Madonna - Revenge (1998)

Following the release of her compilation album 'Something To Remember' in 1995, Madonna started taking vocal lessons in preparation for her role in the film of 'Evita', and later that year she gave birth to her daughter, Lourdes, and both of these events inspired a period of introspection for her. This was also around the time that she embraced Kabbalah and started studying Hinduism and yoga, and so all of this which was going on in her life helped her see the world from a different perspective. By May 1997 she had started writing songs for her next album, collaborating with Babyface, who had first worked with her on her previous album, 1994's 'Bedtime Stories', and the two wrote a couple of songs together before Madonna decided the collaborations were not going in the musical direction she wanted for the album. She instead turned to musician Rick Nowels, who had previously co-written songs with Stevie Nicks and Celine Dion, and this collaboration produced seven songs in nine days, although one of these displayed the album's future electronic musical direction. Madonna then began writing songs with Patrick Leonard, who had produced many songs for her in the late 1980's, but she felt that Leonard's production would have lent the songs more of a 'Peter Gabriel' vibe, which was a sound that she did not want for the album. Guy Oseary, chairman of Maverick Records, then phoned British electronic musician William Orbit, and suggested that he send some songs to Madonna, and a 13-track digital audio tape duly arrived for her to listen to. With Orbit on board, recording began in early June 1997, with Madonna listening to musical snippets that Orbit was working on over and over until she was inspired to write lyrics, and once she had an idea about the lyrical direction of the song, she would take her ideas back to Orbit, and they would expand on them. The album was recorded over four and a half months at Larrabee North Studio in North Hollywood, California, beginning in mid-June 1997, and was the longest that Madonna had ever worked on an album, as Orbit preferred to work with samples and synth sounds, rather than live musicians, and his computers were constantly breaking down, delaying recording until they were repaired. 

The finished album was a stylistic and aesthetic departure from her previous work, being an electronica and techno-pop record which incorporated multiple genres, including ambient, trip hop, psychedelia, and Middle Eastern music, while also seeing Madonna singing with greater breadth and a fuller tone. Having gone through so many collaborators before settling on Orbit, it's no surprise that there are a number of songs floating around that didn't make the album, particularly those written with Babyface, Leonard, and Nowels, as well as some with Orbit himself. 'Gone, Gone, Gone' is a pre-Orbit recording, sometimes referred to as 'Gone Gone Gone (This Love Affair Is Over)', while 'Like A Flower' was written around this time, but only leaked online in 2003, with it later being given to Italian singer Laura Pausini for her 2004 album 'Resta In Ascolto'. 'Revenge' was one of the early demos from 1997, produced by Greg Fitzgerald and Rick Nowels, and when it leaked in 2002 it was rumored to be a newly recorded song for the James Bond movie 'Die Another Day'. 'Be Careful' was written and produced by Madonna and Patrick Leonard, and is possibly an early version of the song 'Be Careful (Cuidado Con Mi Corazon)', recorded with Ricky Martin and William Orbit, although Leonard is not credited on the released Madonna/Orbit version with Ricky Martin. 'No Substitute For Love' was the original name for what became 'Drowned World/Substitute For Love' on the album, where it was re-recorded with different lyrics, vocal melody and instrumentation, while 'You'll Stay' is a variation of 'Like A Flower' with different lyrics, and with a lovely stripped-back Latin flavour to it. 'I'll Be Gone' and 'Never Love A Stranger' are two of the songs produced by Babyface before that collaboration broke down, and so once again there are enough out-takes from the 'Ray Of Light' sessions to put together a companion record that could have come out some time in the three years before 'Music' appeared in 2000. Obviously it doesn't have the cohesion of 'Ray Of Light', as the songs were written with a number of different producers, and each had their own style, but there are still some fine pieces on here, in particular 'Like A Flower'/'You'll Stay', and so it's definitely worth hearing.  

Track listing
 
01 Be Careful  
02 Has To Be #1      
03 No Substitute For Love 
04 You'll Stay
05 Revenge
06 Never Love A Stranger
07 I'll Be Gone  
08 Has To Be #2  
09 Like A Flower
10 Gone Gone Gone

Madonna - Set The Right (2004)

In 2002 Madonna was offered the job of supplying the theme song to the 20th James Bond film 'Die Another Day', but when it was delivered the producers asked her to change the song to fit the movie's title into it, like all other Bond movies have done. She did as requested, and around the same time another title was rumoured to have been recorded with producers M and Mirwais Ahmadzai for the soundtrack, but it was later decided that it was just the early version of 'Die Another Day'. As it turns out it was in fact a completely new track, and 'Can't You See My Mind' was leaked online some time later. After the single of 'Die Another Day' was released, Madonna began work on the follow-up album to 'Music, which was to be called 'American Life', and as with the 'Music' sessions, more material was recorded than could fit onto the album. One of these leftovers was another collaboration with Mirwais and Monte Pittman, and 'Cool Song' was taped as both an acoustic track and also a dance remix by Paul Oakenfold, re-titled 'It's So Cool', with the latter appearing as an iTunes-only bonus track on Madonna's greatest hits compilation 'Celebration'. The original recording from 2002 features a stripped-down, acoustic performance, and includes a children's choir during the final chorus, while a Mirwais dance remix demo has also surfaced. 'The Game' and 'Miss You' are more Mirwais co-writes, and they both have a stripped-down acoustic folk feel, but neither made the cut for the album. 'Set The Right' is a more upbeat Mirwais co-write, and had an number of titles through it's recording, including 'To The Left, To The Right' or 'Set To Right', but when it leaked online it was titled 'Set The Right'. After 'American Life' was released in 2003, Madonna embarked on the Re-Invention World Tour, and with Mirwais and Pittman in tow, more songs were written and recorded, including 'I'm In Love With Love' and 'I Love New York', both of which were supposed to be indicative of the sound originally conceptualised for the next album, before the project evolved into what eventually became 'Confessions On A Dance Floor'. 'Miss You', 'If You Go Away', 'How High', 'Boum', 'Curtain', 'The Devil Wouldn't Recognize You' and 'Is This Love (Bon D'Accord)' were written for a planned musical called 'Hello Suckers', which would have been a 1920's-style stage show loosely based on the life of 'Texas Guinan'. Songs were written with a number of co-writers including Patrick Leonard and Mirwais Ahmadzaï, and lyrics from some of them were later reworked and included on tracks for 'Confessions On A Dance Floor' and 'Hard Candy'. With the addition of lovely acoustic take of 'Love Profusion', we therefore have enough new material to produce another album that could have come out during the Re-Invention tour of 2004, before 'Confessions...' appeared in 2005.    

Track listing

01 Set The Right
02 It's So Cool
03 The Game
04 If You Go Away
05 Can't You See My Mind
06 Is This Love? (Bon D'Accord)
07 I Love New York
08 Miss You
09 In Love With Love
10 Love Profusion (demo)
11 Boum
12 Cool Song

Madonna - Background Music (2000)

After the critical and commercial success of her 1998 album 'Ray Of Light', Madonna intended to embark on a new concert tour the following year, but due to the delay of her film 'The Next Best Thing', which she started filming in April 1999, the tour was cancelled. By 2000, she was pregnant with her son Rocco, from her relationship with director Guy Ritchie, and wanting to distract herself from the media frenzy surrounding this news, she concentrated on the development of her eighth studio album, to be called 'Music'. Buoyed by the commercial success of her previous album, she was keen on getting back to the studio to record new music, and although she was keen to continue to work with William Orbit, his production style had become somewhat ubiquitous, and so she needed to find a distinctive sound within a market dominated by Britney Spears and Christine Aguilera. She was then introduced to French DJ and producer Mirwais Ahmadzaï, and she instantly liked his pitch-shifting, pulverizing rhythms and his utilization of acid bass in his songs. Madonna approached British house DJ Sasha to work on writing new material together for the album, and recording sessions began in January 2000 at Sarm West and East Studios in London. The sessions went well, and about twenty tracks were taped, with ten of them being selected for the standard issue of the album. On 22 August 2000, a month before the album's official release, all tracks from 'Music' were leaked online through Napster, and it was finally officially released on 18 September 2000 by Maverick Records in the United Kingdom, and worldwide the next day. 'Music' received critical acclaim from music critics, with Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic praising the album's layered music and described Madonna's collaboration with Mirwais as the reason why the album "comes alive with spark and style". The songs which didn't make the cut for the album were put to one side, and eventually they found their way onto bootleg albums, including a cover of ABBA's  'Like An Angel Passing Through My Room', and two versions of 'Little Girl', one under that title, and a later recording as 'La Petite Jeune Fille' with similar lyrics, but as an up-tempo dance song. 'Liquid Love', 'Mysore Smile' and 'Run' were written and produced with William Orbit, as was 'Arioso', which in classical music is a type of solo vocal piece, and it was based on a Johann Sebastian Bach cantata. Around the same time as the 'Music' sessions, Madonna recorded 'Time Stood Still' for the film soundtrack of her film 'The Next Big Thing', and it was also released as a single, so I've added the extended version to this post, alongside a demo instrumental entitled 'Baby Blue Jay', which I thought sounded pretty good as it was without lyrics, to make a great 41-minute album of rarities, any one of which could easily have been included on the 'Music' album. 

Track listing 

01 Liquid Love
02 Like An Angel Passing Through My Room  
03 Baby Blue Jay
04 Little Girl
05 Run
06 Arioso
07 Mysore Smile
08 Time Stood Still
09 Le Petite Leune Fille

Prince - ...and on guitar (2015)

Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 7, 1958, the son of jazz singer Mattie Della and pianist and songwriter John Lewis Nelson, and both he and his sister Tyka developed a keen interest in music, which was encouraged by their father, writing his first song 'Funk Machine' on his father's piano when he was seven. When he was 10 his parents divorced, with his mother remarrying to Hayward Baker, with whom she had a son named Omarr. Prince had a fraught relationship with Omarr, to the extent that it caused him to repeatedly switch homes, sometimes living with his father and sometimes with his mother and stepfather. After a brief period of living with his father, who bought him his first guitar, Prince moved into the basement of his neighbours, the Anderson family, after his father kicked him out, and it was there that he befriended the Anderson's son, Andre, who later collaborated with Prince and became known as André Cymone. In 1973 Prince met songwriter and producer Jimmy Jam, and impressed him with his musical talent, early mastery of a wide range of instruments, and work ethic. In 1975, Pepe Willie, the husband of Prince's cousin Shauntel, formed the band 94 East with Marcy Ingvoldstad and Kristie Lazenberry, hiring André Cymone and Prince to record tracks. Willie wrote the songs, and Prince contributed guitar tracks, with Prince and Willie co-writing one song, 'Just Another Sucker'. The band recorded some songs which have since been re-issued as an album many times under different titles, including 'Minneapolis Genius – The Historic 1977 Recordings'. 

In 1976, Prince created a demo tape with producer Chris Moon, but he was unable to secure a recording contract, so Moon brought the tape to Owen Husney, a Minneapolis businessman, who signed the 19 year-old Prince to a management contract, and helped him create a demo at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis, which generated interest from Warner Bros. Records, A&M Records, and Columbia Records. With the help of Husney, Prince signed a recording contract with Warner Bros, who gave him creative control for three albums, and let him retain his publishing rights. Husney and Prince then left Minneapolis and moved to Sausalito, California, where Prince's first album 'For You' was recorded and released in 1978, with Prince writing, producing, arranging, composing, and playing all 27 instruments on the recording, except for the song 'Soft and Wet', whose lyrics were co-written with Moon. In 1979, Prince created a band with André Cymone on bass, Dez Dickerson on guitar, Gayle Chapman and Doctor Fink on keyboards, and Bobby Z. on drums, and released the 'Prince' album that year, and despite the record company thinking he needed more time to develop, the album hit the top five spot on the Billboard R&B/Black Albums chart, and the single 'I Wanna Be Your Lover' sold over a million copies. 

The same year he made the first of what was to become many guest appearances, although the following decade was to be particularly busy for him, and it was to be 1989 before he really started regularly guesting on other artist's albums. In 1980 he released the album 'Dirty Mind', which contained sexually explicit material, following this the next year with 'Controversy'. In 1981, Prince formed a side project band called The Time, who released four albums between 1981 and 1990, with Prince writing and performing most of the instrumentation and backing vocals, and at the same time releasing his own four-million selling album '1999', along with a string of hit singles, being the start of his world-domination over the next two decades. When he was asked to contribute to records by other musicians, it wasn't always by famous artists, and even into the 90's he was adding his guitar to tracks by Eric Leeds and Diamond And Pearl, as well as Kid Creole & The Coconuts and Mavis Staples. Similarly, in the 2000's he was guesting with Common and Rhonda Smith, as well as Stevie Wonder. In 2004 he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame, playing in the all-star band's version of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', alongside Tom Petty, Stevie Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others, and performing a stunning, un-rehearsed guitar solo at the end of the song. Other guest appearance were fairly sparse after that, with his final one before his death in 2016 being on Judith Hill's 'Back In Time' album. Although it might seem that more music has been released since his death than there was while he was alive, these guest appearance are generally over-looked as they tended not to be with the superstars that he hung out with, but lesser-known artists who would appreciate his contribution to their music. 

Track listing

Disc One
01 Fast Freddie The Roller Disco King (single by The Imperials 1979)
02 Got To Be Something Here (from 'The Lewis Connection' by Lewis Connection 1979)
03 Love Song (from 'Like A Prayer' by Madonna 1989) 
04 The Sex Of It (from 'Private Waters In The Great Divide' by Kid Creole 1990)
05 The Dopamine Rush (from 'Times Squared' by Eric Leeds 1991) 
06 51 Hours (single by Diamond And Pearl 1992)
07 Melody Cool (from 'The Voice' by Mavis Staples 1993)
08 Why Should I Love You (from 'The Red Shoes' by Kate Bush 1993) 

Disc Two
01 Star *69 (PS With Love) (from 'Electric Circus' by Common 2002)
02 Purple House (from 'Power Of Soul: A Tribute To Jimi Hendrix' 2004)
03 So What The Fuss (from 'A Time 2 Love' by Stevie Wonder 2005) 
04 While My Guitar Gently Weeps (from Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame induction concert 2004) 
05 Time (from 'RS2' by Rhonda Smith 2006)
06 Raise Up (from 'Raise Up' by Larry Graham & Graham Central Station 2012) 
07 Givin' Em What They Love (from 'The Electric Lady' by Janelle Monáe 2013)
08 All Day, All Night  (from 'Back In Time' by Judith Hill 2015)

Madonna - 12"ers + 2 (1985)

As a side-bar to the article in Bruno MacDonald's book about the unreleased Madonna album 'Veronica Electronica', he mentioned that in 1985 Warner Brothers subsidiary Sire had proposed a stop-gap mini-album which would collect together some of her singles re-mixes and soundtrack work. Madonna was at the height of her fame at this time, with the 'Like A Virgin' album and tour, supported by a then unknown Beastie Boys, being a resounding worldwide success. '12"ers + 2' would have comprised six remixed 12" singles, plus 'Into The Groove' from the 'Desperately Seeking Susan' soundtrack and 'Ain't No Big Deal', which might have been her debut single had the label not preferred 'Everybody'. However, because 'Like A Virgin' continued to sell in huge numbers, and the follow-up 'True Blue' was looming on the horizon, the release was cancelled after a few promo cassette copies were issued in Japan. Original copies of this cassette are now the holy grail among Madonna collectors, and so although none of the tracks are actually unreleased I thought it would be fun to reconstruct the album and post it here, along with updated artwork. The cover is based on the original cassette, but as only low-resolution copies of it appear on the net I've cleaned it up as much as possible without losing the original concept.  

   

Track listing

01 Ain't No Big Deal
02 Dress You Up (The 12" Formal Mix)
03 Angel (Extended Dance Remix)
04 Lucky Star (U.S. Remix)
05 Into The Groove
06 Material Girl (Extended Dance Remix)
07 Borderline (U.S. Remix)
08 Like a Virgin (Extended Dance Remix)