People’s careers, in some cases, could have progressed entirely differently if a shelved album had been released instead of what did come out. In hindsight, you could mull over the other avenues an artist could’ve traveled the unreleased albums become the counter-narratives, the stylistic detours (or plateaus) that were traded for something different. There’s something about the unheard that is always going to be exhilarating, the anticipation preceding discovery. Those are the more unfortunate cases of what could’ve been, but that same lure and mystery exists for projects with less dire conclusions. They become a piece of lore, whether it’s the Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis collab that never happened or the tragedy of Dennis Wilson succumbing to alcoholism and eventually drowning during the recording of Bambu, thus not being able to follow-up his cult masterpiece Pacific Ocean Blue. Regardless of the cause, this is why the specter of the unreleased album is such an enticing one. In graver circumstances, artists have died in the midst of working on something that could have been great, leaving us to wonder not only what could’ve been in that moment but also in all the remaining years that never were.
A band might go into implosion mode and break up before finishing their latest opus they might dissolve and decide the story ends right there instead of offering one last swan song. But sometimes those business or logistic decisions come from the artist, too. You know those old stereotypes, “the Man” getting in the way of unfettered creative output. When it comes to a “shelved” album, the cause is almost always some kind of label or industry machinations - they receive the would-be Next Big Statement from a major artist and then recoil at the lack of singles, lament its lack of commercial viability, or even find it artistically misguided and request a re-do. And while concerns of vision might be the more righteous cause for an album disappearing into the ephemera of time, more often it has to do with the bleaker realities of life, and of the music industry. Sometimes an over-eager artist begins talking up a new album as they are working on it, with a name and set of themes all figured out, only to run into creative burnout and abandonment of the project on the other hand, sometimes new inspiration strikes in the moment and takes them to a totally new place, one necessitating they don’t look back and muddle the story. There are as many possibilities for what that “reason” might be as there are permutations in the actual crafting of an album. A more aggressive term there could be “shelved,” albums seemingly complete and ready to be unveiled and subsequently met with a concrete decision that there was some reason they shouldn’t be. Sometimes we simply call them “unreleased,” albums we know were supposed to exist and were supposed to materialize and yet were held back. Sometimes we call these “lost” albums, the works that never quite came into focus, that suggest some path not fully taken. Pop history is littered with the albums that could’ve been, the albums we could’ve heard. Because there’s a whole other battle to be fought even once an album has been written and recorded: the battle of actually releasing it. There are the ones that get discarded, ones that get edged out and never see the light of day. The ones that get stunted somewhere along the way, never having their chance to reach completion. There are also the great ones we don’t get. It’s a wonder we get as many great ones as we do. While not quite on the level of, say, a major blockbuster production, it can be dizzying to consider the amount of factors that must fall into place for something as comparatively contained as an album to work. There are the players, the recording circumstances, the money, the ability or luck that results in a once-in-a-lifetime performance. You might come up with seven or 10 brilliant compositions, but then still have nothing lyrically, or vice versa. Every artist must wring something out from deep within themselves and try to make it cohere outside in the world, make it tangible enough that it communicates something to the listener - and even icons have their struggles with writer’s block. Have you ever really stopped and thought about how intricate and difficult the process of making a successful album must be? There is, of course, the basic issue of inspiration.
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