Britney Spears - Original Doll (2005)

'Original Doll' was set to be Britney Spears' fifth studio album, and was due for release in 2005. It was to be a more personal album, with an organic, dark, intimate feel, but for reasons unknown it was cancelled at the last minute. The only song recorded for the album that was ever officially released was 'Mona Lisa', which was included on the 'Britney and Kevin: Chaotic' CD, but many other songs remained locked away, until in 2012, Britney fans sought out songwriter Michelle Bell and asked her point-blank about the project. Apparently Spears started writing songs for the album in late 2003, and she recorded some of them in 2004 whilst on The Onyx Hotel Tour. In December 2004, she made a surprise appearance on KIIS-FM radio in Los Angeles to premiere a new song she recorded, giving the DJ a rough demo of her song 'Mona Lisa', and also giving an interview in which she stated she was halfway through recording an album called 'The Original Doll', which could be released around the summer of 2005. Her label Jive Records were apparently furious that she'd premiered the song on the radio without their permission, and they stated she had only just started recording the album, and that it was not yet on the label's release schedule. The DJ who was presented with this exclusive evidently had his own misgivings about Spear's actions, commenting "No signed artist would ever do that [premiere a song on the radio without label's permission], because [Jive/Zomba Label Group President/CEO] Barry Weiss would cut them in half with a cleaver. If you don't have the record out yet, and you're going to find some radio guy who will ship it out half done, then the whole project will be trashed." This was exactly what happened, with Jive cancelling the project, and although various reasons have been suggested - Spears' pregnancy (Jive may have wanted Britney to concentrate on starting a family rather than releasing a new album), premiering unreleased material without Jive's permission, or simply that Jive didn't like the material set to appear on the album - none have ever been forthcoming from the record company. 

Michelle Bell was known to be involved in writing songs which were destined for 'The Original Doll', following collaborations with Spears in 2003, when three of her songs were recorded for the 'In the Zone' album, although none of them made the final cut, appearing later as bonus tracks on deluxe editions of the album. They co-wrote some of the songs intended for 'The Original Doll', although it's likely that Spears would also have written some of them on her own, in keeping with the more personal feel of the project. In March 2012, members of Britney Spears fan forum, Exhale, managed to get in contact with Bell on Twitter and Tumblr, on which she wrote about the experiences she had working with Spears on 'The Original Doll', and she later leaked snippets of two songs she said were recorded for the album: 'Money, Love & Happiness' and 'Peep Show'. She later leaked much longer snippets of the songs, but in April 2012 she revealed on her Tumblr blog that she'd been asked to stop leaking the songs by her management, before giving fans one last special treat by leaking 'Money, Love & Happiness' in full. Because of her actions, she was unable to leak 'Peep Show' or any other song recorded for 'The Original Doll' in full, although another source obtained 'Ouch' and leaked that later that month. Eventually all of the songs recorded for the album started to appear on bootlegs, with a 3CD set of remixes and out-takes being the latest to surface. For this reconstruction I've taken a proposed track listing from blackoutbrit's site universe.absolutebritney.com, as their running order seems to coincide with the generally accepted list of confirmed songs recorded for the project, so here is the album that could have slotted in between 'In The Zone' and 'Blackout', if Spears had just played by the rules and not pissed off the record company.  

Track listing

01 Welcome To Me
02 Money, Love & Happiness
03 Someday (I Will Understand)
04 Chaotic
05 Peep Show
06 Mona Lisa
07 Over To You Now
08 Look Who's Talking Now
09 Guilty
10 Dramatic
11 Baby Boy
12 Ouch

13 Strangest Love
14 Conscience