Albums blocked by record companies

i've been rocking out to q-tip's kamaal the abstract all day today and was wondering what albums aside from it and fiona apple's extraordinary machine have been shelved due to record companies losing interest. i'm sure such a practise is fairly commonplace when it comes to new bands and their debut records. i'm more interested in hearing about established artists, who, for whatever reason(s), made an album that their record company didn't approve of and never bothered to release. extra points to people who list albums that, like the aforementioned ones, eventually saw the light of day.

BLACK BASTARDS

annie's new album :(

i guess it's not really "new" anymore, though!

the final transvision vamp album, although it did end up coming out in australia (the only place they kept selling records iirc)

(wiki tells me it was only their UK label blocking it, came out in US too)

haha apparently the second wendy james solo thing stayed unreleased too

annie was so successful, what happened there?

there was also that annoying smarmy chick who did showtuney things. can't remember her name.

A bunch come to mind...

Juliana Hatfield _God's Foot_
Brian Wilson _Sweet Insanity_
The Darkside <untitled third album>

Wasn't "Whats Going On" initially blocked by Berry Gordy? Then released to critical and audience appraisal.

Probably something only I care about, but Danielle Brisebois's second solo album was shelved in 1999 by RCA, even after the New Radicals got pretty famous the year just before it. I was so excited to see it show up on OiNK years later.

Also, Prince's Black Album.

Butthole Surfers: After the Astronaut (although apparently it was released in a different version as Weird Revolution)

Joi: Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome

Prince himself blocked The Black Album so that doesn't count.

I probably knew that, but okay.

Entering a new Ride : Big Audio Dynamite

Impossible ! : Bronze Age Fox - recorded for sony records, and then never released. though it has since been released digitally via SVC records.

Warner Bros. ordered George Clinton to release Funkadelic's The Electric Spanking of War Babies as a single LP instead of the intended double.

George Harrison "Somewhere in England"

Then John dies, so George records a tribute song with contribs from Paul and Ringo, and suddenly the record company are all keen again. Funny, that!

Gordy didn't block What's Goin' On. He tried to block the single, which Motown released behind his back while he was away in LA, and then when that took off he actually insisted that Marvin record an album to capitalise.

there was a rumour a few months ago that amy winehouse had recorded a reggae album, and her record company wasn't happy with her new direction and asked her to make a new one. half-suspect that this rumour was started to reassure the public that amy is still capable of recording music. i think a reggae album from her would be really good though.

http://www.banquetrecords.com/graphics/winehouseska.jpg

This was doing the rounds of certain shops, about a year ago.

http://files.myopera.com/PeruvianFlava/albums/311765/Here%20I%20Am.jpg

Eve (the rapper) was supposed to release a new album called Here I Am a couple of years ago. The first single had come out and the album was even reviewed in XXL, but for some reason her label shelved it and it hasn't been released to date.

I don't know the story behind the unrelease of Plone's second album, but I think Warp was to blame. it isn't very good so...

there was also that annoying smarmy chick who did showtuney things. can't remember her name.

Nellie McKay. didn't she just get dropped and get to take the record with her though?

Black Flag-Damaged

Mojo: The release of Trans began your ill-starred liaison with Geffen Records. Actually, hadn't you already offered them an album entitled Island In The Sun which they refused?

Neil: Yeah, I offered that to Geffen just before Trans. It was a tropical thing all about sailing, ancient civilisations, islands and water. Actually two or three songs ended up on Trans.

The Klaxons got told to go away and re-record their second album, IIRC.

Dandy Warhols - The Black Album

Which was actually quite a good thing in retrospect.

Thing is, the more the DWs were their record company's bitches, the better they were, which I don't think they'll ever really understand.

70s Beach Boys to thread

Late 90s: Boom Boom Mancini and The Fixed Stars each released promos with about half an albums worth of tracks, along with a single or two, then nothing.

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (thought this would've been mentioned ages ago, so tell me if i am missing the point here)

Jungle Brothers' "Crazy Wisdom Masters," some of which was later reworked for "J Beez Wit the Remedy."

Never knew Plone recorded a second album. It sounds okay to me.

99th Dream by Swervedriver. This happened to them twice w/ the same album, once by Creation & once by DGC.

Prefab Sprout had a couple suppressed that eventually came out: Protest Songs and Let's Change The World With Music.

Adam Ant Persuasion. Recorded, mixed and ready for release. A regime change at the record company brought the decision to put the album on hold.

David McAlmont's been screwed twice...the Thieves LP got shelved, with a revised version ultimately issued as a McAlmont solo release, then his own solo LP Be was shelved by Hut...(not sure it it was technically "shelved" or simply lost in the shuffle)...

re: amy winehouse. my friends and i heard this incredible reggae cover of "cupid" by sam cooke. when i asked the dj whether it was by horace andy or somesuch i was told to my horror that it was by amy winehouse. oh well.

This is really common in Country music right now. A single is released from a "forthcoming" album, it barely makes the top 40, then either the album is shelved or the artist (as in Terri Clark's case) is dropped and the album ends up coming out on an indie label. Tim McGraw complained publicly about his label shelving an album he recorded so that they could drop another Greatest Hits CD instead.

The new Prefab Sprout was actually blocked for 17 years, no?

Sleep - Dopesmoker
Unida - whatever that last album was that never came out

Karen Carpenter's 1979 solo album, which finally came out in '96. evidently when the label rejected it she was reduced to tears, the story runs that they told her at a meeting and she bore it well and just collapsed when the meeting was over.

Is it good?

So this is only for discs blocked by the label, hm? I guess that excludes Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue:

Issued by Caribou/CBS Records on CD in 1991, Pacific Ocean Blue went out of print within a year due to ongoing disagreements over copyright ownership; the album was virtually unavailable for more than fifteen years. Copies of the extremely rare 1991 CD sold for over $200.

Then it was finally re-released two years ago.

Nicole Scherzinger's album, "Her Name is Nicole," was shelved by her label after four singles kind of fizzled.

yes, it's excellent - I mean, whether you like the Carpenters & what you like about them will to a large extent determine your response to it. Richard had no input - was doing something else. So his production (in my opinion the equal of any of the great auteur-producers in rock history) is absent; as a result, the album's all over the place. Disco, ballads, flirting with country, this and that. It's unfocused. But the songs are decent & sometimes better than decent, Karen stacks her harmonies & backing vox like she would on a Carpenters record (=always great), and there's a really great Peter Cetera duet. And a cover of "Still Crazy After All These Years" which as I've said elsewhere is pretty lol just from a content/singer disconnect standpoint.

(xpost to Nate)

ANNIE's second album is finally coming out with 4 new tracks, some produced by Phones and THIS artwork =
http://pitchfork.com/news/36189-annies-idont-stopi-finally-coming-out/

i know of shiteloads of these in the indie world.

the sukpatch album that was meant to come out on grand royal seems to have remained completely unreleased. i happened across a promo and it's not very good, to be charitable

examples from a couple of years ago: 'american whip' by joy zipper, and 'the falls' by snowblind. both ace records that found homes on new labels several years later.

recent examples: joe lean and the jing jang jong, pull tiger tail. both have since come out on different labels..

Oh and Menswear's 2nd album 'hay tiempo!' only came out in Japan.

a big favorite from the KC album (about which I'll then shut up or reawaken an old thread) with great stacked harmonies & pretty intense stereo panning @ end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kD2xF3Ewg

That's fun.

It's a myth that Extraordinary Machine was shelved by the label. The truth is rather more prosaic. From Spin:

"Fans erroneously thought that Apple's record label, Epic, had rejected the first version of Extraordinary Machine and protested outside Epic's headquarters in early 2005; in reality, according to Elizondo, Apple was unhappy with the results, and it was her decision to redo the record, not her label's."

The road to Pazz & Jop dominance is often paved with the persecution complexes of impatient fans who don't understand how the music industry works (see also: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Hell Hath No Fury)

I'm going to have that Karen Carpenter song stuck in my head all day now.

RA The Rugged Man has has TWO different albums shelved by TWO different record labels!

I keep on meaning to make a blog post about shelved rap albums that leak out and are actually dope: Crustified Dibbs, Godfather Don, Killer Mike, Rah Digga, etc, etc.

But lol blog post

Didn't M.O.P. have like 3 or 4 albums shelved during their Roc-A-Fella and G-Unit stints?

CASSIE :(

The Donna Summer double-album that should've come out in 1981, I'm a Rainbow.

Kiley Dean!

Also, what happened to Tori Alamaze?

The Kelis album that never came out in America is dope

the lisa "left eye" lopes solo album that had "the block party" on it

Orgasm by John's Children.

yeah, kiley dean seconded! man i'd pay quite a lot for decent quality mp3s of some of those songs. "stay away from my boyfriend", "busy", "keep it moving", "kiss me like that", "america", "by your side"...i think it's a really ::important:: album in timbaland's evolution as a producer too.

The Kelis album that never came out in America is dope

yeah for sure. still baffling the way it sunk, though "young, fresh'n'new" was hardly the best lead single choice.