personal touch on it, but it's still credited on their album as being written by Run DMC and Rick Rubin. The original Run DMC demo appeared as a bonus track on a 2006 re-release of King of Rock, but a more fully produced version apparently doesn't exist.
• Kenny Chesney:
  • His 1999 hit "How Forever Feels" was recorded by Tim McGraw around the same time, but McGraw chose not to include it on an album, thus allowing Chesney to cut it. Given that it would become Chesney's Breakthrough Hit, even McGraw admits that he made the right decision in the end.
  • He was supposed to film the video for his 2001 single "The Tin Man" (a re-release of a 1994 single) at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but the label canceled the shoot because they thought the song didn't need one.
• Several "Weird Al" Yankovic parodies have only been performed in concert rather than recorded, due to the original artist objecting to the latter. These include:
  • "Gee I'm a Nerd" (The Beatles' "reunion" single "Free as a Bird"; scrapped because Yoko Ono deemed the parody "Dude, Not Funny!")
  • "Laundry Day" (The Offspring's Come Out and Play")
  • He's also claimed that Prince didn't like his idea to redo "Raspberry Beret" as "Brown Ugly Toupee", nor has he liked any of his parody ideas for Prince songs.
  • "Snack All Night", a parody of Michael Jackson's 1991 number "Black or White", was supposed to be the centerpiece of Al's 1992 album (eventually released as Off the Deep End), but Jackson objected to his pro-racial harmony song being Played for Laughs. After Jackson's death, Al admitted that having to scrap this one was probably for the best — first because it would have typecast him as a Jackson parodist after two previous spoofs ("Eat It" and "Fat"), and second because "Smells Like Nirvana" came about as a substitute lead-off track. Years later, a similar situation with regards to the James Blunt parody "You're Pitiful" (which was denied not by Blunt, but Blunt's label) paved the way for "White & Nerdy", the highest-charting and first platinum single of his career.
  • Additionally, "Talk Soup" (off Al's 1993 album Alapalooza) was actually commissioned by the E! network to be the new theme song to their show of the same name. According to Al, E! execs told him they "approved" the lyrics and "loved" the song, and then proceeded to never use it. "Go figure."
  • For his 2014 album Mandatory Fun, he was thinking of a parody of Frozen (2013)'s "Let It Go" called "Make It So", which would be an entire song devoted to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Then, he found out that someone had beat him to it and that it got so popular, Disney's legal team descended on the person and it was yanked from the web. He just couldn't find anything better to do with it, so he had to let it go.
• During their restructuring in the 1980s after departure of founding guitarist Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of KISS met with and entertained the idea of bringing on a guitarist from a band whom Gene had spotted on the LA club scene and helped land their first record deal. The guitarist was unhappy in his current band and thought he might fit into KISS. Paul and Gene, tempted by the young guitarist's overwhelming talent considered bringing him in, but ultimately the guitarist decided to return to his band with Paul and Gene agreeing it was for the best. The guitarist? Eddie Van Halen.
• Toni Braxton had to be talked into recording what would become her Signature Song, "Unbreak My Heart". Her producers L.A. Reid and Babyface thought it would be a monster. She just didn't feel it. The song ended up as the second-biggest single by a female artist ever (behind Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You").
• The Hawthorne Muchachos were one of the first member corps of Drum Corps International in The '70s. Just before the 1975 DCI Championship Finals, it was revealed that the Muchachos had marched an overage member; as a result, the corps was disqualified. It was believed that the Muchachos would have given the eventual champion Madison Scouts a serious run for the title. Had the Muchachos not been caught with the overage member, they may have continued their success in DCI and broken the Western/Midwest dominance of the circuit. As it turned out, the Muchachos never recovered from the scandal and folded three years later.
  • On the other side of the coin: After the Muchachos' Finals DQ, several members and instructors defected to the Bridgemen and the Garfield Cadets. This allowed those corps to ascend within DCI, with the Bridgemen winning several Top Drums honors (thanks to former Muchachos instructor Dennis DeLucia) and the Cadets winning 4 DCI Championships in The '80s. So it's possible that a successful Muchachos corps could have prevented some of its fellow East Coast corps from becoming contenders.
• The Rolling Stones intended "Paint It Black" from Aftermath (Album) to be a comedic song. When the original guitar riff didn't work, they replaced it with a much harsher one, which changed the entire tone of the song.
• Frank Zappa:
  • Originally the album We're Only in It for the Money was going to be called Our Man in Nirvana. Zappa changed the title and the concept when he heard about the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band hype.
  • Zappa was once contacted to compose the music for an upcoming science fiction movie. He turned it down. The name of the movie? Star Wars!
  • Near the end of the 1970s Bob Dylan contacted Zappa in person to produce one of his next albums. Although ideas were worked out Dylan eventually withdrew himself from the project.
• We also have Zappa to thank for most of Captain Beefheart's career. After Beefheart's first two albums fell victim to Executive Meddling he wanted to leave the business altogether. Zappa then produced Beefheart's next album Trout Mask Replica and gave his friend total creative freedom. The result is one of the most unique and groundbreaking albums of all time. Though not exactly a best-seller, the Zappa-Beefheart connection provided Beefheart with enough notoriety to continue his recording career. In 1975 Beefheart was saved yet again by Zappa when he took him on tour at a time when Beefheart was contractually unable to record any new albums, resulting in Bongo Fury. Zappa would originally have produced a new Beefheart album, "Bat Chain Puller", but legal problems put the project in the closet. Beefheart then went his own way again and recorded three of his best albums in the process (Shiny Beast, Doc at the Radar Station and Ice Cream for Crow) before he quit the music business altogether in 1982.
• Trent Reznor approached Sade and Aaliyah to sing on the Nine Inch Nails track "The Great Below" from The Fragile.
• American choral composer Eric Whitacre had a setting of Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods, who did not get permission from the Frost estate for the poem. It was performed and recorded by the Concordia Choir out of Moorhead, Minnesota. New lyrics were written and the work took on a new name.
• Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies have a few:
  • One early sketch for the finale of the Fifth Symphony was a piece in C minor and 6/8 time.
  • The great instrumental recitative that opens the Ninth Symphony's finale was originally intended to have lyrics and be sung, at least at the turning point where the key changes to D major.
• Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony was once planned to have "Das himmlische Leben" as its seventh and last movement. While the song was used in the fourth symphony instead, a few of its musical themes can be heard in the third symphony's second and fifth movements.
  • Sketches for the C minor chorale in the Sixth Symphony's finale included Wagner tubas.
• Jimmy Buffett wrote "Margaritaville" for Elvis Presley. Presley died before he could even record a demo, so Buffett recorded it himself. It became his Signature Song.
• Beyoncé's hit "Irreplaceable" was written by fellow R&B artist Ne-Yo: He intended to record it himself, then re-imagined it for a female country singer. Allegedly, Beyoncé heard the song and demanded it for herself, despite Ne-Yo and producers Stargate protesting that they already had another song meant for her. Beyoncé insisted, gaining one of her signature songs in the process.
• Lupe Fiasco along with Pharrell from N.E.R.D./The Neptunes and Kanye West were going to form a supergroup called Child Rebel Soldiers or C.R.S. Unfortunately all that materialized were two songs and later Lupe announced that group was on ice. Lupe and B.o.B. formed a massive supergroup that many fans thought were going to put Young Money in its place...they've done absolutely nothing, besides a remix to "I'm Beaming". Additionally, B.o.B.'s song, "Nothin' on You" is originally planned before Atlantic gave them to B.o.B.
• Johnny Mathis' career could have taken an interesting turn in the 1980s if Columbia Records hadn't refused to release the album he recorded in 1981 with Chic.
  • Around the same time, Atlantic nixed the idea of an Aretha Franklin / Chic collaboration before it even got into the studio.
  • On the other hand, Chic were in involved in one example where it went gloriously right - early in their career, their record label asked them to do something with The Rolling Stones. Feeling that if it worked, the Stones would get all the credit, and if it didn't, Chic would get the blame, they turned it down and asked whether the label had an unknown act they could work with instead. The label paired them up with Sister Sledge, and the resultant album, We Are Family, was a huge hit and established Chic as go-to hitmakers.
• Reba McEntire has had a few:
  • McEntire was the first artist tapped to record "Goodbye Time", but she had just divorced at the time and thought that the lyrics were too close to home for her. It instead went to Conway Twitty, and was later Covered Up by Blake Shelton.
  • "For My Broken Heart" was originally intended to be a duet with Clint Black, but he was unavailable so it became a solo outing.
  • "The Heart Won't Lie": Kim Carnes wrote the song for Kenny Rogers after the two collaborated on "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer". Rogers ended up not recording it, since the album for which it was intended already had a female duet. He then wanted to record it with Reba, but the two were unable to come up with a suitable recording due to differences in their vocal ranges. Reba then asked if she could cut the song herself, and Rogers approved. She had intended for the song to be a solo outing with Vince Gill merely providing a backing vocal, when producer Tony Brown suggested that Gill sing the second verse. The result was a #1 smash for both of them, with no telling how it would have fared had Carnes and/or Rogers been able to stay on board, or had Gill not stayed on.
  • "Does He Love You" was written as a two-woman duet, so Reba had to find an appropriate duet partner. She wanted Linda Davis, who had just come off a failed record deal with Epic Records and was a backup singer in her road band at the time. Label execs suggested either Wynonna Judd or Trisha Yearwood, since both were also recording on MCA and had bigger name recognition. Since Tony Brown was producing for both Reba and Wynonna at the time, he sent Wynonna a demo with the knowledge that she would probably reject its Love Triangle theme. When she did just that, Davis was approved as the duet partner, leading to the song's chart-topping success and even a Grammy. Would it have been as popular had anyone else sung it?
• Elvis Presley almost deserves his own subpage given how many "what could have beens" that have emerged, both in terms of his music and his film career.
  • What if his towering cover version of Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time", buried and forgotten as a filler track on the eighth-rate soundtrack album to Spinout, received proper release in 1966?
  • What if Col. Parker hadn't become so paranoid about Ann-Margret upstaging Elvis in Viva Las Vegas that he prevented two of their recorded duets (including the erotic "You're the Boss") from being included in the film and prevented the third from seeing release until well after Elvis' death?
  • Elvis' final recording session was held at Graceland in October 1976. Only a handful of songs were recorded, including the rocker "Way Down" which was his final hit. The producer tried to get Elvis to record another song called "There's a Fire Down Below" but he refused. The music track survives and reveals the song would have been a very contemporary rocker and potentially a stronger track than "Way Down" was, and thus a potential additional hit record during Elvis' final months.
  • Aside from "There a Fire Down Below", there were other songs that had been submitted for Elvis' consideration for recording sessions for later in 1977, but he died before he could make any decision on them. One was "Feels Like I'm in Love", a disco tune written by Mungo Jerry frontman Ray Dorset (who gave the song to Scottish singer Kelly Marie after Elvis died; her version was a #1 hit in the UK) and another was "Fire" by Bruce Springsteen (Springsteen said the tape didn't reach Graceland until after Elvis' death; it later found its way to The Pointer Sisters, who scored a #2 hit in the US with it).
  • What if Elvis had been allowed to tour outside the US in the 1970s? The only time he performed outside the US was in 1957 when he made three stops in Canada; in October 1958 there was talk of Elvis joining Bill Haley & His Comets during one of their shows in Germany, but this was vetoed due to the rioting already plaguing Haley's tour.
  • What if Elvis' two attempts at transitioning into a serious acting career, 1960's Flaming Star and 1961's Wild in the Country had been critically and commercially successful? Elvis yearned to be taken seriously as an actor, and didn't like that he was pigeonholed into making the musical comedies that his manager Col. Tom Parker insisted he'd do. The disappointments of these two movies ultimately resigned him to continue making those same kinds of films for the rest of the 1960s.
  • Parker also shot down Presley's casting in three musical films that were a cut above the usual quality of his acting material - A Star Is Born, West Side Story (1961) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show - because he would have not been the center of attention (the latter two films are ensemble pieces, while A Star is Born is more about the female lead).
• Garth Brooks' ill-fated crossover album, In the Life of Chris Gaines, that featured him as a rock star named Chris Gaines was supposed to be a preview album for a feature film called The Lamb. The tepid reception the album got pretty much killed the project.
• Faith Hill had originally been engaged to marry her then-Record Producer Scott Hendricks. Instead, she married Tim McGraw in 1996, and the two ended up as one of the biggest power couples in country music history.
• Mark Wills was the first artist to record "What Hurts the Most" in 2002, and he supposedly had it slated as a single at one point, but it never happened. Faith Hill also recorded it for her 2005 comeback album Fireflies, but it was axed at the last minute. It ended up being recorded by Rascal Flatts, whose version became their biggest crossover hit in early 2006.
• Both Gary LeVox and Joe Don Rooney had auditioned to become members of Little Big Town in the late 1990s. Instead, they became two-thirds of Rascal Flatts along with Jay DeMarcus.
• Charles Ives started work on a series of overtures honoring American literary figures. Only the Robert Browning Overture was finished. The Emerson Overture, which became a piano concerto, ultimately became the first movement of the Concord Sonata. Only a fragment of the Matthew Arnold Overture survives.
• Brad Paisley had originally had "I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin' Song)" on hold for Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks, and George Strait, but ultimately cut it himself.
• George Strait also had "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" and "Love Done Gone" on hold, but they ended up being cut by Kenny Chesney and Billy Currington, respectively. Strait's version of "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" was later released as a standalone digital download.
• Craig Morgan originally wrote "I Got You" with the intent of having Keith Urban record it, but after cutting a demo, he felt that it was better suited for himself.
• Jethro Tull examples:
  • A Passion Play was intended to be a double-length Concept Album of sociopolitical songs comparing part of the human race to animals (a concept which would have predated Pink Floyd's Animals by four years). It was scrapped after the band came down with food poisoning in France (where they had been recording at) and they returned to England, with limited time left before their next tour was to start, and retooled it into a single, album-length piece dealing with the afterlife.
  • War Child was planned as a film project and double-length soundtrack recording for a Black Comedy also using supernatural/afterlife themes, with a script assisted by John Cleese and featuring ballet choreography by Dame Margot Fonteyn. It was also later scrapped as Ian Anderson felt he could not effectively write an effective script for his concept, and he had a terrible time convincing Hollywood studios to back the project.
  • Too Old to Rock and Roll: Too Young to Die! was written to be a stage musical.
  • A was recorded as an Ian Anderson solo project, but Chrysalis Records was going through financial strain and wanted the album to be released as a Tull project. This led, to Anderson's dismay, to the unintentional sacking of three longtime band members (keyboardists John Evan and David Palmer, and drummer Barriemore Barlow).
  • The Broadsword and the Beast was originally meant to be released as a two-record set.
• Hank Williams wrote "Hey Good Lookin'" with the intent of having Little Jimmy Dickens record it, but ended up keeping it for himself.
• Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn revealed that the failure of their 1999 Tight Rope album almost led to them splitting in 2000, until a label exec persuaded them to stay together while pitching them a song. That song? "Ain't Nothing 'bout You", which went on to become the lead single to their 2001 album Steers & Stripes. The song went on to become their biggest #1 and crossover hit to date, while sparking a Career Resurrection that lasted until they retired on good terms in 2011.
• "Chemical Bomb!" by The Aquabats! was originally played with a faster and more upbeat tune, but their producer Thom Wilson "didn't like it", so they went with a mellow bossa-nova version. The original tune was eventually used for "The Wild Sea!"
• Hardcore Punk group Off! have their roots in a failed Circle Jerks album. Producer/musician Dimitri Coats was hired to produce the album, which would have been their first full-length release in over a decade. However, while Coats and vocalist Keith Morris found they worked well together, the rest of the band didn't like the amount of creative control Coats was assuming. This led to Morris and Coats writing some songs intended for the project without the rest of the band's input; When the rest of the band told him they had decided to fire Coats, the two decided to start a new group together, with Steven Shane McDonald and Mario Rubalcaba forming the rhythm section.
• Originally, Toby Keith planned to release "Clancy's Tavern" as the second single from his 2011 album of the same name, after the album had already produced a #1 hit in "Made in America". However, after he released a video for "Red Solo Cup", that song went massively viral and started getting airplay, causing it to become the second single instead. It also became his highest entry on the Hot 100 and became his most-downloaded song.
• In the autograph of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Little Organ Book" (Orgelbüchlein), there are many blank pages for chorales whose settings were never written (or, in the case of, "O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid," only sketched for a bar and a half).
• After years of growing hostility, The Police decided to record an album of new versions of their previous hits in 1986. Shortly before the recording sessions, drummer Stewart Copeland fell off his horse during a polo match and broke his collarbone. Since he couldn't play, they were forced to use a drum machine for the recording sessions. After recording a new version of "Don't Stand So Close to Me", Copeland and Sting got into an argument over the drum machine. (Andy Summers stepped out for a few hours and came back to find them still arguing.) Afterwards, they decided to part ways and release a Greatest Hits album with the new version of "Don't Stand So Close to Me". In an interview, Copeland said that if he'd been able to play the drums, he could've worked out his frustrations and prevented the breakup.
• The original lineup of Asia was to have been a trio with John Wetton, Carl Palmer and Rick Wakeman. Problems in dealing with Rick Wakeman's management led to Wakeman's departure. Trevor Rabin was also a candidate to join Wetton, Palmer and Wakeman, but according to The Other Wiki, "Wakeman claimed he refused to sign a recording contract "out of principle" after the label was prepared to sign them without listening to any of their music".
  • Wakeman would have also been involved in Yes's 1994 Talk album, had contractual disagreements not interfered.
• After Kurt Cobain's death in April 1994, Dave Grohl did a stint as drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in November (which included an SNL appearance), and was soon offered a permanent spot. He declined, and began working on what eventually became the Foo Fighters' debut album.
• Mick Jones wanted The Clash's Combat Rock to be a 77-minute double album, but the rest of the band disagreed: In the end, four songs were left off the album and several others were shortened significantly, leaving it a 46-minute single LP. Fan-made bootlegs of Jones' version of the album (usually labeled Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg after a Working Title for the album) exist, aided by the fact that two of the cut songs were reused as B Sides and a few of Jones' preferred versions of Combat Rock songs were included on the box sets Clash On Broadway and Sound System.
• While The Pixies were still working on Trompe Le Monde, Black Francis discussed working on a solo Cover Album with Record Producer Gil Norton - the cover album concept was decided on because Francis had the urge to start recording again as soon as the Pixies album was finished, but knew he wouldn't have the time to write much new material by then. By the time he did enter the studio to make his first solo album (with Eric Drew Feldman as producer), he had come up with plenty of ideas for original songs, so instead we got a self-titled album centered around original material and released under the name Frank Black. As the one remaining holdover from the cover album concept, the album contained one Cover Song, "Hang On To Your Ego", originally by The Beach Boys.
• COMMUNICATIONS:
  • GHOST confirmed this is scrapped: I Want My Beloved to Be Happy + Incompatible Orientation: Stephanie has a crush on Kennith, but she realizes he’s gay, so she doesn’t confess her feelings.
  zoey may: Ghost, is Kennith's girl childhood friend (can't remember her name :p) still canon? And does she still have a crush on Kennith? (Just wondering cuz she seemed interesting)
  GHOST: so steph is still a part of the series, but they met their freshman year of high school so i guess they're not really childhood? the crush thing isn't really canon anymore though because it's kinda irrelevant and boring LMAO
• The Steve Miller Band had finished Fly Like an Eagle when Steve Miller decided to switch the backing music for two of the songs on the album. Both songs ("Rock'n Me" and "Take the Money and Run") ended up being released as singles and were well-received, so it seems to have worked out in the end.
• Bill Mack's "Blue" was originally supposed to be recorded by Patsy Cline, but she died in a plane crash before she could record it. Despite common belief, however, he didn't write the song specifically for Cline; he had recorded it himself, and Kenny Roberts had also cut it long before the most famous version by LeAnn Rimes was released in 1996.
• In the late 90s, a group called Sons of the Desert cut the song "Goodbye Earl", but got into a dispute with then-labelmates Dixie Chicks, who had also recorded the song. As a result, the Chicks won out with their version, and the album that would have had Sons of the Desert's version of it became a Missing Episode.
• Eric Stewart originally envisioned the ninth 10cc album Windows In The Jungle as an ambitious Progressive Rock concept album "in the style of Pink Floyd", but these plans never came to fruition due to pressure from the record company to release an album that was as accessible as possible.
• Japanese indie record label Diverse System had released several unofficial remix albums of BEMANI songs and tribute albums to their artists. However, in late 2010, Konami stepped in and pushed a cease and desist against the unauthorized BEMANI albums, forcing them to pull all those albums from their store and leaving the completed remix album D16 and tribute album Dear Mr. wac to go unreleased. As these albums were going to be their new products at the coming Comiket, they swiftly recorded a new compilation album called THE DIVERSE SYSTEM as a replacement.
• When Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were recording Southern Accents, their guitarist Mike Campbell came up with a piece of music on his own and offered to let Petty add lyrics and a vocal melody and release it as a Heartbreakers song. Petty liked what he heard but thought it wouldn't be a good fit for the album, so he turned it down. Around the same time, Don Henley got in contact with Campbell looking for material for his next album - after asking Petty for his blessing, Campbell offered him the unfinished piece and it became "Boys of Summer", arguably Henley's Signature Song as a solo artist.
  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Don't Come Around Here No More" was at one point offered to Stevie Nicks, in part because its New Wave Music and psychedelic pop elements were too out of place with their usual style. Nicks heard a demo version and felt she couldn't improve on Petty's vocal performance.
  • In another Stevie Nicks-related case: "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" was initially meant to be a Heartbreakers song and could have appeared on their album Hard Promises - in the end it became a duet between Petty and Nicks with all of the Heartbreakers as backing musicians, appearing on her Bella Donna album. A demo of the song without Stevie can be heard on the Tom Petty box set Playback.
  • "Don't Do Me Like That" was a song that originated with Mudcrutch, Tom Petty's pre-Heartbreakers band, but at one point Tom considered giving the song away to The J. Geils Band, as he felt it fit their style more than it did his own. Producer Jimmy Iovine convinced Tom to record a version for the album Damn the Torpedoes because he (correctly) thought it could be a hit single.
• Pharrell Williams originally wrote "Happy" for Cee Lo Green to sing - CeeLo recorded a demo of the song, and Pharrell thought it sounded better than his own performance. However, CeeLo was about to release his Christmas album at the time, and his label, Elektra, thought releasing an unrelated single would get in the way of promoting the album. Presumably, the song's release couldn't just be delayed since it was meant for the soundtrack to Despicable Me 2, so Pharrell's version was the one that was released.^note CeeLo finally sang "Happy" when he took part in the British version of The Masked Singer as the Monster.
• The 9/11 terrorist attacks created three unusual examples on the Country Music charts due to artists withdrawing support on their then-current singles in order to release music inspired by the tragedy:
  • Alan Jackson pulled "It's Alright to Be a Redneck" after only a few weeks (thus causing it to be his first single in 12 years to miss the country Top 40^note his very first single "Blue Blooded Woman" also missed the top 40) in favor of "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)", which went on to become a multi-week #1.
  • Aaron Tippin's "Always Was" was withdrawn after it only got to #40, in order to replace it with "Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly". This song got to #2, incidentally kept out of the #1 position by the aforementioned "Where Were You".
  • Garth Brooks originally planned to have his duet with George Jones "Beer Run (B Double E Double Are You In?)" be the lead single from Scarecrow. After 9/11, he changed the lead single to the Lighter and Softer "Wrapped Up in You". However, Jones's label later issued "Beer Run" as a single from his album The Rock: Stone Cold Country 2001 anyway.
• One wonders how successful Bruno Mars would've been if he had listened to record label executives at the beginning of his career and had done Latin pop. Bruno has stated that he would frequently get this due to his birth name being Peter Hernandez, which is part of the reason he picked an ethnically-ambiguous stage name like Bruno Mars.
• Had Lee Ryan of English boy band Blue not made his infamous post-9/11 "whales and elephants" statement to The Sun, said boy band would have gotten a record deal in the United States. Whatever or not he actually said that remains unclear, as Ryan stated that he was misquoted and his comments were taken out of context.
• The vocal part in Zedd and Maren Morris's "The Middle" was offered to 17 artists rather than Morris, including some of the top female artists at the time. Notably, Demi Lovato, Anne-Marie, Carly Rae Jepsen, Tove Lo, Bishop Briggs, Bebe Rexha, Daya, Charli XCX, Elle King, Camila Cabello and Lauren Jauregui were offered the song.
• The song "Hit Me Baby One More Time" was originally written in 1997 by producer Max Martin. He presented it to both the Backstreet Boys and TLC, but they passed on it for different reasons (the Backstreet Boys simply didn't like it, while TLC were on hiatus at the time, plus they felt the lyrics sounded uncomfortably close to an abuse victim wanting her partner back). Martin tweaked the lyrics slightly and presented it to up-and-comer Britney Spears, who was much more receptive. Its worldwide success launched her career and his, not that either band minded (T-Boz of TLC stated "I was like, I like the song but do I think it’s a hit? Do I think it’s TLC? I’m not saying ‘hit me baby’. No disrespect to Britney. It’s good for her. But was I going to say ‘hit me baby one more time’? Hell no!")
• Layne Staley at very least wanted to be the vocalist for what was to become Audioslave, though it's doubtful how close this came to being a reality: Essentially, a friend of Layne told biographer David De Sola about a conversation circa 2001, in which Layne claimed he was going to rehab so he could audition to sing for Rage Against the Machine. Tom Morello later denied Layne was ever being considered, leaving De Sola to conclude that, while Layne did most likely say this, it was more likely that he had merely heard that Rage were looking for a new singer and was doing some wishful thinking out loud.
• This interview with Country Music parodist Cledus T. Judd reveals several projects of his that never came to fruition, including an album titled Songs to Eat By, a rap album, a duet with "Weird Al" Yankovic, and a rendition of Andy Griffith's monologue "What It Was, Was Football". None of these came to be.
• Session steel guitarist Steve Fishell was offered an opportunity to be a member of Country Music trio McBride & the Ride (best known for their 1992 hit "Sacred Ground"), but turned it down in favor of staying a session musician and producing Radney Foster's first two albums.
• Keith Whitley had several albums' worth of material in various stages of completion upon his sudden death from alcohol poisoning at age 33 in late 1989. While he was able to score a few stray posthumous hits as late as 1992 (including "I'm Over You", which contains some very Harsher in Hindsight lyrics, and the Earl Thomas Conley duet "Brotherly Love"), would he have been able to stand toe-to-toe with the sudden wave of neo-traditional country acts who emerged that same year such as Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, and Clint Black?
• Among the artists Disney was looking to sign when it first set up Hollywood Records? Nirvana, Dr. Dre, The Smashing Pumpkins and Cypress Hill among others. They eventually found footing when they signed Queen for North America, but one has to imagine how different things would be had Disney not gotten cold feet towards signing the aforementioned artists.
• Deryl Dodd was looking to start the next leg of his career in 1999, when he had signed a touring deal with Tim McGraw and Brooks & Dunn, and he was climbing the charts with a cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown", the intended lead single to his third album. However, he came down with viral encephalitis, which rendered him bedridden for six months, followed by an 18-month recovery period that required re-learning how to play guitar. After he recovered, he finally released his third album in 2002, albeit on an obscure subsidiary of Sony Music intended largely for Texas-based acts instead of his original label Columbia Records. While he maintained a following on the Texas honky-tonk circuit and continued to record well into The New '10s, how much more exposure would he have gotten had he stayed in the majors and been able to tour with bigger names?
• Katy Perry:
  • Her third album Prism was originally intended to be Darker and Edgier before the singer decided to revise it to a more Lighter and Softer sound, feeling the dark tone hits too close to home due to the collapse of her marriage with Russell Brand.
  • Her major debut album would've been much different had she remained in Columbia as she recorded an album for the record label in 2005 before being dropped from said label.
  • She wrote "Black Widow" as a last-minute addition to Prism but the song was excluded from the final track listing, partly because the composition wasn't finalised until after the album's release, and partly because it was too similar in tone to one of the singles, "Dark Horse". Ultimately, Perry decided to give the song to Iggy Azalea instead, who offered her to sing the hook of the song but Perry turned it down due to other commitments, so Rita Ora fills in for Perry as a result.
• Robbie Williams' acrimonious first departure from Take That (Band) in 1995 along with the band disbanding a year later before reforming a decade later unfortunately ended any chances of the band scoring another US Top 40 hit after "Back for Good". It's quite possible that they would've scored more hits in the States had they continued on to the late Nineties.
• Keiichi Ueno, better known to BEMANI fans as DJ Swan and other aliases including Baby Weapon and Anal Spyder, had plans to make long versions of "Shine On" and "Bad Boy", two old songs of his from beatmania IIDX, and include them on his 2008 album, Rewind! However, Don Katsumoto, the musician who introduced him to the vocalists of those two songs, had passed away the previous year. Out of respect for Don, he chose not to include those songs on the album.
• A few months after the release of Scream, Chris Cornell digitally released "rock versions" of the songs "Long Gone" and "Never Far Away" ^note the former a remix that removed the song's synthesizers and drum machines, the latter an entirely new re-recording, and a full rearrangement of the album was said to follow. The release was delayed by a Soundgarden reunion, and remains unfinished due to his death. Since Scream was derided by critics and fans alike for being a shift from alternative rock to dance pop, the rearranged version might have been better received.
• A Southern rock band from Kentucky named Itchy Brother almost signed a deal with John Bonham's Swan Song Records in 1980, but the deal fell through when Bonham died. While every member of Itchy Brother would later go on to have success in The Kentucky Headhunters, what would have happened had they been able to record for Swan Song?
• Vince Gill was offered a chance to join Dire Straits in the early 1980s, but turned it down. Would he have had his commercial breakout in The '90s, and would his background in country and bluegrass have impacted the sound of Dire Straits?
• "Shakedown", the theme song for Beverly Hills Cop II, was originally written for Glenn Frey (Frey had recorded "The Heat Is On" for the first movie). But because Frey was unavailable, the song was given to Bob Seger. Although the song sounds nothing like any of his other work, it wound up being Seger's first Number One hit.
• Ezra Koenig sings lead for Vampire Weekend. However, he almost wrote a movie titled Vampire Weekend. After seeing The Lost Boys, he was inspired to write his own vampire movie, but lost interest after two days. Such a non-starter would normally barely rate a footnote in entertainment history if Koenig hadn't formed the band and applied the name of his movie to them.
• For most of his career, guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan struggled with addiction to cocaine and alcohol, until a health scare finally drove him to rehab in 1986. He was already known as a remarkable musician, but when he returned to performing after leaving rehab, he turned out to be even better sober than he had been when he was using, and many predicted this would be the start of something incredible. In 1989, he released his fourth album (his first since achieving sobriety), In Step, which was (and still is) almost universally considered his best to date, leaving critics and fans eager to see what he would produce next. In August 1990, Vaughan's career was abruptly cut short when he was killed in a helicopter crash.
• After his 1979 debut concert in Paris, Jean-Michel Jarre encountered a bearded man backstage who turned out to be Mick Jagger. Mick asked him if he'd like to play the keys for The Rolling Stones on their upcoming album, Emotional Rescue.
• Music acts that could have performed at the star-making Woodstock festival but didn't:
  • The Doors turned Woodstock down because Jim Morrison didn't like outdoor shows and they thought it would be a pale imitation of the Monterey Pop Festival from 1967. (The Monterey Pop film was released in 1968.) Drummer John Densmore did attend the festival, however.
  • Joni Mitchell wanted to play the festival, but her manager David Geffen (yes, that one) implored her to keep her scheduled appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. That decision proved to be ironic, because all the other guests on that episode - Jefferson Airplane, David Crosby, and Stephen Stills - had performed at Woodstock.
  • The Moody Blues, The Jeff Beck Group, and Iron Butterfly were all on the original poster, and all three missed the festival: The Moody Blues decided to play Paris instead, Jeff Beck broke up his band (resulting in his singer Rod Stewart also missing out on a chance to play Woodstock), and Iron Butterfly got stranded in New York City and the organizers denied their manager's request to escort them to the festival ground by helicopter.
  • Artists who wanted to play but were turned down or otherwise unable to appear despite their interest in performing included: John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band, James Taylor, Billy Preston, Chicago, and It's a Beautiful Day.
  • The biggest grouping of artists who could have played Woodstock are the ones who were contacted by the organizers but declined the offer. These include: Led Zeppelin, The Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel, Jethro Tull, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Tommy James and the Shondells, Spirit, Free, Lighthouse, Blind Faith, Love, Blues Image, The Rascals, Mind Garage, Poco, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, Zager & Evans, Raven, The Guess Who, Laura Nyro, Donovan, and Roy Rogers, who was specifically contacted to be the final performer at the concert and to conclude the show with "Happy Trails".
  • One of the reasons why interest in the festival was so high was that there were rumors that either Bob Dylan or The Beatles would perform. Both were contacted; Dylan considered but chose instead to play the Isle of Wight Festival in England later that month. The Beatles were too busy working on Abbey Road and Lennon, as mentioned above, was the only member who expressed interest in performing.
• In 1940, there were discussions about Benny Goodman and Count Basie combining their big bands, with Billie Holiday as a featured vocalist. However, these never got beyond the talk stage (the start of World War II and the corresponding decline in big bands further killed such speculation).
• After Diamond Rio founding bassist Matt Davenport quit in late 1988, they had to find a new bassist quickly as they were scheduled to appear on the talk show Nashville Now in January 1989. One of the names offered up was Alan LaBoeuf, who had just quit the country group Baillie & the Boys, but he ultimately turned it down and went back to his previous group.
• Stratovarius keyboardist Jens Johansson originally auditioned for Dream Theater, but they rejected him.
  • In 2005, Timo Tolkki, then-lead guitarist and band manager for Stratovarius, teased a new project of theirs, most likely an upcoming album, which he codenamed R...R.... However, due to increasing tension between band members at the time, Tolkki left the band (he initially wanted to disband them entirely, but the others resisted, so he handed the rights to the name over to them and left), taking the songs he had already written for R...R... and forming a new band called Revolution Renaissance.
• There was at one point planned to be a video game based on the band Sonata Arctica, developed by Zelian Games. It would have been called Winterheart's Guild (named after their album of the same name), and would have been an action RPG in the vein of series such as Fallout and Diablo. The game would have featured the band members as characters, with the soundtrack also being provided by the band, including at least one previously-unreleased song. Sadly, it never happened.
• Cocteau Twins almost had a reunion tour in 2005, but it was cancelled because Elizabeth Fraser chickened out of participating due to being unable to share the stage with her ex-lover Robin Guthrie.
• The Backstreet Boys:
  • The boys were almost signed to Mercury Records, but the label pulled out after John Mellencamp threatened to jump ship and move to another label if Mercury got into the boy band business.
  • "I Want It That Way" was originally titled "No Goodbyes" and had drastically different lyrics. This version was widely circulated via P2P services.
• According to its listing on Broadcast Music Incorporated, both Joe Diffie and Collin Raye recorded "In a Different Light", which instead became the Signature Song of Doug Stone. (All three singers were on Epic Records Nashville at the time.) Would the song have been as successful in the hands of another singer?
• George Strait's debut single "Unwound" was originally written for Johnny Paycheck, but he was in jail at the time and could not record it. That's right; we have Johnny Paycheck's jail time to thank not only for George Strait's breakthrough hit, but also for his long-term association with songwriter Dean Dillon.
• When Lisa Loeb was still an unsigned musician and songwriter, she wrote a song called "Stay" with the intention of giving it to Daryl Hall to perform - by the time she finished working on it, she'd heard Daryl was no longer looking for new material, so it became part of the live repetoire of her band, Nine Stories. The song eventually ended up in the end credits to Reality Bites, which led to it being a #1 Billboard hit for the still unsigned Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories.
• Rodney Atkins was first signed to Curb Records in 1997, and asked for production of his first album to be halted because he didn't like the material. His debut single "In a Heartbeat" features him sporting a mustache and cowboy hat, with a Roy Orbison-influenced vocal style. He did not release a full album until 2004's Honesty, which cast him as a near-clone of then-labelmate Tim McGraw and produced no other hits besides its title track. He would finally go on to his breakthrough between 2006-08 with his smash album If You're Going Through Hell producing signature songs in its title track and "Watching You". Would he have hit it big earlier had the 1997 album been released, or had Honesty been more of a commercial success?
• "Freedom Feels Like Lonely" was originally supposed to be the third single off Joe Nichols' 2006 album III, but the label instead chose "I'll Wait for You", a ballad that went on to become a top-10 hit and fan favorite. Would the same have happened to "Freedom Feels Like Lonely"?
• Eminem:
  • Eminem's first "I Am" Song for the Slim Shady character, called "Slim Shady", was written and recorded, and included on an early demo tape of which only six copies exist. It never had a proper release. It's not that Slim needs any more songs where he tells us his name and describes all the stupid, awful things he does, so it's likely that it was just not high enough quality to bother releasing.
  • An early version of The Slim Shady LP was leaked, showing a different tracklist containing more remixes of Slim Shady EP songs ("Low Down, Dirty", "No One's Iller" and "Murder, Murder"), a posse cut ("Take The World With Me" - dropped because Dr. Dre said there were too many features on the album) and different arrangements of EP tracks that did end up on LP ("Just Don't Give A Fuck" has an arrangement with an Ominous Music Box Tune interpolation of the Bob James sample used in the original). The order of the tracks is different (weirdly, the Public Service Announcement skit is track 4), "Still Don't Give A Fuck" and "Rock Bottom" are absent (as well as the Bitch skit and the Paul skit) and several songs have different titles (e.g. "My Conscience" instead of "Guilty Conscience").
  • The Marshall Mathers LP:
    • A scrapped song for The Marshall Mathers LP called "Angry Blonde" has been referred to and referenced by Eminem multiple times (he dropped the title a number of times in other songs, sometimes refers to Slim/his early 2000s persona as 'the angry blonde', and named his lyrics book after the song). The song was reportedly inspired by a phase where Eminem would get drunk, stand on a table and give a speech about how he could beat up anyone there which was always the exact same speech. It also (unusually for a Slim song) seems to have been an "I Am Becoming" Song with a Jekyll & Hyde theme, an idea that Eminem wouldn't revisit until his post-overdose work like Relapse and The Marshall Mathers LP 2. All that we have of the song is this fragment of a verse:
    Wouldn’t like it when I’m angry, the Reeboks I'm wearing turn to Nike and
    when I'm cranky my skin pales, my hair turns blond, my shirt comes off,
    I throw a pair of earrings on, two shots of Bacardi and I start to hear things
    This girl that I came with I start to spill drinks on, I get this evil little grin in the middle of my chin
    Then I begin cursin' at each & every living person, then all my boys around me start sweating & getting nervous, then I start bussin' they balls in front of they girlfriends

  There is a longer unused bit of material, revolving around some eye-wateringly misogynistic jabs at Kim and at other women, that is frequently speculated to be part of "Angry Blonde" due to it appearing on a sheet with confirmed "Angry Blond" lines and involving wordplay based on the phrase "I'm platinum" (as in, platinum record and platinum hair).

  • Eminem had written a song for The Marshall Mathers LP, "Dear Ronnie", which would have used samples of a tape of Uncle Ronnie - his uncle who introduced him to hip-hop - rapping, and continued, "the guy you just heard on tape is dead. He shot himself and blew off the whole top of his head. That was my uncle Ronnie, grew up with him from the cradle, we thought he was crazy but never thought he'd do something fatal". Eminem's grandmother made a legal threat to prevent him releasing the song.
  • Eminem has stated that "Stan" originally contained several extra verses in which Stan survived the car crash, wrote to Slim from hospital mad that Slim didn't send him a get-well card, then went round to Marshall's house to kill him, where, eventually, "I blew his head off". It's worth pointing out there's no evidence of this that's been released (the released lyric sheets for "Stan" have no suggestion of this), so a lot of fans think he made it up.
  • Eminem claims his initial recording of "Stan"'s third verse had a superior performance, but he made a small flub at the end. His (stoned) engineer misinterpreted his request to be punched in at the end of the verse, instead wiping the entire recording of the verse, forcing him to do it again. Considering how iconically good his acting performance is on the verse committed to the record, it's not clear how much of this is just Eminem's OCD conkin' him in the head, or if it really was that much better he'd still regret it decades later.

  • The Eminem Show:
    • "Hailie's Song" originally used a sample from The Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", but Eminem couldn't get the sample cleared. The version on The Eminem Show uses a different instrumental.
    • A track called "Stimulate" was intended to go after "Soldier", but was replaced very late in production with "Say Goodbye To Hollywood". Some early prints of The Eminem Show's cover art still show "Stimulate" on the track list. "Stimulate" was eventually released on a bonus disc on the 8 Mile soundtrack and as the B-side to the CD single of "Cleanin' Out My Closet".
    • "Lose Yourself" was intended to be on The Eminem Show, with a similar flow and melody, but a different lyric, about the euphoria of his music ("if I could give the world a hit of ecstasy to make it feel the way I do..."). Eminem decided it didn't meet his standards and scrapped it, digging out the beat and rewriting the lyric when he realised he needed a song in a hurry for 8 Mile. The demo was eventually released as a bonus track on the label mixtape SHADYXV.
  • Eminem has released lyric sheets for some of his most popular songs, which contain unused lines:
    • "My Name Is" had a lot of unused jokes clearly written in the flow of the song. For example: "Back in the Medieval, I went up in a cathedral/put a bomb in the steeple and killed a heapful of people" and "Baby mama gave me pyjamas that say 'Shady's the bomb', and / made me an omelet covered in alien vomit".
    • "The Real Slim Shady" initially had a wildly different concept - probably inspired by Eminem's disgust at having to write a mainstream MTV pop single - which would have been about Slim Shady transforming into various female pop starlets with makeup and plastic surgery, then mocking them ("look at me I just got a boob job/but I'm a role model for teenage girls/people love me all over the world/okay, now, wait, you see this mascara? / look, I'm Pristina Gagulara..." This idea was dropped, but the eventual video does use the idea of Eminem dressing in drag as Britney Spears. He later used a version of his lyrics about starlets in his "R&B Bitches" freestyle.
  • The King Mathers mixtape was set to be released in 2007 and would have been his retirement album, ending with a song in which he sings (to the tune of "When I'm Gone") that he's done with rap because he's too stressed out. However, before it could be released, Eminem had an overdose that nearly killed him, detoxed, got clean, rediscovered his love of rap, scrapped King Mathers as being too low quality, and made Relapse.
  • "We Made You" was originally written for D12 member Bizarre, whose song Eminem heard, liked, and pinched the beat of for Relapse. It's likely a sum of money changed hands in order to lock Bizarre's version of "We Made You" away forever, so we will never hear it.
  • "Crack A Bottle" was originally intended for Dr. Dre's Detox, and therefore was written to have two Dre verses with an Eminem verse in between. When it was instead moved to Eminem's Relapse, the final verse was given to 50 Cent, who rewrote it himself. Dre never recorded the third "Crack A Bottle" verse, but - as his lyrics were written by Eminem - a leaked demo exists in which Eminem raps Dre's verses in a pretty convincing impression of his voice.
  • The ending of Relapse is a skit in which Eminem says he'll release a sequel album, Relapse 2. However, Relapse's mixed reception from fans and poor chart performance spooked Eminem so badly that he scrapped the album and turned a lot of what he had of it into the much more radio-friendly and sincere Recovery - which gave him multiple radio hits and served as his big comeback. Some songs written for Relapse 2 turn up on Relapse: Refill and on Recovery (for example, "Cold Wind Blows" is a Shady joint with a bombastic beat and Em using a silly accent on the hook - and you can hear the "ohh!" adlib used throughout Relapse on "W.T.P."). A few others have leaked ("Oh No") or were released as part of Relapse: Refill ("Elevator"), but there is no Relapse 2, which irritates a lot of fans now that Relapse turned out to be hugely influential and Recovery started off an Audience-Alienating Era of Eminem's career.
  • "Godzilla" was intended to have a bigger contribution from Juice WRLD, but he died before he could record all of it.
• Noah: Ariel originally wanted "Puisi Adinda" to be a Hidden Track at the end of Seperti Seharusnya. But because they no longer can do that trope in 2012 with CDs and Digital Distribution, the song becomes a regular final track (although preceded by the quiet "Night Ambience" track in CDs to achieve a similar effect).
• The Country-pop song "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia", written in 1972 by songwriter Bobby Russell, was originally intended for Cher to sing but Cher's then husband Sonny nixed it for fear that it would offend Chers southern fans. It was instead recorded by Russel's then wife, singer and comedian Vicki Lawrence, who had a #1 hit with it. It would also later be covered by Reba Mc Entire version in 1992 and again charted going to #12 on the Billboard US Hot Country Songs chart.
• A music video was planned for The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience's "Come to Butt-Head".
• After Bush broke up in 2002 but before they reunited in 2010, lead singer Gavin Rossdale formed a new band called Institute which released one album called Distort Yourself. In 2017, Rossdale said that Distort Yourself was originally supposed to be Bush's fifth album.
• Songwriter Jimmy Webb wrote "MacArthur Park" with the intention of giving it to The Association - the group rejected the song, apparently because its Epic Rocking length meant they would have had to ditch two or three of their own original songs in order to fit it on an album. Not long after, Jimmy Webb would meet actor Richard Harris at a fundraiser and Harris would be the first to record the song.
• The Led Zeppelin tribute album Enconium was at one point going to feature Cracker covering "When The Levee Breaks", but the final version of the album had them performing "Good Times, Bad Times" instead. Rumor had it that the label had rejected their rendition of the former as "too weird", but members of the band would state it had to be cut from the album due to copyright issues - the Led Zeppelin version of "When The Levee Breaks" is an adaptation of a song of the same name by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy, and at the time it was unclear how songwriting royalties should be properly distributed for the recording, so the band was asked to record something else.
• In the late 1970s, Sony demonstrated a prototype digital optical audio disc that was 12 inches in diameter, similar to that of an LP record. The company teamed up with Philips when they learned that both companies were working on digital audio disc technology. The effort eventually became the Compact Disc. The connection to the LP remained in early CD packaging prototypes that used mini paperboard LP-style sleeves before switching to the more familiar jewel case.
• Jhariah's song "DEBT COLLECTOR" was planned to be released on the deluxe cassette version of To Mend the Sun in July 2020. In March 2022, Jhariah shared an early version of the song, with the same lyrics and core idea but less polished.
• Guitarist Randy Rhoads was big part of Ozzy Osbourne's initial success in his solo career. Rhoads' death in a plane crash after the second album changed what could have been. Whether Rhoads would have stayed with Ozzy for at least another album, or whether he would have struck out on his own in new musical directions, we will never know. But it would have been glorious.
• When Stereophonics first formed in 1992 they went by the name Tragic Love Company, derived from their favourite bands, The Tragically Hip, Mother Love Bone and Bad Company. Wayne Coleman, who helped organise some of their first concerts, disliked the name and suggested they change it. Drummer Stuart Cable found a gramophone manufactured by Falcon Stereophonic and the rest is history.
• Jhené Aiko was supposed to release her debut album, My Name is Jhené, in 2002-2003, but due to disputes between her and her label, the album never got released and she decides to not go back to the music industry for a few years, and didn't create her first album, Sailing Soul(s) until 2011.
• The song "Something to Talk About" , written by Shirley Eikhard, was first pitched to Anne Murray in 1985 - Anne herself wanted to record it, but her producers didn't think the song would catch on and rejected it, though the 1986 album that would have featured the song still ended up being titled Something To Talk About. Six years later, the song was a hit for Bonnie Raitt instead.
• In 1991, Record Producer Michael Bivins was promoting a roster of vocal groups billed as the “East Coast Family” - since one of the groups in question, Boyz II Men, included shout outs to two of the others in their song "Motownphilly", the music video included cameos from all the rest: Bell Biv Devoe, Another Bad Creation, and Sudden Impact. Bell Biv Devoe and Another Bad Creation had already released successful albums for Motown at that point - on the other hand, despite their prominent appearance in the video, Sudden Impact hadn't established themselves yet, and ultimately would break up without having released any music.
• Obviously, the world is full of musicians who never got to be big stars. But of all the failed "Next Big Things" in music, none have almost succeeded as much as the mercurial Hollywood singer-songwriter Bobby Jameson. Here's a brief overview of his career and the many times he almost became a star...but didn't, whether that be from record industry politics to his own demons:
  • After recording his first single "Let's Surf" in 1963, alongside the B-side "Please Little Girl Won't You Take This Lollipop" ^note  Which would later be used in the infamous short horror film Take This Lollipop , Jameson's first brush with almost becoming a star came in 1964, when his manager Tony Alamo (who would later leave show business behind and become an infamous real life Sinister Minister) began a promotional blitz describing the 19 year old as "The World's Next Phenomenon"...without Jameson's permission. His first single with Alamo, "I'm So Lonely", was a regional hit in the Midwest (and Canada) and he soon began touring as an opening act for The Beach Boys and appearing on American Bandstand...but after the followup "Okey Fanokey Baby" failed, he soon moved to England to restart his career away from Alamo.
  • While in England, he befriended The Rolling Stones and recorded a song called "All I Want Is My Baby", written by Keith Richards and featuring a young Jimmy Page on guitar, which also went nowhere. Returning to Hollywood, he was signed by Mira Records, a new label founded by Randy Wood ^note  Who had, under the Chicago based Vee-Jay Records, previously discovered Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and gave The Beatles their first American record deal with an odd request. See, Mira had already recorded an album with another singer named Chris Ducey called Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest for their budget label Surrey, and had even printed a sleeve with the album titles. But Ducey was already under contract with another label, so they couldn't release what had been recorded...so Jameson and producer Marshall Lieb (who had formerly worked with Phil Spector) had to create entirely new songs to match the titles Ducey wrote, and the album would be credited to "Chris Lucey. ^note  To add insult to injury, the cover featured neither Jameson nor Ducey, but a stock photo of the Stones' Brian Jones! Ignored upon its 1965 release, the album would gain a cult following among collectors of 60's rock, noted for its odd mix of psychedelic pop and bleak lyrics, with arrangements that resemble Forever Changes, the seminal album by Arthur Lee's Love (although coming out two yeas prior). But at the time, it was given Invisible Advertising and left to rot in record store bargain bins around America. If it was released under his real name and given any sort of advertising at all, who knows how his career could've gone?
  • In 1966, Jameson finally got to release a single for Mira under his real name. Titled "Vietnam", the blistering garage rock song was one of the earliest songs protesting The Vietnam War...and was immediately shelved by the record label as being too radical. Around this time, he became infamous as an anti-war protestor and general rabble-rouser in So Cal's burgeoning hippie community, gaining the title of "The Mayor of the Sunset Strip" for his role in protests against the LAPD attempting to set a curfew on rock clubs in West Hollywood. Due to his friendship with Frank Zappa, he managed to get another contract on Verve and a new album called Color Him In!, appeared in the cult documentary Mondo Hollywood, and was even considered for a role as one of the The Monkees (which he infamously turned down), but his history of violent outbursts and legal troubles stemming from the riots became more famous than his music, and he eventually left the label after assaulting a police officer. By 1972, Rolling Stone ran an article about his fading career and his links to Tony Alamo, sympathetically describing him as "a has been who had never been to begin with" and noting that the most press he got in the previous year was over a failed suicide attempt.
  • After spending the 70's drifting in and out of rehab centers, homeless shelters and mental insitutions, he made his last recordings in 1978 and finally retired for good in 1985, moving away from Hollywood. For decades, people assumed he had died, but he was living with his mother in San Luis Obispo and trying to break his addictions. He resurfaced in the 2000's after Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest was reissued, and started a blog and YouTube channel about his life and career and his attempts to get any sort of royalties from his music. At the time of his death in 2015, he was regarded as one of the greatest "what if" stories of 60s music: someone who could've been a trailblazer but never got the chance to shine.
• Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" was originally conceived as a four verse, ten minute piece of Epic Rocking, but ended up about half that length and featuring what were originally the first and last verses only. One of the middle verses got dropped from the arrangement just because the band had decided it was weaker than the rest, which still left a seven minute song; the Record Producer then suggested sacrificing another verse for the sake of Radio Friendliness. The final version ended up being about four minutes (a later stereo remix extended it to five, but still didn't include any additional lyrics). The band have performed the song live with the missing verses, but no studio version of them exists.
• The original idea behind funk rock Supergroup The Power Station was that the core group of musicians (Andy Taylor, John Taylor and Tony Thompson) would write and record instrumentals and a different singer would perform on each track - those approached to sing included Mick Jagger, Billy Idol, Richard Butler, and Robert Palmer. Palmer was initially brought into the studio just to sing the song "Communication", but ended up having so much chemistry with the group that they decided to record the entire Self-Titled Album with him as lead singer.

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