What Could Have Been/Music

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• David Bowie originally planned, among many other things...
  • ... to have a Chuck Berry cover as the fourth track of Ziggy Stardust, 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.
• Pete Townshend's original plan for the album Who's Next was an elaborate Rock Opera called Lifehouse about futuristic dystopia where people lived in pods and only experience life through a virtual mainframe. But then an old man taught a group freedom fighters about rock 'n' roll from the old days, and they 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, effectivley changing the music to fit in with those hearing it hopefully resulting in a "perfect chord" and trascend vibrating nirvana. It eventually fell apart mostly due to no one else involved in The Who having a bloody idea what he was talking about, and instead we only got one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
  • Sounds like The Matrix.
• 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 two of which ultimately ended up on an album ("Hash Pipe" on The Green Album 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
  • 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.
• Pink Floyd originally planned their followup to 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 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, Waters's 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 Water's 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 as 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.
• 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). 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.
• Michael Jackson's song "Is It Scary" was first conceived in 1993 as a tie-in to Addams Family Values, along with a video concept that he hashed out with Stephen King in which Michael would face a Torches and Pitchforks mob with help from Wednesday and Pugsley Addams. When the first round of child molestation allegations was leveled against him, this was all put on hold, but he revived and completed the project in 1997 as the 38-minute video Ghosts, which added two more songs and dropped the Addams Family trappings.
  • The main page illustrates a snippet from the rehearsals of his upcoming This Is It tour. Which he unfortunately did not live to do so. Luckily, Sony compiled all the rehearsals and make it into a two-hour movie. And now everyone's happy.
  • MJ's song "Bad" was originally supposed to be a duet with The Artist Formerly Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Prince turned down the offer because he felt the song was excellent with just Michael singing.
    • Rumor has it Prince wasn't terribly enamored of the song's opening line, "Your butt is mine..."
    • Another rumour is that Prince turned it down because a duet would make it obvious to all audiences that Michael Jackson was significantly taller than him.
  • Jackson was rehearsing a live special for HBO, One Night Only, in late 1995 when he collapsed and had to go to the hospital; although the show had been widely advertised, he never rescheduled it.
  • 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. It could have worked, assuming he had wanted to play Voldemort.
  • "In the Closet" was originally planned as a duet with Madonna.
  • Decade, a Greatest Hits Album with some new tracks, was supposed to be his first album after Bad.
• Entirely averted by Johannes Brahms, who burned all the drafts of his music before publication.
• The Beatles recorded "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" in the 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 insanity. 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 a few years after leaving the band.
  • 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 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 redo of it that removes the Spector element.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
    • And now how am I going to get rid of my hardon?
  • 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 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.
  • 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".
  • 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") who show an interesting future. But then came Napster, Jason Newsted's departure, and the mother of all Creator Breakdowns...
• X Japan has a lot of these:
  • What if the band hadn't been 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 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 Nightmare Fuel 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, of course, generates more What Could Have Been speculation regarding Sharon Tate. Nice going, Charlie.)
• 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.
• 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.
• 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!
• 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.)
• 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.
• 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 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 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.
• In a lesser example, 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.
• Averted with another country music singer, Jason Aldean. The studio that held the masters to his second album, Relentless, caught fire, but the fire stopped just shy of 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.
• You know that song "Kryponite" by Three Doors Down? Well apparently the song was originally slower in tempo...and written as a song for Green Day.
• Vangelis was offered a spot in the group Yes. However, he turned it down to go solo. Had Vangelis 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.
• Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" was originally written with The Ramones in mind.
• 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 , 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 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 it's 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 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?
• Kurt Cobain wanted to work with Michael Stipe in a solo album. And there's this interview, where Kurt expresses his love for New Wave.
• 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 are owed that!
  • The original concept for "Britney" was to be a more R N B Darker and generally more personal album called "Shock Your Mind" which she wrote most of the tracks except for one. Jive decided they'd rather have another Max Martin focused album and nixed the idea
  • "Everytime" was supposed to have Britney commit suicide, the recording company couldn't have that
  • "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.
• "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 if this had happened.
• 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!
• 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 MIA and Jarvis Cocker. This of course never ended up happening.
• 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.
• 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 Brian Ferry, Cy Cumin from The Fixx, and Billy Idol, all of whom turned it down. Idol later recorded a version in 2001, as the token new track on 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.
• Disappointed that it hasn't been mentioned yet but just imagine what could have been if Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Bizet, Purcell, and many many others had lived longer to produce more of their beautiful music.
• There was a urban legend going around that NWA 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, where 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 very poor 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.
  • 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.
• 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 Dork Age album Self Portrait instead.
• 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.
• 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.
  • In 2004, the OK Computer idea was resurrected, on a smaller scale, for Hail to the Thief as 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. In a roundabout way though, if XYZ had happened, Yes' 90125 might not have.
• 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.
• When Bobby Gentry sent in seven-minute eleven-verse song named Ode to Billy Joe explaining the life of Billy Joe McAllister and why he jumped off the Tallahassee Bridge, the record companies insisted that she cut it down to the length of a single and most of the verses were removed. To this day, we still don't know what Billy Joe tossed off of the bridge and why he jumped.
• Lady Gaga was very very close to becoming another piano based singer songwriter of the theme of Delta Goodrem and Alicia Keys had she not been dropped from her recording company at the very last moment. The rest is history.
  • 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 tour with Kanye West
  • The Edge Of Glory cancelled video
  • Alejandro's lack of Latin theme in it's video.
  • Just Dance was supposed to be a rock song.
• Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and REM 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.
• 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 lead by her boyfriend at the time and a few of his friends.
• Christina Aguilera's original idea for Bionic was supposed to be more modern and more fitting to the promoted theme (Cutting edge electro pop). The rumour is that her recording company refused to put the more abstract and creative songs on the album.
• 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 ino an instrumental band after Peter Gabriel left.
  • Fish from Marillion was briefly to be considered the replacement for Phil Collins, before deciding to use Ray Wilson of Stiltskin.
• Though it hasn't been confirmed or denied by anyone else involved, 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.
• 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. Dave Grohl decided that he wanted to play on the whole album instead, and that's what ended up happening.
• Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus were originally approach to perform the song “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”, possibly reunited with Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog for the song. The task was ultimately given to Elton John.

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