Kelis - Amphibious (2001)

Following the massive success of her debut album, 'Kaleidoscope', in 1999, Kelis set about recording songs for her second record 'Wanderland'. The sessions were completed in 2001, but according to the singer, when they were presented to Virgin Records the executives didn't understand it, and so she subsequently left the label around the time of the album's European release, resulting in the record not being released at all in the United States. In order to produce something that could be released in the US, a plan was hatched to re-record tracks from 'Wanderland' with live instruments, and to get Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka The Neptunes, to produce the replacement, to be called 'Amphibious'. It was intended to be a more acoustic-leaning version of 'Wanderland', but this plan never came to fruition, as Kelis' new record label Arista urged her to follow a different direction for her material, which resulted in the 'Tasty' album appearing in 2003. It remains unclear what tracks were due to make the cut on 'Amphibious', although rumour has it that the original version of 'Popular Thug (feat. Nas)' was slated to be the effort's lead single, although this has never been officially confirmed by Kelis' camp. Various recordings have surfaced, some as hidden tracks on re-issues of 'Wanderland', while other Neptunes' tracks have leaked over the years, and so we are able to construct a very rough track listing for the album, which does include some new versions of 'Wanderland' songs, but mostly consists of new recordings with The Neptunes.   

Track listing

01 Rain (Intro)
02 Oasis 
03 So Be It  
04 Star Wars 
05 Finest Dreams (Part 2) (feat. Richard X)  
06 Freak Me Slow 
07 Harlem Streets (feat. Raphael Saadiq)

08 Popular Thug (feat. Nas)
09 The Spot
10 This Way  
11 I Don't Care Anymore

Ariana Grande - Do You Love Me? (2020)

For the third and final instalment of demos and rarities from Ariana Grande I'm featuring out-takes mostly from the 'Thank U, Next' and 'Positions' albums. 

Track listing  

01 Dream
02 He Had It Comin'
03 Still On Ur Mind
04 Eternally
05 Nobody (feat. Chaka Khan)
06 Solo
07 How I Look On You
08 No Free Promo (Interlude)
09 Jada (Like That)

10 Could Be Us
11 Not OK

12 Lessons
13 Do You Love Me?
14 Juice
15 Sweet Dreams
16 In The Moment

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Dolly Parton (2002)

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on 9 January 1946 in Pittman Center, Tennessee, and is the fourth of twelve children. For six or seven years, Parton and her family lived in their rustic, one-bedroom cabin on their small subsistence farm on Locust Ridge, and music played an important role in her early life. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six, and by seven she'd started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight, her uncle bought her first real guitar and she began singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, and at 13, she recorded a single 'Puppy Love' on a small Louisiana label, Goldband Records. After graduating from Sevier County High School in 1964, she moved to Nashville the next day, where her initial success came as a songwriter, having signed with Combine Publishing shortly after her arrival. With her frequent songwriting partner, her uncle Bill Owens, she wrote several charting singles during this time, including two Top 10 hits for Bill Phillips, with 'Put It Off Until Tomorrow' and 'The Company You Keep', and one for Skeeter Davis with 'Fuel To The Flame'. 

Her songs were recorded by many other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells and Hank Williams Jr., but when she was signed to Monument Records in 1965, she initially was pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the only one that charted, 'Happy, Happy Birthday Baby', did not crack the Billboard Hot 100. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, thinking her unique, high soprano voice was not suited to the genre. After her composition 'Put It Off Until Tomorrow', was recorded by Bill Phillips and went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country music. Her first country single was 'Dumb Blonde' (composed by Curly Putman, and one of the few songs during this era that she didn't write), which reached number 24 on the country chart in 1967, followed by 'Something Fishy', which went to number 17, and both songs appeared on her debut album 'Hello, I'm Dolly' in 1967. In order to showcase her song-writing talents, she recorded her own versions of the Bill Phillips and Skeeter Davis singles for inclusion on the record, and other songs from it were soon picked up and covered by other country artists. Only two tracks from the album were not self-penned, but because 'Dumb Blonde' is so associated with her I've included it on this collection anyway, and to flesh out a rather short album I've included a few tracks written during the same time-frame, which all go to show what a talented song-writer she was even in her teens. 

Track listing

01 Dumb Blonde (Liz Anderson 1968)         
02 Your Ole Handy Man (Priscilla Mitchell 1967)  
03 I Don't Wanna Throw Rice (Ursula West 2002)  
04 Put It Off Until Tomorrow (Loretta Lynn 1966)  
05 I Wasted My Tears (The Traditional Grass 1993)  
06 Something Fishy (Marie Strong 1968)  
07 Fuel To The Flame (Skeeter Davis 1967)  
08 I'm In No Condition (Hank Williams Jr. 1967)  
09 The Company You Keep (Bill Phillips 1966) 
10 You're Gonna Be Sorry (The Stonemans 1968)
11 Just Because I'm A Woman (Jeannie Seely 1968)
12 Why Why Why (Tracy Nelson 1969)
13 As Long As I Love You (Dottie West 1970)

Nicole Scherzinger - Still Here (2007)

When Nicole Scherzinger started thinking about a solo career while still a member of The Pussycat Dolls, she dipped a toe in the waters by collaborating with a number of other artists during 2006 and 2007, and singing on their records. These included Avant's 'Lie About Us', Diddy's 'Come To Me', Vittorio Grigolo's 'You Are My Miracle', 50 Cent's 'Fire', and Timbaland's 'Scream', and soon afterwards she started to release singles under her own name, although none made any significant impact on the Billboard charts. Work on her solo album carried on throughout 2006 and early 2007, and at one point she probably had about 30 songs to choose from. About a dozen of the best were selected to appear on her debut album 'Her Name Is Nicole', but the release was pushed back a couple of times, before Scherzinger herself requested that it be shelved so that she could concentrate her efforts on the Pussycat Dolls' second album, 'Doll Domination'. At this point all of her solo recordings were consigned to the vaults, and 'Doll Domination' appeared in 2008, with the group embarking on a worldwide tour in support of it, commencing in January 2009 and lasting most of the year. In 2010 Scherzinger left the Pussycat Dolls, and the time was right to re-ignite her solo career, but rather than revisit her 2006/2007 recordings she wrote new material, and those old songs have remained unreleased. I've already posted a reconstruction of the 'Her Name Is Nicole' album here, and so this post is made up of the left-over songs from those sessions, but they are anything but inferior filler, and this collection is probably just as good as her proposed 2008 album.  

  
Track listing

01 Erotica Revolution
01 Psycho
03 I'll Be Your Love
04 Steam (feat. Eva)
05 I'm A Cheat
06 Loser
07 Whatever Happens
08 Get Em Ready (Ladies)
09 Break Yo Chest
10 Punchin' (Punch You In Your Sleep)
11 Still Here
12 Winning Women (feat. Rihanna)

The Jonas Brothers - V (2013)

The Jonas Brothers formed in 2005, and gained popularity from their appearances on the Disney Channel television network. They consist of three brothers: Kevin Jonas, Joe Jonas, and Nick Jonas, who in 2005 recorded 'Please Be Mine', their first song to be recorded, and on hearing the song, Columbia Records president Steve Greenberg decided to sign the brothers as a group. For their first album, titled 'It's About Time', the band collaborated with several writers, including Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne), Michael Mangini (Joss Stone), Desmond Child (Aerosmith, Bon Jovi), Billy Mann (Destiny's Child, Jessica Simpson) and Steve Greenberg. The album was initially supposed to be released in February 2006, but was pushed back several times, due to executive changes at Sony, and the executives' desire to have "another lead single" on the album. The brothers covered two hit songs by UK band Busted – 'Year 3000' and 'What I Go To School For', and 'It's About Time' was finally released in August 2006. Because Sony was not interested in further promoting the band, the Jonas Brothers considered switching labels, and in 2007 they signed with Hollywood Records, and their self-titled second album was released in August 2007, reaching number five on the Billboard Hot 200 chart in its first week. 

At the same time, they guest-starred in an episode of the Disney Channel show 'Hannah Montana' titled 'Me and Mr. Jonas and Mr. Jonas and Mr. Jonas'. Their third studio album, 'A Little Bit Longer', was released in the United States in August 2008, and iTunes announced that it would release four songs from it, one roughly every two weeks, and the purchase of each of the songs applied to the cost of the entire album, which could be purchased via iTunes 'Complete The Album' feature after release. In 2008 they made their film debut in the Disney Channel Original Movie 'Camp Rock', in which they played a band called Connect Three, but it was released to mixed reviews. In July 2008 they announced on stage that they had already written five songs for their fourth studio album, and a feature in the July 2008 issue of Rolling Stone magazine made them the youngest band to be on the cover of the magazine. The brothers finished recording their fourth studio album, 'Lines, Vines And Trying Times', and began to talk about the album in the beginning of 2009, announcing a release date of 15 June 2009, and that it would be preceded by two singles, 'Paranoid' and 'Fly With Me'. When 'Lines, Vines And Trying Times' was released it debuted at number one on the Billboard chart, becoming their second No. 1 album. 

In 2011 the brothers took a hiatus to focus on their solo careers, with Joe releasing his debut album 'Fastlife', Nick embarked on a tour with his band Nick Jonas & the Administration, and Kevin studied music production. In addition, they parted ways with Hollywood Records, and despite rumours that they had split, Kevin said the band would release new material in the future. In August 2012, two years after they last worked together, they announced a new concert tour, and a preview of the song 'Meet You In Paris' was released on Cambio. Their fifth studio album, which would have been their first not to be released through Hollywood Records, was scheduled to be released in 2013, and would be titled 'V' (pronounced: Five). A lead single, 'Pom Pom', was released on 2 April 2013, followed by a second, 'First Time', in June, but trouble was brewing on their tour, and in October they cancelled 23 tour dates between October and December, citing a "deep rift within the band" over creative differences. On 29 October 2013, the Jonas Brothers officially confirmed their split, and announced that their fifth album wouldn't be released, although some of the songs would feature on a live album that would appear in the future, titled 'LiVe', with the letter "V" in caps as a reference to their would-be fifth studio album. One track from the cancelled album is proving extremely elusive, with 'Sandbox' still unreleased after a decade, but all the other tracks have surfaced, so here is The Jonas Brothers' cancelled 'V' from 2013. 

Track listing

01 Pom Poms
02 Wedding Bells
03 Mr. Nice Guy
04 Neon
05 First Time
06 Let's Go (feat. Karmin)
07 What Do I Mean
08 Don't Say
09 The World
10 Found

Dua Lipa - Twisted Paradise (2017)

We close this quartet of albums from Dua Lipa with one final collection of songs recorded before the release of her debut album in 2017. But fans needn't worry, as there's more to come from 2020 later on. 

Track listing

01 Beg For It
02 Used To Know
03 That Girl At The Party
04 Cryptic
05 Good Things
06 21 Grams
07 On My Own
08 Daddy
09 Twisted Paradise
10 Lions & Tigers & Bears
11 Terms And Conditions 
12 Hard Liquor
13 Six Feet Under
14 Bite The Bullet (feat. Trey Campbell)

Mike Solof - Off The Beatle Track - Episode 45 (2019)

The next episode of Mike Solof's 90's radio show is a favourite of mine, as it features various covers of one Beatles' song. While was digging through the internet one day. Mike thought that although it’s kind of true that 'Yesterday' was the most covered song that the Beatles ever did, to his surprise he also found hundreds of covers of the song 'Tomorrow Never Knows'. This seems like such an odd choice, not only being an Indian bass tune, but also that it's based on just one chord, that you'd think it would be too monotonous to tackle. However, he soon discovered that there were many, many, many different covers that he was able to find, very few of which sounded the same, and so he soon had an entire hour's worth for an episode of his show. It's a testament to Mike's deep diving skills that despite the fact that this whole show plays just one song, your attention doesn't wander, and you don't lose interest until The Beatles/The Chemical Brothers have closed the show with their own rendition of the track.

Track listing

01 Episode 45 - Tomorrow Never Knows

Ariana Grande - Voodoo Love (2019)

For this second instalment of the mega-post of rarities from Ariana Grande that were recently posted on Youtube, I'm featuring out-takes and demos mostly from the 'Yours Truly', 'My Everything' and 'Dangerous Woman' period of her career. 

Track listing

01 Strong
02 Human
03 Voodoo Love
04 Focus
05 Real
06 You
07 All That
08 Pretty Girls Like Trap Music
09 Hi
10 Oh Darling
11 Young Love
12 More (feat. Lucky Daye & Victoria Monet)
13 The Way It Is

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