Albums disowned by their creators

Help me compile a list - all I can think of off the top of the dome are:

Cold Lake - Celtic Frost
Into The Unknown - Bad Religion

First Beta Band album

First Ministry album

Marvin Gaye's "In Our Lifetime."

Didn't Lana Del Rey buy back the rights to her Lizzie Grant recordings to prevent them being rereleased?

yeah pre-fame/relevance era albums are prob the biggest subset of this

Y Kant tori read

Most lately Chromatics newest in release one to which the tapes have apparently been "lost"

whoa really? dammit

Newest unreleased that should say

Apparently Johnny destroyed every copy according to the spin article

Prince - black album?

The Las debut, to some degree.

Cold Spring Harbor?

let It Be ('Spector' mix).

early Kraftwerk

Underworld's first two albums

Pantera glam era

The first Japan album. They're wrong, too.

First Ministry album

― brimstead, Friday, January 19, 2018 9:37 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup. Of course, Jourgensen's also wrong!

Everyone who does this is wrong.

Dion "Born to Be With You"

On its completion in 1974, DiMucci effectively disowned the record, stating that the production made it sound like "funeral music"

this is a common theme w Spector-produced bands

Did TV on the Radio disown OK Calculator? Because I don't think they'd be wrong if they did.

First Emmylou Harris. First Johnny Cougar?

'Unconditionally Guaranteed" and "Bluejeans and Moonbeams" Captain Beefheart.

He wrong too.. Unless its purely about the DiMartinos

Elvis Costello - Goodbye Cruel World

i feel like Mellencamp disowned his first five albums! he had a whole other career before Jack and Diane.

Frank Zappa -- the individual LPs of the Läther material

Nurse With Wound - Insect And Individual Silenced

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_and_Individual_Silenced

(he kind of changed his mind many years later)

Not sure if you can officially call it disowned, but Working On A Dream doesn't get mentioned even once in Springsteen's huge 500+ page bio.

what happened to that blog where that guy recreated lost albums?

The first unicorns LP was disowned. I was buddies with their first manager and he gave me a copy. They redid some of the songs for the first official LP and basically made them more polished and less lo fi

"Unicorns are people too" was the first self released one

Richard & Linda Thompson: First Light and Sunnyvista (their two 'Pop' albums for Chrysalis)

Richard disowns a bunch of his stuff right? Like he claims he "loses" master tapes for things he doesn't like?

"Losing" a tape is an all time trope

what happened to that blog where that guy recreated lost albums?

― campreverb

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/

Not an album, but Bowie's "The Laughing Gnome"

early Bob Seger

how has Pablo Honey not been mentioned yet

Pink Floyd, or rather Waters and Gilmour, are pretty dismissive of most of what they recorded between Syd and Meddle. They are wrong.

What did Lou Reed say about Sally Can't Dance? "The worse I am, the better I sell".

Richard disowns a bunch of his stuff right? Like he claims he "loses" master tapes for things he doesn't like?

Something like that? I think it mainly has to do with outtakes/demos/unreleased material (most notably the original Shoot Out the Lights sessions). The Chrysalis albums are an interesting case because iirc they were released on CD without his knowledge and he successfully asked that they be taken out of print. He did a similar thing with Hannibal Records and the Small Town Romance live LP, which he blocked for CD reissue for several years before pulling back in the late '90s.

Waters and Gilmour also hate Atom Heart Mother, fuckin idiots.

a good subthread for this would be "Albums disowned by their creators, who are wrong"

tbrr they are always wrong

U2's Pop.

What sleeve said. It would be more interesting to see which artists are actually OTM with their dismissals.

Beastie Boys

The Strokes Hate Their New Album Angles

There are also Greatest Hits albums disowned by their creators, but purely for label/contract reasons — Cowboy Junkies and Michelle Shocked hasty compilations come to mind.

Marvin Gaye's "In Our Lifetime."

album is fucking great, though

"Losing" a tape is an all time trope

oh however this I just wanna say there's some old stuff the Joan Crawfords actively would love to reissue and I spent this week trying to locate the tapes and nobody knows where they are.

When xpost Phil Spector was involved, the tapes really could get "lost"(and not just re artists' usual standards of quality). Consire the case of one L. Cohen, making merry and making music, in-The Twilight Zone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Ladies%27_Man_(album).
And the tale of the Lennon tapes is so twisted it has to be read, not summarized:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_John_Lennon_Sings_the_Great_Rock_%26_Roll_Hits

Although in some cases (the Ramones, maybe for instance), Spector's notoriety could make for a convenient alibi: "Dat Phil, wotta whack job!" So why'd you pick *him*?

thanks sleeve.

Robyn Hitchcock sort of disown "Groovy Decay / Decoy", at least in terms of getting it back in print physically. He's also wrong, I never understood the hate for it.

Rem / Fables..

Red Hot Chili Peppers / One Hot Minute

both debatable there i guess.

Brett Anderson has said Suede should have never made A New Morning. He's not wrong.

Neil Hannon often refers to Liberation as his first album ignoring The Divine Comedy's first release, Fanfare For The Comic Muse. The only time I read him mention its existence, it wasn't at all positive.

Noel Gallagher must have disowned at least half of Oasis' output over the years. Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants especially.

Hasn't Scott Walker disowned most of his work from the 70s?

Van Morrison and Harry Nilsson both pretty much disowned their first albums for the same reason - they were made up of assorted singles and demos that were never intended to be albums. In Van's case, it also was given a druggy cover image and title he didn't approve of.

Genesis doesn't have any use for their first album either, or for that matter their last one.

Re:U2, I think « Rattle&Hum » is the only pre-« Zooropa» album that didn’t get a remaster/deluxe version...

Radiohead disowned Pablo Honey and Creep as a single. Even made a song against it... they eventually made peace with it.

Goldfrapp indicated head first was a contractual obligation. Shame cuz dreaming and the hunt are gorgeous songs

Radiohead made peace by suing Lana del Rey over similarities to the song "creep". That's how Much they disowned that LP

Time Fades Away, On The Beach and probably a bunch of other Neil Young albums as well (I'm not too well versed in the depths of his discography)

Sorry anagram did Neil disown these? P

At one point yeah but not any more.

Beastie Boys

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, January 20, 2018 12:30 PM

yeah, they've disowned eight of their albums and never perform anything from them live anymore

Brett Anderson has said Suede should have never made A New Morning. He's not wrong.

He's not right either - that album has 'Obsessions' on it, which is one of their best songs. 'Lonely Girls' and 'Lost In TV' aren't too bad either.

Noel Gallagher must have disowned at least half of Oasis' output over the years. Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants especially.

Only Be Here Now and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants ...

Radiohead and numerous other idiots also completely wrong about Pablo Honey.

Waters and Gilmour also hate Atom Heart Mother, fuckin idiots.

― kurt schwitterz

gilmour played "atom heart mother" live in 2008... he can't hate it _that_ much...

Gary Numan has said he shouldn't have bothered making a lot of the albums he released in the late 80s/early 90s.

Radiohead made peace by suing Lana del Rey over similarities to the song "creep". That's how Much they disowned that LP

― kolakube (Ross)

If’s not really Radiohead suing but the label. Regardless on stance this article is a really interesting read on the similarities between both songs and “the air that I breathe” for which Radiohead got sued back then.

http://thequietus.com/articles/23883-music-plagiarism-radiohead-lana-del-rey

the Rattle & Hum remaster thing may be some kind of rights issue between movie/music labels & original copyright holders etc

Rivers Cuomo once described Pinkerton as "worthless" but I think he just wanted to wind people up at the time

"Groovy Decay" is a GREAT example. The second side of it just completely runs out of steam.
hard to hate on it too much given "The Cars She Used To Drive", but the version of 'Kingdom of Love' is a total train wreck.

I thought Rattle & Hum did get remastered, but they buried it as an exclusive in one of the big Joshua Tree boxes (iirc, they did a similar thing with Zooropa in the Achtung Baby box).

Tony Bennett's Contemporary Pop Album from 1969

https://athenae25.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/tony-bennett-tony-sings-the-gr-474931.jpg

Bennett later said that, "I started planning the record by listening to as many current hits as I could stand. I mean some of the songs made me physically nauseous."[5] Clive Davis reported that Bennett literally vomited before the first recording session for the album.

I thought Rattle & Hum did get remastered, but they buried it as an exclusive in one of the big Joshua Tree boxes (iirc, they did a similar thing with Zooropa in the Achtung Baby box).

a quick poke-around suggests that neither of these are the case (Zooropa was included in a ten-disc Achtung Baby box, but apparently not remastered)

Fleetwood Mac - Time

Damon Albarn was pretty much dismissing Think Tank during interviews for Blur's last LP.

Howlin' Wolf - This is Howlin' Wolf's New Album. He Doesn't Like It. He Didn't Like His Electric Guitar First Either.

i like the idea of tony bennett listening to "my cherie amour" and being so repulsed he literally vomited. yeah, you're right tony, what a terrible fucking song

I know Alice Cooper doesn't remember recording at least one of his 80s albums - not sure if that's another way of disowning an album, or just a consequence of being completely blotto/ sloshed for a decade.

lol great Tony Bennett story

Alice Cooper doesn't remember recording Special Forces, Zipper Catches Skin and DaDa but he's never disowned any of those records. He was particularly proud of DaDa and rightly so, it's one of his best albums and a fan favourite.

Wikip has it he never did any of DaDa live, ever.

He toured Special Forces, but you can see from the footage of that period that he's not in great shape. He didn't tour either Zipper Catches Skin or DaDa, and by the time he came back with Constrictor, there was very little from those albums that fit in stylistically with what he was doing and it's pretty much been that way since. But he's never disowned DaDa and as said, it's a very popular album with fans.

Yeah, that was pretty much what I assumed.

I recently came across an old program I had from the Special Forces tour, and man did he look gaunt in those days. The fact that he rebounded and is still with us is no small miracle.

Paul Kelly (the Australian one) apparently wishes every copy of his first two albums could be gathered up and destroyed. He's done a good job of helping people forgot them. I wouldn't have guessed many strongly disagree with him, but a quick look at discogs suggests that Talk now changes hands for non-trivial $.

Er, *forget* them.

what's the reason for the first gas album not being included on the recent anthology

Should Musicians Criticise Their Own Music?

Kurt Ralske has disowned all of the Ultra Vivid Scene albums, in fact he posted his opinion on an ILM thread some years ago.

Green Gartside pretty much disowns Provision, but hey that's my favorite Scritti album. (I like all the UVS stuff too.)

I'm guessing that Underworld don't really have much to say about their pre-1992 work anymore.

However they still seem to value the Freur days, as they should.

Thinking about it, the LP's that Cooper seems to disown is the very early stuff... Easy Action and Pretties For You.

what's the reason for the first gas album not being included on the recent anthology

Why did you choose to not repress the first GAS EP and album?

Wolfgang Voigt: Because the first GAS album represents a different artistic and musical style and approach.

Source: Discogs' interview with him about the boxset.

... Harry Nilsson {..} pretty much disowned {his} first albums for the same reason - they were made up of assorted singles and demos that were never intended to be albums.
― Lee626, Saturday, 20 January 2018 06:14 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Harry dis-owned then in a sense - when the original copyright owners contacted him for 'permission', he said that as they had already paid him a decent whack for his work back in the day, they could do what they liked with them, with thanks.

xp ah ok, cheers!

Beastie Boys

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, January 20, 2018 12:30 PM

yeah, they've disowned eight of their albums and never perform anything from them live anymore

― Haribo Hancock (sic), Saturday, January 20, 2018 4:43 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I assume Adam was talking about the first album (misogynistic lyrics etc)

Throwing Muses, but just "Dizzy" (and correctly IMO)

Mandy Moore's first two albums

Paul Kelly (the Australian one) apparently wishes every copy of his first two albums could be gathered up and destroyed.

I agree with him, I sold them a couple of years ago myself. Just not good.

Green Gartside pretty much disowns Provision

I did too, it was SUCH a letdown after the immortal "Cupid & Psyche". Maybe I was too hard on it, I know lots of people who adore it.

lana del rey's first album? the one(s)? under a different name

katy perry's christian album(s)?

Lana Del "Monte" Rey was mentioned, like, five posts in.

No RnH, Zooropa or Pop reissues, though I'd guess it's at least partially due to the band being busy on other things.

Maybe in the down time after the next tour we'll see some action on these fronts? Also getting closer to 20th anniversary of ATYCLB, which is far more loved by the band than the aforementioned (in my opinion).

However they still seem to value the Freur days, as they should.

I wish they'd give the second album a proper remaster but I don't know if they own the rights to it anymore. Hyde played "Doot Doot" at a solo show though which is pretty awesome. Never thought I'd see the day...

most blatant example of this I can think of is Mike Doughty writing an entire book to essentially disown all his work with Soul Coughing, at least until reclaiming it a couple years after and making it kinda suck

I assume Adam was talking about the first album (misogynistic lyrics etc)

They obviously spurned some of those lyrics, but never disowned the album: continuing to perform songs from it live, going to the expense & hassle of licensing tracks from it for compilations, etc.

Yeah, c'mon they knew what they were doing at the time

That's true, and yet hindsight can strip away the rationale-at-the-time.

Shriekback on "Go Bang", which Barry doesn't quite disown but does own the poor choices:
http://shriekbackmusic.tumblr.com/post/87300284602/go-bang-and-after-compromise-king-swamp-and

Robert Fripp is not a fan of Lizard. I am pretty sure Gordon Haskell hated the album as it was being recorded. When Steven Wilson proposed remastering it a few years ago Fripp's response was basically, "why?"

hah that discussion is why i didn't list the album itself. i googled it and there were all these different takes. like they disowned _this_ aspect of their songs but they still play it live and never said anything about _that_. they deserved a mention just cos when i was growing up they were one of the biggest acts to come out and say that and not many people do. i remember MTV News talking about it a lot, they were also getting into Tibetan freedom and all kinds of activism at the time. it was pretty cool.

Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg - The Mountain Goats

Leaked without John's permission.

“The more loudly I proclaim its badness, the more entrenched the opposition becomes,” he said, adding, “if you’re listening to that, open up Audacity and pitch-correct it.” The version that’s out there is faulty in some way, and the responsibility of the “true fan” is to do herself the service of fixing it, and of making it the best it could be

Well the difference between "Rattle&Hum" and "Zooropa"/"Pop" is that the album AFTER R&H has a deluxe/remaster version !
So it's the only album between their debut and "Achtung Baby" that didn't get one (even "Under a Blood Red Sky" has been remastered).

Haven't U2 said that Pop was kind of half finished when it was released?

Also think Mullen has said he'd like to go back and rework some of the songs "some day".

for what it's worth the Beasties were really in an odd spot with that one...how many albums listed here were the artists' best seller?

U2 did rework a few of the songs on Pop slightly for their 90s best of compilation i think

My Bloody Valentine disregards everything they've done prior to their Creation years.

^^^^Which is too bad, as some of it is quite good.

"No RnH, Zooropa or Pop reissues, though I'd guess it's at least partially due to the band being busy on other things." maybe also because no one would buy these (I'd be interested in a zooropa reissue though; i wouldn't buy it but i'd like, stream it).

"Robert Fripp is not a fan of Lizard. I am pretty sure Gordon Haskell hated the album as it was being recorded. When Steven Wilson proposed remastering it a few years ago Fripp's response was basically, "why?""

this is true, however, he also said that the remixing of that was revelatory to him and he rediscovered it as a result, and now a fair chunk of it makes up their live set.

american music club disowned their first album, which was a mistake as it's jsut as good as all the others. I guess too 'college rock' but it's of a set with green on red and other things of that ilk.

When Ben Watt was on his Patient book tour in Seattle, I complimented him on North Marine Drive, and he dismissed the album as awful.

Has anyone mentioned Lee Mavers disowning The La's 1990 self-titled? Seems a good example.

When Ben Watt was on his Patient book tour in Seattle, I complimented him on North Marine Drive, and he dismissed the album as awful.

Wow, really? To me, it's up there with his best work. Especially the stuff with Robert Wyatt that's been added to the CD reissue.

I think Alanis Morissette dismisses her first couple of albums - the pre-Jagged Little Pill stuff.

How does Bjork feel about her first album these days?

It's never been reissued, but one doubts she ever "owned" it as a creator in the first place.

Debut? Or some other, earlier album?

This one:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/Bjork%2C1977%2CFront.jpg

Whaaaaaaaat

Also think Mullen has said he'd like to go back and rework some of the songs "some day".

And, in U2, what Larry Mullen says goes.

The Byrds hated their last two albums soon as they were released and acknowledged their flaws.

I don't think Björk would disown her childrens album tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Br7nXmA1e4

Adorbs

And, in U2, what Larry Mullen says goes.

eheh. he might not be the LEAST important guy in the band, though !

Debut? Or some other, earlier album?

Debut was her ninth studio album and the third credited to her

eh I'm no Bjork expert but even I know that's not the case, Debut was her first solo album proper, i.e. excluding this juvenilia thing so idk where you're getting nine studio albums from, unless you're counting the Sugarcubes

He's counting:

1) The album where she was young
2) The Sugarcubes ones
3) The Jazz one
4) Then came "Debut"

Guess he's counting -

Bjork - Bjork (1977)
Tappi Tíkarrass - Miranda (1983)
K.U.K.L. - The Eye (1984)
Kukl - Holidays In Europe (1986)
Megas - Loftmynd (1987)
Megas - Höfuðlausnir (1988)
The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good (1988)
The Sugarcubes - Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! (1989)
Megas - Hættuleg Hljómsveit & Glæpakvendið Stella (1990)
Björk Guðmundsdóttir & Tríó Guðmundar Ingólfssonar - Gling-Gló (1990)
The Sugarcubes - Stick Around for Joy (1992)

...but the Megas albums she's only on backing vocals.

K.U.K.L. are really great btw, highly recommended

I had that "Holidays in Europe", it was mmmmmmm

Mark G disapproval is a sure sign of greatness

Well, she achieved it..

Debut was her first solo album proper, i.e. excluding this juvenilia thing so idk

idk why you don't count Gling-Glo as being credited to her

that Bjork "Fool on the Hill" is pretty rad and look at the album cover how on Earth would you not think this was the coolest thing ever? when im thinking back to being a kid it's embarassing Thanksgiving sweaters not mystic Icelandic Beatles covers

Otm. Joanna Newsom built a whole career out of that album cover.

Notable by its absence from the second of Lily Allen’s intimate comeback shows is any trace of the 32-year-old’s last album, from 2014. It’s not surprising: Sheezus bombed critically, sank commercially and, thanks to a video interpreted as racist and anti-feminist, became a lamb to the slaughter in the early days of Twitter’s wokeness wars. Nobody wants to go back there.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/mar/22/lily-allen-review-confessional-pop-on-her-own-terms