Ayesha Erotica - horny.4u (2008)

Ayesha Alexis Auciello-Torres was born on 11 August 1996, and is better known as Ayesha Erotica, or Ayesha Nicole Smith. She started using the Ayesha Erotica name around April 2015, and would go on to produce Miss Prada's debut album 'Queen Of Pop', which was released in June of that same year. She also put out her own singles via SoundCloud throughout 2015, including songs such as 'Can I Get A Bump?' and 'That's Hot', and she released her debut mixtape 'Sick At Home' in January 2016, although not much is known about it as it was deleted soon afterwards. Her first actual album was 'BIG JUICY', which she self-released in April 2016, and which incorporated elements of electroclash, Miami-bass, hip-hop and electropop. After the success of 'BIG JUICY', she then released her second and favourite album titled 'Barely Legal' just a couple of months later, although not without some issues, where the release was delayed for a week and then two tracks were removed from the track-listing. In August she released her first EP, which was intended as a 7-track taster for her third album 'Gangbang', although this was later cancelled, and the title track was released as a single. After the cancellation of 'Gangbang', she announced that she'd be working on a new project titled 'Fresh Meat', and as a goodbye to the former project she uploaded a SoundCloud playlist titled 'What You Never Got To Hear: A Farewell To The Gangbang Era', containing the  unreleased tracks from the album. 

In 2017 she released three joke/skit EPs under the name "Lisa Schultz", and was considering issuing her own skit album, 'Loose Teens', in 2018, although this was also scrapped. After shelving 'Gangbang', she announced that her new album, 'Fresh Meat' was due out on 25 October 2017, but although the title track appeared as a single, the rest of the album has yet to appear, and even a track-listing for it is unknown. One last EP surfaced in  2018, and after shelving two albums and going on a temporary leave from music, she announced her new album would be 'horny.4u', with one single being released from the project titled 'Vacation Bible School'. The album apparently consisted of 14 tracks, and songs included 'Iconic', 'Anna Nicole', 'Taco Bell', and 'All Around The World', and while 'We Can Do It!' leaked on a Discord server from the Playtime Soundtrack, she also sold some of the tracks to her friends Slayyyter and That Kid. In late 2018, user "void4ngel" posted a master-post of all of her social media accounts that were previously unknown, and when she saw the post she falsely blamed the SoundCloud artist Quinn Fatale, who then leaked demos of her music as revenge, ultimately leading to the cancellation of 'horny.4u', and her eventual early retirement from the music scene. In December 2023 she announced on Instagram that she was returning to music and would be releasing 'horny.4u' as her new album, with a release date of 5 March 2024. She confirmed that one or two old songs would appear on it, while the rest of the material would be new, and so on the very day that the official album should be released, here is my reconstruction of the original record from 2018. 

Track listing

01 Iconic
02 We Can Do It!
03 Vacation Bible School
04 Anna Nicole
05 Taco Bell
06 All Around The World (La La La La La)
07 Come C My Tits (feat. Miss Luxury)
08 Hello Kitty
09 Alone
10 Star (feat. Baby Zionov)
11 Delicious
12 Alice
13 BFF
14 Control - The Finale

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Nick Drake (2018)

Nicholas Rodney Drake was born on 19 June 1948 in Burma, with the family, including his older sister the successful actress Gabrielle, moving back to England to live in Warwickshire in 1951. At school he played piano and learned clarinet and saxophone, and formed a band, the Perfumed Gardeners, with four schoolmates in 1964 or 1965. Drake contributed piano and occasional alto sax and vocals, and when Chris de Burgh asked to join the group, he was rejected as his taste was "too poppy". In 1966 Drake enrolled at a tutorial college in Five Ways, Birmingham, where he won a scholarship to study at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, but in his gap year before starting the course he travelled with friends to Morocco, returning to England in 1967 and moving into his sister's flat in Hampstead, London. That October, he enrolled at Cambridge to begin his studies in English literature, and in January 1968 he met Robert Kirby, a music student who went on to write many of the string and woodwind arrangements for Drake's first two albums. By this time, Drake had discovered the British and American folk music scenes, and was influenced by performers such as Bob Dylan, Donovan, Van Morrison, Josh White and Phil Ochs, and he performed in local clubs and coffee houses around London. After spotting him in one of these clubs, Fairport Convention bassist Ashley Hutchings introduced him to the 25-year-old American producer Joe Boyd, owner of the production and management company Witchseason Productions.  

Boyd was a respected figure in the UK folk scene, and he and Drake formed an immediate bond, with Boyd acting as a mentor to Drake throughout his career. Impressed by a four-track demo recorded in Drake's college room in early 1968, Boyd offered Drake a management, publishing, and production contract, and Drake recorded his debut album 'Five Leaves Left' later in 1968, with Boyd as producer. He sought to include a string arrangement similar to John Simon's on Leonard Cohen's debut, and to provide backing he enlisted contacts from the London folk rock scene, including Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson and Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson. Ultimately, both Drake and Boyd were unhappy with arranger Richard Anthony Hewson's contribution, and so Drake suggested his college friend Robert Kirby as a replacement, and he provided most of the arrangements for the album, including its centrepiece 'River Man'. Post-production difficulties delayed the release by several months, and the album was poorly marketed and supported, receiving little radio play outside of shows by more progressive BBC DJs such as John Peel and Bob Harris. Despite this low-key reception at the time, 'Five Leaves Left' has since become regarded as a classic album of the folk scene, and despite a push by Boyd in 1970 to get Drake's songs more well-known, by arranging a session by Elton John and Linda Peters (later Linda Thompson) to record some of them to be sent out to publishers, most of the best covers have appeared since the turn of the last century. These ten versions of the songs from Drake's debut album all capture the delicacy of the music while still allowing the performers to add their own personality to their interpretation of the songs. 

  
Track listing

01 Time Has Told Me (Elton John 1968)
02 River Man (Norma Waterson 1999)
03 Three Hours (Keith James 2003)
04 Day Is Done (Charlie Hunter Quartet featuring Norah Jones 2001)
05 Way To Blue (In Gowan Ring 2007)
06 'Cello Song (The Books featuring Jose Gonzales 2009)
07 The Thoughts Of Mary Jane (Vashti Bunyan and Gareth Dickson 2018)
08 Man In A Shed (Beatrice Mason featuring Leoni 2018)
09 Fruit Tree (Green Gartside 2013) 
10 Saturday Sun (Alexis Korner 1971)

Dua Lipa - Living Life (2017)

This third collection of left-over tracks from 2017 is another fine album from the early days of the singer/songwriter.

Track listing

01 Love You Better
02 Satisfied
03 Living Life
04 Talk About It
05 Rule Number 4
06 Overflow
07 Superstitious
08 Cry Baby
09 Deep
10 Carry On (feat. Kygo & Charlie Puth)
11 For Julian
12 Lost In Translation
13 Irreversible
14 Drinking

Ariana Grande - Sweet 'n Low (2018)

When I posted my first collection of Ariana Grande rarities there weren't that many around, and so the post included out-takes from all her albums from 'Yours Truly' in 2013 to 'Sweetener' in 2018, plus some one-off collaborations. At the beginning of February someone uploaded about 60 songs onto Youtube, and luckily I found them three days later, and was able to grab them all before they were removed, which they now have been. That means that I now have enough unreleased material to post a further three albums of out-takes and demos, and as the majority of the songs were from the 'Sweetener' sessions in 2018, I'm starting with a companion album to that, which I've titled 'Sweet 'n Low', and which is housed in an alternate version of the original sleeve. I've had to make an edit to 'One Hundred', as it was an unfinished demo, and the second half was all instrumental, so I've patched in an extra verse to fill it out.  

   
Track listing

01 Ever Been
02 Chasing (Jason) On Occasion
03 Hate That You (Made Me Love You)
04 Clarity
05 My Way
06 Let's Talk About U (S E X)
07 One Hundred (feat. Pharrell Williams)
08 I Love Me
09 Sober
10 Keep It Cool  
11 Cocoon
12 Rush
13 Wifey

Normani - Black Woman (2023)

While Normani's management struggle to release her debut solo album, having postponed it so many times since 2018 that fans are seriously doubting that it will ever appear, here is my attempt at her sophomore release, comprising songs recorded in the last few years. It includes a solo rendition of 'Wild Side' without Cardi B, and I've titled it 'Black Woman', not only after one of the tracks from the album, but also as a tribute to Normani's achievement at being listed on BET's "Future 40" list as a young woman who is "redefining what it means to be unapologetically young, gifted & black".  

Track listing

01 Used To
02 Parade
03 Black Woman
04 Candy Paint
05 Fair
06 Make Me Feel
07 Go Deep
08 Eh Yo
09 Touch Myself
10 Wild Side
11 Waiting For You
12 Cest La Vie
13 Disconnected
14 Ocean Club

Kanye West & Ty Dolla $ign - Vultures Volume 2 (2024)

'Vultures 1' is the first collaborative studio album by rapper Kanye West and singer Ty Dolla $ign, and it was released independently through West's YZY brand on 10 February 2024. The album features uncredited guest vocals from West's daughter North, Freddie Gibbs, YG, Quavo, Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, Bump J, Lil' Durk, Rich the Kid, and Chris Brown, and production was primarily handled by West himself, alongside Digital Nas, JPEGMafia, Chrishan, 88-Keys, Wheezy, Ojivolta, DJ Camper, Timbaland, No I.D., Wax Motif, the Legendary Traxster, and Anthony Kilhoffer, among others. It sustained multiple delays and changes to its tracklist before its final release, and several listening events to promote it, including a multi-stadium listening event and a concert in Reggio Emilia, were cancelled. The title track was released on 22 November 2023 and served as its lead single, and a set of listening events titled 'Vultures Rave' preceded the release of the second single, 'Talking/Once Again', which features uncredited guest vocals from his daughter North West. On 15 February  2024 the business-to-business music distributor FUGA started to remove the album from streaming and download services, because it had been published using their platform's automated processes after they had explicitly declined to publish it, but it was redistributed the same day through Label Engine. In contrast to West's previous two albums, it finds him mostly forgoing religious themes, and received mixed reviews from critics, with many criticizing the album's unoriginality and lyrics, namely those addressing West's rhetoric towards preceding controversies. This didn't stop it debuting at the top of the US Billboard 200, though, becoming West's eleventh number-one album, and Ty Dolla $ign's first. Recording sessions had been taking place since the summer of 2023, and so it's no surprise that many tracks had to be removed from the final track listing, including 'Everybody' and 'New Body', after the Backstreet Boys and Nicki Minaj respectively refused permission to use samples of their work. As usual with West's work, it didn't take long for them to appear online, and so here are the offcut's from 'Vultures 1', which you won't be surprised to learn that I've called 'Vultures Volume 2', and it's housed in an updated version of the original scrapped artwork. 

Track listing

01 Everybody (feat. Charlie Wilson & Lil' Baby)
02 Time Moving Slow

03 Timbo Freestyle
04 Slide
05 New Body (feat. Nicki Minaj)
06 Promotion (feat. Future) 
07 Lifestyle (feat. Lil' Wayne) 
08 Drunk (feat. Kodak Black & Bad Bunny)
09 Worship (feat. North West & Charlie Wilson)
10 River (feat. Young Thug)
11 Gun To My Head (feat. Kid Cudi)
12 Unlock
13 North's Song (feat. North West & James Blake)
14 Once Again
15 Forever Rollin' (feat. Lil' Baby)
16 All This Money On The Floor (feat. YG)
17 IG Models (feat. Future & Lil' Durk)
18 Don't Kill The Party (feat. Tyga)
19 Work Done/Diablo

Leslie Carter - Like Wow! (2001)

Leslie Barbara Ashton (née Carter) was born on 6 June 1986 in Tampa, Florida, and at the age of 13 she signed a record deal with DreamWorks Records, where she began recording her debut album. This was set for release in June 2000, but it was delayed because DreamWorks wanted to test her fanbase before releasing the record in order to ensure its success. Her single 'Like Wow!' appeared on the 'Shrek' soundtrack and received minor radio airplay, peaking at No. 99 on the Billboard Hot 100, and her debut album of the same name was set for release on 10 April 2001. However, following a number of reported problems from the set of her debut music video, Dreamworks cancelled the album and dropped her from the label, although promo copies later became available online, and "Metal Mike" Saunders of The Village Voice described it as "the best bubblegum album of the entire '97–Y2K era." She started a small club tour in Canada in December 2005, and had a showcase in New York City in January 2006, with hopes it would lead to a new record deal, showing that she'd abandoned her bubblegum pop roots for a more mature, pop rock-oriented sound. In late 2006 she founded the band The Other Half, which included her backup musicians, with the final line-up consisting of Carter on vocals, Mike Ashton on drums, Jason Eldon on electric guitar, and Sean Smit on bass and back-up vocals, but in September 2009 they mutually decided to split up. On 31 January 2012 Carter was found unresponsive at the home of her father and stepmother while she was visiting them. She'd fallen asleep after she fell in the shower and did not wake up. She was just 25 years old. She only released the one single in her way too short career, and so to show that she wasn't just a one-hit wonder, here is her shelved album from 2001. Fans of B*Witched should love this record. 

Track listing

01 Be Mine
02 Like Wow
03 They Don't Know
04 I Need To Hear It From You
05 Too Much Too Soon
06 Shy Guy
07 I Wanna Be Your Girl
08 True
09 Boy Like That
10 Mine

Camila Cabello - Unforgettable (2017)

Karla Camila Cabello Estrabao was born on 3 March 1997, and is best known for being a member of the girl group Fifth Harmony, which became one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. She auditioned for the TV talent competition show The X Factor in Greensboro, North Carolina, with Aretha Franklin's 'Respect', but her audition was not aired because the series did not get the rights for the song. After elimination during the "bootcamp" portion of the process in Miami, Florida, Cabello was called back to the stage along with other contestants Ally Brooke, Normani, Lauren Jauregui, and Dinah Jane to form the girl group that would later become known as Fifth Harmony. After finishing in third place on the show, they signed a joint deal with Simon Cowell's Syco Music and Epic Records, and released the EP 'Better Together' to some acclaim (see previous 5th Harmony post here). Two albums followed, with 'Reflection' coming out in 2015, followed by '7/27' the following year. In November 2015, Cabello collaborated with Canadian singer Shawn Mendes on a duet titled 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', a song they wrote together, charting at number 20 in the US and number 18 in Canada, and in 2016 American rapper Machine Gun Kelly released a joint single with Cabello called 'Bad Things', which reached a peak of number four on the US Billboard Hot 100 songs chart. On 18 December 2016, Fifth Harmony announced Cabello's departure, with both sides giving contradictory explanations of the circumstances for her exit. After her departure she appeared on songs from Norwegian DJ Cashmere Cat and rappers Pitbull and J Balvin, and later she announced the future release of her first studio album, at the time titled 'The Hurting. The Healing. The Loving.'. 

Her debut solo single 'Crying In The Club' was released in May 2017, followed by a performance at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards, and then new writing and recording sessions for her album were undertaken following the success of her 'Havana' single, in order to capitalise on it's success. The single became Spotify's most-streamed song ever by a solo female artist in June 2018, with over 888 million streams at the time, and so she wanted the album to go in that musical direction. This postponed the album's original release date, and 'Camila', her debut album, was eventually released on 12 January 2018. It was a pop record containing Latin-influenced songs and ballads, and debuted at number one in the United States with 119,000 album-equivalent units. In April 2018 she embarked on the Never Be the Same Tour, her first headlining concert tour as a solo artist, and by May she was performing as the opening act for American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift in her Reputation Stadium Tour. In October 2018, Cabello announced she would start working on new music in the new year, and in April 2019 it was announced that she would star in an upcoming film adaptation of 'Cinderella', directed by Kay Cannon for Sony Pictures. Because her debut album was drastically revised after the success of 'Havana', a number of songs were dumped from it in order to make room for the new 'Havana'-influenced tracks, and so there were quite a few demos and out-takes left over when it was released. Enough, in fact, to make up a perfectly acceptable companion album to 'Camila', which could have been released shortly afterwards to tide fans over until her next single was released in 2019. 

Track listing

01 Be Right Here
02 Love Life
03 Come When I Call (feat. Pharrell Williams)
04 Must Be Love
05 Cleopatra
06 OMG (feat. Quava)
07 Scar Tissue
08 Curious
09 The Middle
10 Unforgettable
11 Died
12 Thinkin' Bout One
13 Knows Me
14 Witness
15 Just Like You
16 The Boy (feat. Ed Sheeran)

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Joni Mitchell (2014)

Roberta Joan Anderson on 7 November 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, and moved with her family to Saskatoon, which she considers her hometown, at age 11. She wanted to play the guitar, but as her mother associated the instrument with country music and disapproved of its hillbilly associations, she initially settled for the ukulele, although she eventually taught herself guitar from a Pete Seeger songbook. She started singing with her friends at bonfires around Waskesiu Lake, northwest of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and after dropping out of school after a year at age 20, she started to play gigs as a folk musician on weekends at her college and at a local hotel. In 1964, at the age of 20, she told her mother that she intended to be a folk singer in Toronto, and wrote her first song 'Day After Day' on the three-day train ride east to Ontario. In February 1965 she was playing gigs again around Yorkville, often with a friend, Vicky Taylor, and was beginning to sing original material for the first time, written with her unique open tunings. In March and April she found work at the Penny Farthing, a folk club in Toronto, where she met New York City-born American folk singer Charles Scott "Chuck" Mitchell, from Michigan. Chuck was immediately attracted to her and impressed by her performance, and he told her that he could get her steady work in the coffeehouses he knew in the United States. She left Canada for the first time in late April 1965, travelling with Mitchell to the US, where they began playing music together, and they later married, with Joni taking his surname, although the marriage and partnership ended with their divorce in early 1967. Following this, she moved to New York City to follow her musical path as a solo artist, and while she was playing one night in 1967 in the Gaslight South, a club in Coconut Grove, Florida, David Crosby walked in and was immediately struck by her ability and her appeal as an artist. She accompanied him back to Los Angeles, where he set about introducing her and her music to his friends, and soon she was signed to the Warners-affiliated Reprise label by talent scout Andy Wickham. 

Crosby convinced Reprise to let Mitchell record a solo acoustic album without the folk-rock overdubs in vogue at that time, and 'Song To Seagull' was released in March 1968. She toured steadily to promote the album, creating eager anticipation for her second LP, 'Clouds', which was released in April 1969. This contained her own versions of some of her songs already recorded and performed by other artists, such as 'Chelsea Morning', 'Both Sides, Now', and 'Tin Angel', and the covers of both albums were designed and painted by Mitchell herself.  In April 1970 Reprise released her third album, 'Ladies Of The Canyon', and her sound was already beginning to expand beyond the confines of acoustic folk music and toward pop and rock, with more overdubs, percussion, and backing vocals, and for the first time, many songs composed on piano, which became a hallmark of Mitchell's style in her most popular era. 'Ladies Of The Canyon' was an instant smash on FM radio and sold briskly, eventually becoming Mitchell's first gold album, but she made a decision to stop touring for a year and just write and paint. The songs she wrote during the months she took off for travel and life experience appeared on her next album, 'Blue', released in June 1971, which was an almost instant critical and commercial success, peaking in the top 20 of the Billboard albums chart in September and also hitting the British Top 3. The lushly produced 'Carey' was the single at the time, but musically, other parts of 'Blue' departed further from the sounds of 'Ladies Of The Canyon', with simpler, rhythmic acoustic parts allowed a focus on Mitchell's voice and emotions, while others such as 'Blue', 'River' and 'The Last Time I Saw Richard' were sung to her rolling piano accompaniment. With the music now so much more than just folk songs, they were soon picked up and recorded by a variety of artists in other fields, such as soul rendition of 'All I Want' by The Supremes, or the hard rock of 'This Flight Tonight' by Nazareth. The songs from 'Blue' have continued to be covered ever since, with Linda Ronstadt tackling 'River' in 2000, and Wilson Phillips taking on 'California' in 2004. 'Blue' is often cited as one of the best albums of all time, being rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and so here is a unique interpretation of it by a variety of artists who appreciate the quality of her song-writing.   

Track listing

01 All I Want (The Supremes 1972)  
02 My Old Man (Sandbloom 2011) 
03 Little Green (Blue Tapestry 2002) 
04 Carey (Goldie Hawn 1972)  
05 Blue (Sarah McLachlan 1994)  
06 California (Wilson Phillips 2004) 
07 This Flight Tonight (Nazareth 1973) 
08 River (Linda Ronstadt 2000)  
09 A Case Of You (Phoebe Snow 1998)  
10 The Last Time I Saw Richard (Clare Maguire 2014)

Demond - Street Tales (1997)

R&B singer Demond was signed to 550 Music/Epic Records, and recorded his debut album 'Street Tales' for them around 1997. Two singles were released from it, with 'AllIWannaDo' reaching #24 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart, and 'Ooh La La' just breaking the top 60 on the R&B chart, but neither of these charting records were enough to stop the cancellation of the album. It's a great shame, as this record has some really interesting experimentation, especially on the two longer tracks - 'Beamer' and 'Warm Embrace'. Luckily it was not completely scrapped, and so with a subtly coloured version of the cover, here is one of my favourite unreleased R&B albums from the last 25 years.

Track listing

01 AllIWannaDo
02 Ooh La La
03 Loser
04 Beamer
05 True To The Game
06 Show Me The Money
07 Baby Can I Touch You
08 Warm Embrace
09 Sometimes
10 Anything

Meghan Trainor - Treat Myself (2019)

Meghan Elizabeth Trainor was born on 22 December 1993, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and she began singing at age six, at a Methodist church with her father, who was a music teacher and organist. Her family encouraged her to pursue her musical interests, and she had told her father she wanted to become a recording artist, so she began writing songs and recording them using the digital audio workstation software GarageBand. At the age of 12, she began performing as part of the cover band Island Fusion, which also included her aunt, younger brother, and father, staying with them for four years, singing and playing piano, guitar, and bongo drums. She and her family left Nantucket when she was in the eighth grade, temporarily relocating to Orleans, Massachusetts, before moving to North Eastham, where she attended Nauset Regional High School and studied guitar, played trumpet, and sang in a jazz band for three years. While she was a teenager, her parents encouraged her to attend songwriting conventions, and at 15, she took guitar lessons from former NRBQ member Johnny Spampinato. During this time, Trainor used Logic Studio to record and produce her compositions, and later worked independently in a home studio built by her parents. Between the ages of 15 and 17, she independently released three albums of material she had written, recorded, performed, and produced, with her debut album 'Meghan Trainor' being released on Christmas Day 2009, followed by the acoustic albums 'I'll Sing With You' and 'Only 17' the following year. Though she'd been offered a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music, she decided to pursue her songwriting career and signed with Big Yellow Dog Music in 2012, starting out as a songwriter-for-hire, because of her ability to compose in a variety of genres, but being unsure about becoming a recording artist herself. 

Throughout 2013 she travelled to Nashville, New York City and Los Angeles, where she wrote and helped produce country and pop songs, singing lead and background vocals on demos for other artists, and her vocals were occasionally used on the final recordings. In June 2013 Trainor met producer Kevin Kadish in Nashville, and they found that they both liked retro style music and began recording together that month, later writing 'All About That Bass' together. The duo offered the song to several record labels, all of which rejected the doo-wop song because it was not "synth-y, pop-y" enough, but she when she performed the song for Epic label boss L.A. Reid, he signed her 20 minutes later. 'All About That Bass' was released as her debut sonhle on 30 June 2014, and it reached number one in 58 countries, and it sold 11 million units worldwide. Her debut EP, 'Title', with songs composed by Trainor and Kadish, was released in September 2014, and peaked at number 15 on the US Billboard 200. Her three self-released albums were removed from sale in the build-up to the release of her major-label debut studio album 'Title', which replaced her EP of the same name on the iTunes Store, and it was released on 9 January 2015, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200. Singles from the record, 'Dear Future Husband' and 'Like I'm Gonna Lose You', reached the Hot 100's top 20, and she began her first headlining concert tour, That Bass Tour, on 11 February 2015, but just before starting her "MTrain Tour" in July, she was diagnosed with a vocal cord haemorrhage, and her medical team ordered her to undergo complete vocal rest, delaying the first two dates of the tour. 

In August she announced the cancellation of the remainder of her North American tour, undergoing surgery "to finally fix this once and for all". In March 2016 she released the first single from her new album, with 'No' peaking at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, which was followed by 'Me Too' in May, the day before her 'Thank You' album appeared, and although it received mixed reviews, it still debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200. In December 2017 Fox announced Trainor as one of the judges on the show 'The Four: Battle For Stardom', along with Sean Combs, DJ Khaled and Charlie Walk, with the show's first two seasons being broadcast in 2018. Her third major-label studio album, 'Treat Myself', was scheduled for release on 31 August 2018, but was delayed because she wanted to write and record more songs for it, and its lead single 'No Excuses' was released in March 2018 and peaked at number 46 on the Billboard Hot 100, followed by 'Let You Be Right', 'Can't Dance' and 'All The Ways', and 'Treat Myself' was given a January 2019 release date, although it was not actually released until 31 January 2020. Trainor wrote enough material for four albums while trying to adapt to new trends in the music industry, and the final track listing was drastically different from the original incarnation, and it received mixed reviews on its release, only reaching number 25 on the US Billboard 200. In the end only four songs from the original track list made it to the actual album, with even the title track being removed, and so this early version of 'Treat Myself' is almost a completely new album for you to enjoy. 

Track listing

01 Treat Myself 
02 No Excuses 
03 Let You Be Right 
04 Hard To Please 
05 Evil Twin 
06 I'm Down 
07 Foolish 
08 Look At Us 
09 Another Opinion 
10 Don't Think About Leavin' 
11 Can't Dance 
12 All The Ways 
13 After You 
14 Good Morning (feat. Gary Trainor) 

Tracks 01, 03, and 11 released as singles.
Tracks 06, 07, 12 and 14 later released on 'The Love Train' EP.
Tracks 02, 05, 09 and 13 kept for the official album.
Tracks 04, 08 and 10 previously unreleased.

Dua Lipa - Roses & Fire (2017)

This second collection of demos and out-takes from Dua Lipa is another great album which could have been released at the same time as her actual debut in 2017.

Track listing

01 Lot To Love
02 All Or Nothing
03 Berlin Summer
04 Pour Me A Lie
05 Favourite Problem
06 Bad Idea
07 Top Dollar
08 Try
09 Roses & Fire
10 Afterlight
11 Save Someone
12 Wicked And Wild
13 Lose Myself

Mike Solof - Off The Beatle Track - Episodes 48/49 (2019)

You may have seen that Mike has mentioned in the notes to his Beatles Remix albums that he started doing them after hosting a Beatles-themed radio show in the US, and a while ago he sent me a load of these shows to listen to, and after hearing a few I thought they would be a great addition to the blog. The only thing stopping me posting them was the fact that I didn't know much about the background of the shows, but out of the blue I've just received a complete history of how they came about from Mike himself, so I'm now able to start posting them. Here's how it all started...........  
When Mike was around 13, in 1976, he used to listen to NPR, which was a classical station, at the same time as he was just getting into the Beatles, and he realized that 'Yesterday' was basically a classical song but just with Paul singing. He got thinking about all the rock groups that took that idea and ran with it, like, to name just a few, The Moody Blues with 'Nights In White Satin', Elton John's 'Indian Sunset', ELP's 'Pirates' and Peter Gabriel's 'Down The Dolce Vita'. That would make a cool show on the classical station and push its bounds, and so he wrote to them with the idea and they wholeheartedly umm...didn’t agree! Jump to 1988, and Mike's interest in the Beatles had greatly intensified in college, when someone played him the Red and Blue albums, and he suddenly realized that all these songs that he didn’t know were the Beatles, were in fact the Beatles! He wasn't the first person to realise that this exceptional group had gone from 'Love Me Do' to 'I Am The Walrus' in the span of just six years. Around that time he was in his local college Record Store, when suddenly he noticed a back room with a black curtain that said you must be over 18 to enter. One day he jokingly said to the owner "what's back there, porn?", and the owner said no, it's bootlegs. The naive Mike said "what are bootlegs?", and he was led behind the black curtain to a locked case that contained about 40 CDs ranging in price from about $30 each up to about $120. Two of them caught his eye - they were Beatles bootlegs entitled Ultra Rare Trax Volume One and Two and they were $90 apiece (for a single CD), and he decided to take a chance and splurged on them. At the time he had a really phenomenal stereo system set up in his college room, and when he slipped these CD's on and heard 'I Saw Her Standing There (Take Two)' in a quality beyond anything that I had heard before, it was so clear and so stunning that he stood there in shock. It was like the band was right there in the room, and that moment cemented his love for the Beatles and all things bootlegs! 
Soon after that his research into the Beatles led him to a website called Beatles-A-Rama. It was 24 hours a day of beautifully produced Beatles stuff, and it often played many things that he had never heard before. After listening to that station for a couple of years he finally got up the nerve to write to the owner, Pat Matthews. He was a super nice guy and they got along great, so Mike told him about his idea to do a single two hour show based around classic rock and it's influences from classical music, using all sorts of different bands, but grounding it in Beatles songs like 'Yesterday', 'I Am The Walrus' and 'Strawberry Fields', plus a few others where they used classical instruments in the song ('Penny Lane' and 'For No One' come to mind). He said great, send me a show, so Mike bought himself a microphone and learned how to record things on Audacity, and proceeded to create a two hour show, the one that he'd been planning in his mind since he was 13. Once Pat had played the tape his reply was unexpectedly... "Love it. You're on every Saturday at 10.00am". And that was the start of 11 years of his own show called 'Off The Beatle Track' on Beatles-A-Rama, running to over 300 episodes in its 11 year run. 
As I said, Mike has sent me a load of these shows, and of course the first one I listened to was the 'classical music' one which started the whole thing off, so in the first of a sporadic series, here are Episodes 48 and 49 of Mike's 'Off The Beatle Track' radio broadcast. 

Track listing

01 Episode 48 - Classical Classics Part 1

02 Episode 49 - Classical Classics Part 2