Britney Spears - Whiteout (2007)

In November 2003, while promoting her fourth studio album 'In the Zone', Britney Spears told Entertainment Weekly that she was already writing songs with Henrik Jonback for her fifth studio album, and was also hoping to start her own record label in 2004. When asked about her next album, she said she had been experimenting in her home studio with live musicians, stripping down her sound and playing the piano, and that she wanted the album to represent her Louisiana roots. However, her personal life was very turbulent at this time, giving birth to her second son Jayden James in September 2006, and then filing for divorce from Kevin Federline in November, citing irreconcilable differences. This was finalized in July 2007, but during her divorce her partying and public behavior drew attention from the worldwide media, ending with her suffering a nervous breakdown and shaving her head, which caused intense media scrutiny. Once she'd recovered she returned to her music, and while recording of the album had begun in 2006, she met J.R. Rotem in Las Vegas and enlisted him to work with her after hearing Rihanna's 'SOS'. She also worked with Keri Hilson, Jim Beanz, Corté Ellis, and Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, known as Bloodshy & Avant, and they recorded about two dozen tracks for possible inclusion on the album. 'Blackout' was set to be released on 13 November 2007, but Jive Records announced on 10 October that the release date would be moved up two weeks, to 30 October, due to unauthorized leaks. The following day, Zomba Label Group filed a lawsuit against Perez Hilton, claiming he illegally obtained and posted on his gossip blog at least ten songs and unfinished demos of the album. The following month, The District Court judge dismissed the case with prejudice, and the album was released on 25 October 2007. On its release, 'Blackout' received mixed to positive reviews from music critics, with one calling it a seamlessly entertaining collection of bright, brash electropop, although there was no getting away from the fact that her off-disc life was both a distraction from, and enabler for, this album. As we know from the court case, there were a number of unused songs and demos floating around, and most of them have now appeared online, so here are fourteen of the best, which can make up a companion album to 'Blackout', which I've called 'Whiteout'.

Track listing

01 State Of Grace
02 Love 2 Love U 
03 All That She Wants
04 Let Go
06 When U Gon' Pull It
06 Rebellion (interlude)
07 Sugerfall
08 This Kiss
09 911
10 Kiss You All Over
11 Little Me (Just Yesterday) 
12 (What You) Sippin' On
13 Pull Out

Bonnie McKee - Femme Fatale (2010)

In 2010 Britney Spears management approached Bonnie McKee to write some songs for Spears' new album, to be called 'Femme Fatale'. One of the first songs that she wrote was 'Hold It Against Me', and originally longtime collaborator Max Martin and executive producer Dr. Luke originally wanted to give the track to Katy Perry, but they later decided that it wasn't the right fit for her. They continued to work on the song, and Luke commented that before giving the song to Spears he wanted to make sure it sounded different from his previous recordings, and when it was eventually released as a single in 2010 it make the Billboard Top Ten. McKee carried on writing songs for the project, coming up with about twenty tracks, for which she recorded demos and then pitched them to Luke and Martin. In the end five of her compositions were chosen to be included on the record, being the afore-mentioned 'Hold It Against Me', 'Inside Out', 'How I Roll', 'Seal It With A Kiss', and 'Gasoline', and the rest of them were consigned to the vaults. All of the songs were written with Spears in mind, and so they all have a Britney vibe running through them, and it's a shame that they haven't been heard since they were demoed, so here is Bonnie McKee's very own 'Femme Fatale' album, made up of the tracks that Spears' producers rejected.

Track listing

01 Terminate 'Em
02 Catch Me If You Can
03 Battle Royale
04 Earthquake
05 License To Love
06 Risky Business
07 Lie Detector
08 Femme Fatale
09 I Dare You (feat. Ina Wroldsen)
10 U Won
11 Psycho
12 Kiss Kiss
13 RIP
14 The Rules Of Attraction

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