Next week, Electric Nebraska will be available in record stores and on streaming platforms. It is the focal point of a new box set commemorating the release of the sixth Bruce Springsteen album, which is also the subject of a forthcoming film starring Jeremy Allen White. Just like that, Electric Nebraska is this very tangible and accessible thing. And that’s pretty strange, given that only four months ago, not even Bruce Springsteen thought a full-band version of his famously solo acoustic record even existed. Now here we are, on the precipice of being able to cue up one of the most storied “lost” records whenever we please.
I have already heard Electric Nebraska, and I am prepared to express an opinion. But I’ll do that later. Right now, I need to say something that might sound misguided and even privileged but nonetheless represents my overriding feelings about this whole project: I’m ambivalent. As a guy who wrote a book about the period that berthed Electric Nebraska, I’m thrilled to finally hear this music I’ve been reading about for as long as I have cared about Bruce Springsteen. From an historical and journalistic perspective, having Electric Nebraska out in the world, unquestionably, is a boon. But as a fan with romantic notions about “lost” records, it’s sometimes more fun to imagine what a record sounds like than to actually hear it.
In the case of Electric Nebraska, you don’t have to imagine very hard. It sounds like the regular Nebraska, only with a band. Bruce has already played “plugged in” versions of these songs for decades, most commonly “Atlantic City,” one of his best-known tunes. So, there’s not a ton of mystery there. Nevertheless, this is the rare Springsteen music that has never been bootlegged. So many Bruce outtakes have circulated among fans over the years, but Electric Nebraska was protected like the Epstein Files. And that’s over now. Which means it’s no longer this mythical object, subject to endless speculation and conjecture. What was once the ultimate white whale for Springsteen obsessives has been ensnared for posterity.
And, yeah, I’m ambivalent about that, for reasons I’ll explain as we proceed.
PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT, PART 1: WHAT IS A “LOST” ALBUM, EXACTLY?
I am not talking about records that didn’t get their due in their time. And I’m not counting albums that are out of print or absent from streaming or are in any way obscure or hidden or “unsung” or “underrated.” Those are what you might call “lost classics,” and it’s different from the thing I’m talking about right now. I am also not referring to the music of the fictional band Drive Shaft, whose two albums Drive Shaft and Oil Change could be called “lost” records because they were featured on the popular ABC show Lost. (This caveat has a niche audience. But I’m sure they appreciate it.)
These are the three kinds of “lost” albums I am interested in:
1. Albums that remain unreleased, either by artist’s choice or record-label maleficence.
2. Albums that were unreleased for a time but then came out after they achieved iconic
“lost” status, to the point where even now they still seem “lost” even though they technically aren’t anymore.
3. Albums that might not actually exist.
PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT, PART 2: BEFORE YOU READ, LISTEN TO BLACK MESSIAH
The great singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist D’Angelo died this week right as I was finishing this column. And it occurred to me his final album, 2014’s Black Messiah, belongs in its own category, which is this: It’s an album everyone assumed would stay “lost,” and then it came out and blew all our minds. The history is part of the album’s legend: Started making it in 2002, derailed by drug charges and a car accident in the mid-aughts, returns to work in the early 2010s, gets really good at playing guitar, gets hyped as making the “black version of Smile” by Questlove, and then finally drops this surprising masterpiece.
When people romanticize “lost” albums, Black Messiah is the record they’re hoping to find (and rarely get). RIP.
25. Bruce Springsteen — Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions
Electric Nebraska, incredibly, is the eighth (!) “lost” album Bruce Springsteen has put out in 2025. The first seven are collected on Tracks II: The Lost Albums, which came out in summer. The box set spans 35 years of The Boss’ career, from the early 1980s to the late 2010s. Among the “lost” records is a collection of one-man band demos recorded between Nebraska and Born In The U.S.A. (L.A. Garage Sessions ’83), a soundtrack to a so-called “spiritual western” from the mid-2000s that never got made (Faithless), a country record that veers surprisingly close to Garth Brooks territory (Somewhere North Of Nashville), and a jazzy experiment in American Songbook-style songwriting (Twilight Hours).
My favorite “lost” album is the one I thought going in might be the biggest disaster. Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions was made in the wake of Bruce winning an Oscar for the song “Streets Of Philadelphia,” from Jonathan Demme’s 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia. It was a continuation of that song’s sound, which was built around keyboards and drum loops rather than his usual “rock band” instrumentation. In press materials, it was described as “hip-hop-inspired,” which not only sounded uninspiring but potentially, maybe, sort of… offensive?
Alas, thankfully, SOPS sounds nothing like The Chronic. It’s more like a nocturnal trip-hop record molded into the shape of rock music, with Bruce intensely purring about doomed romance over programmed beats and some of the most robust guitar playing he’s ever put on record. Not to spoil what’s coming, but I actually like it more than Electric Nebraska, mainly because the quality of the record is more shocking and therefore transformational in terms of how ’90s Bruce (the least popular Bruce) is perceived.
However, I’m going to put it here because, more than quality, the essential property I’m assessing in this column is “lostness.” How important is “lostness” to the particular album, and how significant is that album’s “lostness” to overall music culture? On those counts, Electric Nebraska must show up higher here.
24. The Beach Boys — Adult/Child
Bruce Springsteen, clearly, is one of the giants when it comes to “lost” albums. He has a high quantity of “lost” albums, and he also has a high-quality “lost” quotient. When it comes to music you can’t find, he truly is The Boss. And then there’s The Beach Boys. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that Smile — probably the most famous “lost” album in rock history — shows up high on this list. It shows up high because the lore is legendary, and also because the actual music is frequently brilliant. That second part isn’t always (or even often) the case with “lost” albums. This is, after all, music that was buried for reasons that were usually good and logical for all involved parties at the time.
I would gently assert that this is the case for Adult/Child, a shelved Beach Boys record made in the wake of The Beach Boys Love You, a polarizing 1977 album that baffled audiences at the time and then became a favorite among weirdo avant-pop enthusiasts. I am one of those weirdo avant-pop enthusiasts, for the record, though Adult/Child — which pairs Brian Wilson’s nicotine-ravaged vocals with zombified soft-rock arrangements on a set of rock ‘n’ roll oldies mixed with a handful of originals — is more “fascinating” than “good.” Al Jardine has talked recently about finally putting it out, which feels like a mistake; Adult/Child is perfectly suited as a “lost” album bootleg, easily available to anyone who wants to hear it and free of the expectations of an “official” release. Some things were meant to stay lost.
23. Chick (aka Mariah Carey) — Someone’s Ugly Daughter
A challenge of writing this column is that a lot of the time, I’m talking about music I haven’t actually heard. In music criticism, talking about music you haven’t heard is typically discouraged. “Music,” after all, literally comes before “criticism” in this equation. However, content must be created and bills have to be paid. So, in situations where I am tasked with creating criticism sans music, I am asking myself two questions:
1. Does this music sound good on paper?
2. Does this music sound funny on paper?
Case in point: Someone’s Ugly Daughter is the self-described “grunge” record made by Mariah Carey in 1995. She’s hinted about the album’s existence for years, but it’s never come out, though that might change soon. There actually is a bootleg on YouTube that purports to be the actual Someone’s Ugly Daughter, though I’m reluctant to take it face value as the genuine article. If it’s real, it sounds like Hole’s worst album. (Questlove supposedly has heard the “real” album, and he called it Mariah Carey’s best LP. Which means he either really dislikes Mariah Carey’s catalog or really enjoys Courtney Love’s.)
If I focus on the first question, this does not seem better on paper than Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions or even Adult/Child. But if I ponder the second question, it definitely has greater comedic value. Therein lies the advantage of “lostness”: On paper, “hip-hop-inspired Springsteen record” is hilarious. But now that I’ve heard it, it’s no longer funny, just merely exquisite. So, Chick gets the edge.
22. Wu-Tang Clan — Once Upon A Time In Shaolin
Technically, this album was released… to one person. Conceived as a fine art project in the vein of Renaissance-era patronage, it was recorded and then sold in 2015 for $2 million to notorious scumbag Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical industry executive who famously jacked the prices of AIDS/HIV medication, with the stipulation that the album not be made available to the public until at least 2103. As it stands, the only people who will still be alive when Once Upon A Time In Shaolin is accessible beyond the rare listening party are the children and grandchildren of ’90s hip-hop heads, i.e. the people who are already sick of hearing about the supremacy of ’90s hip-hop.
21. The Byrds — Unfinished Album About The History Of Music
The best kind of “lost” albums are the ones that are too ambitious (or insane) to live in the world. The release of the Wu-Tang album was crazy, but the music itself, reportedly, is in the group’s usual wheelhouse. This Byrds record, however, sounds like one of the most impossible-to-pull-off pieces of music ever conceived. Roger McGuinn had the idea in 1967, and he was still talking about it when I interviewed him 55 years later:
“I did have an idea to do an album that represented the history of music — not just American music, but world music. When it started with early music and the Gregorian chants, and going through the Renaissance, and then getting into the blues and jazz and rock ‘n’ roll and country music and then running it out into space with a synthesizer. I didn’t get anybody to go along with me on it. It was just too ambitious of a project. And we ended up doing Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, which I’m not ashamed of at all. I think we did a nice job with that.”
So, to review: The idea was for one band to play all styles of music from throughout history, and from all over the world, in sequential order until arriving in the future in outer space. Given the scope of the idea, I’m not sure how big the album would have to be to accommodate it. Would 10 albums suffice? (A deca-record?) How many sides would have been filled with Gregorian chants alone? I will never hear this album, but I will never stop thinking about it.
20. Pink Floyd — Household Objects
Another definitive example of the “too ambitious/insane to live in the world” “lost” album. In 1973, Pink Floyd put out Dark Side Of The Moon, one of the most popular rock albums of all time. Like so many superstar bands in similar positions before and after Pink Floyd, they decided to do the opposite of what made them multi-millionaires. But they did the opposite way harder than those other groups. Their idea, initially, was to make an album using only rubber bands, kitchen utensils, wine glasses, and other things that are not guitars, drums, or musical instruments of any kind. It was to be called Household Objects, and depending on who you ask, it could have been one of the most daring works of the 1970s — on par with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, which likely would have come out around the same time — or the dumbest squandering of a stadium-rock career ever.
Of course, it probably would have been both things. Returning to the essential questions for albums I have not actually heard, I don’t know if Household Objects sounds “good” on paper but it certainly sounds “funny.” Though it ultimately works best as an (extremely stoned) idea, which makes it ideal as a “lost” album few people would ever want to find.
19. The Clash — Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg
The interesting thing about The Clash in the early ’80s is that they made an album too ambitious (and insane) to live in the world, and then they put it out in the world. The triple-LP Sandinista! is one of rock’s all-time sprawls, coming after another of rock’s all-time sprawls, London Calling. A band typically only gets one bite at the “self-indulgent artistic gesture” apple, but The Clash originally considered making theirs a trilogy. Made and then shelved in 1981, Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg originated as a 77-minute opus that extended the previous album’s experiments with rap, funk, and dub music, with many tracks rolling on for several minutes in the style of dance remixes. This creative direction was spearheaded by guitarist Mick Jones and increasingly opposed by Joe Strummer and The Clash’s management, who favored a more straightforward rock approach.
Eventually, producer Glyn Johns (The Who, Led Zeppelin) was brought in to shorten the album and hone the sharpest potential singles. The result was Combat Rock, the best-selling LP of The Clash’s career, and the source of their two biggest hits, “Rock The Casbah” and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go.” It’s also the record that broke the band — Jones was so disgruntled by the gutting of Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg that he declined to work on the new mix and was later sacked by Strummer.
18. Fiona Apple — Extraordinary Machine (Jon Brion version)
Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg is part of a subgenre of “lost” albums that are essentially rough drafts for commercially viable classics. For The Clash, their bootleg doesn’t actually sound like a proper album, but rather a cache of low-quality recordings that feel like works in progress. But for anyone who believes that Combat Rock was a compromise — or simply loves The Clash so much they want all the music they can get — Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg represents a tantalizing road not taken that potentially could have resulted in a more daring and exciting body of music. (Along with “lostness,” “potential greatness” is a crucial property for “lost” albums.)
One of the more famous examples from the past 20 years is the Jon Brion version of Extraordinary Machine, which circulated as a bootleg and inspired an online “Free Fiona” movement before the album was finally released in 2005. Only that version wasn’t the “Jon Brion version,” named after the album’s original producer. In its official form, Extraordinary Machine was produced by Mike Elizondo and, like Combat Rock, was relatively streamlined and pop-friendly compared with the popular bootleg. Which is why there are still Extraordinary Machine fans who prefer the unofficial sister record, even though — as Tom Maxwell writes in a fascinating 2019 story — “the ‘Jon Brion version’ of Extraordinary Machine is a fraud” that “doesn’t sound so much mixed as assembled: sometimes the piano is inaudible; there are new tracks and effects never recorded during the Brion sessions; some of the vocals are what are called “scratch” and not final takes. The basic audio quality is poor enough for it to not have been taken from any master recording.”
All that is true. However… I still listen to it sometimes.
17. Sky Ferreira — Masochism
A key component of “lost” album mythology is record company meddling. “Lostness” becomes doubly appealing if some shadowy “they” has prevented the public from hearing the music in question. The “man,” so to speak, just won’t let our musical geniuses cook! They want “safe” and “commercial” music, and they will withhold anything “risky” or “experimental” from release.
That’s what we want to believe, and it’s actually the case sometimes. More often, however, albums are lost because the artists themselves can’t stop tinkering with their would-be masterworks.
On this list, there is exactly one example coming up that can be credibly slotted in the “recording company meddling” lane. Meanwhile, there are far more instances like Masochism, the infinitely delayed second album by indie-pop singer/songwriter Sky Ferreira. On my podcast, we have a running bit every January where we predict whether this is the year that Masochism, finally, mercifully, comes out. Ferreira has been talking about this record since at least 2016, when she told an interviewer, “When I feel like I’ve reached the point where I’m somewhat comfortable with it, that’s when the album ends.” Two years later, Pitchfork published a lengthy profile that seemed to be setting up the album’s promotional cycle. The year after that, in 2019, she put out a single, “Downhill Lullaby.” Three years after that came the second single, “Don’t Forget.” But now it’s 2025 and still no Masochism. The Wikipedia page promises that the album is dropping later this year, along with a tour, but with Thanksgiving about six weeks away, that seems unlikely.
16. Zack De La Rocha — Untitled Solo Album
Keep in mind: Ferreria’s on-the-record standard for release was feeling just “somewhat comfortable.” (Of course, she said that nine years ago, so the goal posts might have shifted.) But in terms of extended creative indecision, Ferreira still isn’t as extreme as the lead singer of Rage Against The Machine, who has raged against his own creative impulses since the early 2000s.
He’s supposedly been at work on his debut solo LP since at least 2003, when he worked with DJ Shadow on two tracks, “March Of Death” and the DJ Shadow number “Disavowed,” as well as album sessions that were eventually scrapped. Several years later, he took another crack with Trent Reznor, only to decide that music wasn’t up to snuff, either. Instead, he formed a supergroup called One Day As A Lion that nobody remembers, which put out a self-titled EP in 2008 that immediately disappeared. While promoting that project, he admitted to the Los Angeles Times that his own album had been stymied by being an obsession “with completely reinventing my wheel. In an unhealthy way, to a degree. I kind of forgot that old way of allowing yourself to just be a conduit.”
Almost a decade later, De La Rocha seemed to have relearned how to be a conduit — his solo record was set to be released in 2017. And then… crickets. Eight years later, it remains unreleased and there’s no indication that will ever change.
15. Dr. Dre — Detox
For many years in the aughts, this was (along with Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy) the ultimate modern “lost” album. Dre announced the project in 2002 as the follow-up to his blockbuster 1999 album 2001. And it was set up to be an epic, with guest spots from pretty much every popular rapper at the time as well as production designed to make Detox “the most advanced rap album ever,” according to producer Scott Storch. It was also supposed to be Dre’s final record, a grand closing statement for a career and, perhaps, an entire genre.
Hot damn! Who could not be excited about this? Well, in retrospect, the more pertinent question was: Who could actually deliver on this? And the answer was: not Dr. Dre. Years later, in 2010, some tracks were leaked and people heard that Detox was not, in fact, the most advanced rap album ever. Dre subsequently decided to scrap the release.
Then something interesting happened: In 2015, Dre put out an entirely different album called Compton. It wasn’t Detox, but it did make people forget about Detox. Then, not long after it was praised by critics, Compton also was swiftly forgotten. Just try to find a single person a decade later that can name one song from that record. You can’t do it! It’s impossible! Compton was the rare “double memory hole” album, which explains why Detox isn’t higher on this list.
14. Wrens — Unfinished Follow-Up to The Meadowlands
I realize this band is way less famous than Sky Ferreira, Zach De La Rocha, and Dr. Dre. And I acknowledge that only a certain type of person was ever invested in the follow-up to a cult favorite from 2003 put out by a group of middle-aged indie-rock musicians from New Jersey. But I am that certain kind of person, so the unfinished follow-up to The Meadowlands sits here at No. 14.
I first wrote about this album in 2013, one year after Obama was re-elected and 10 years after the last Wrens album. Their singer-guitarist Charles Bissell said that the new record was 71.8 percent done, “plus or minus 35 percent.” I wrote at the time — with wildly misplaced optimism, it turns out — that “signs appear to be pointing towards a 2014 release.” But that was not the case.
The issue, it seems, was Bissell’s maniacal perfectionism. In 2013, he insisted, “basically, it’s all pretty done.” And yet the behind-the-scenes tinkering continued. Eventually, in 2021, the other songwriter in the band, Kevin Whelan, took his songs and released them under the name Aeon Station, a moniker he said was a passive-aggressive jab at Bissell taking “eons” to finish the Wrens record. (He also confirmed that the album was set to be released in 2014 before being delayed, again, by his one-time partner.) Bissell for his part pledged to put out his half of the sandbagged Wrens LP under the name Car Colors, though as late as last month, he was still sending out mixed signals about that ever happening. Alas, I remain 71.8 percent confident, plus or minus 35 percent, that the world will hear those songs eventually.
13. Weezer — Songs From The Black Hole
There are many sad things about the Wrens’ “lost” album. But the saddest for me is that the Wrens missed their window. It could come out tomorrow, and only a fraction of the number people who would have cared in 2014 would still care. Speaking for myself, the constant delays just slowly ate away my interest. On that count, Electric Nebraska is the exception to the rule. Most of the time, “lost” albums lose their allure if they remain lost for too long. There’s just too many records, ones that you can actually hear, to keep yourself invested in enigmatic “theoretical” music as years become decades.
Songs From The Black Hole is also like that for me. Though my waning interest also stems from things like “not longer being in high school” and “hearing too many Weezer albums like Raditude.” But still, the historical record must be accounted for, and this was for a time one of the more mythical “lost” albums if you liked indie or alternative rock. The elevator pitch is… “enticing” isn’t exactly the right word, though “intriguing” more or less works: Songs From The Black Hole was a rock opera composed by Rivers Cuomo as a reaction to the success of Weezer’s 1994 debut. The model was partly Andrew Lloyd Webber, and partly Puccini’s early 20th century opera Madama Butterfly. The latter influence was still apparent on the album that Cuomo cobbled from several Black Hole outtakes, the 1996 emo touchstone Pinkerton, which explored Cuomo’s professional and sexual hang-ups more directly. Like Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg — or The Who’s Life House, which we’ll discuss later, Songs From The Black Hole was the gangly rough draft for a leaner and meaner musical landmark.
12. Purple Mountains — Dan Bejar-Produced Sessions With Stephen Malkmus
Speaking of things that make me sad: Purple Mountains’ self-titled record from 2019 remains one of the greatest indie records of the 21st century, even if you have to be in a room without any sharp objects when listening to it. But no matter the album’s depressing back story, the craft of David Berman’s writing — and the understated perfection of the production by Woods members Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl — is unmatched. It’s simply an expertly rendered swan song by one of the finest and most respected songwriters of the last 30 years.
There is, however, another (and apparently much different) Purple Mountains record in the can. In 2017, Berman reached out to fellow enigmatic indie genius Dan Bejar about working together. Berman came to Bejar’s home base in Vancouver, and they worked on tracks with Bejar’s band and, for a few days, Berman’s old friend Stephen Malkmus. In a 2020 Pitchfork interview, Bejar described the album as sounding more like Destroyer than the countryish material that ended up on Purple Mountains’ sole LP. “It was incredibly loud and brittle and dry and compressed, with this Serge Gainsbourg-style voice-of-God over whatever is happening beneath,” he said. Lyrically, “there were lots of really wild lines that would have fit in more with ’90s Berman — just blasting images, more manic, which was actually the state he was in. But I think he wanted to do something different. So a lot of those amazing pieces of writing didn’t get used.” He added that there’s “halfway to final mixes of an album’s worth of music,” though he’s not sure Berman would want the album to be released. Which means, perhaps, it shouldn’t be.
11. Neil Young — Hitchhiker
Neil rivals Bruce and the Beach Boys in the “lost” albums department, though he takes it one step further by pioneering a whole new kind of “lost” record — the “official album turned into a lost album” lost album. It’s where Neil takes an album we all know and love and then rejiggers it, inserting new songs or different versions of familiar tracks. He’s done this throughout his Archives series of box sets, most notably with Dume, a reimagining of one of my favorite Neil records, 1975’s Zuma. I think I like Dume more than Zuma, and I considered putting it here, but Dume feels more like a thought experiment than a full-on “lost” album. (It’s like a mixtape that Neil made of his own music.) So, I’m opting instead for Hitchhiker, a raw and intimate snapshot of Neil playing a fantastic batch of newly written songs — including some of his all-time best work, namely “Pocahontas” and “Powderfinger” — on just one lonely night at Malibu’s Indigo Ranch Recording Studio in August of 1976. Most of the songs ended up on other albums from around the same time, but they arguably shine most beautifully here.
10. The Masked Marauders — The Masked Marauders
In October of 1969, Rolling Stone reported that the biggest rock stars of the era — Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison — got together to make an album. Due to contractual constraints, they couldn’t identify themselves on the back cover, so they instead dubbed themselves The Masked Marauders. The following month, the album arrived in stores, and it featured covers of ’50s rock ‘n’ roll tunes like “Duke Of Earl” and “The Book Of Love” along with originals like the Stones-y “I Can’t Get No Nookie” and the Dylan-led “More Or Less Hudson’s Bay Again,” which evoked his Blonde On Blonde era. It was loose and inconsistent, but instantly iconic regardless.
If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of this legendary summit before now, it’s because The Masked Marauders were a hoax. Rolling Stone made it up, from an idea by critic Greil Marcus to make fun of emerging supergroups like Crosby, Stills & Nash, as well as the recent Dylan bootleg Great White Wonder. (More on both of those in a minute.) The magazine even corralled a band of rock star impersonators to record an actual album. The public eventually caught on, but not before the Marauders’ self-titled record managed to chart, due entirely to hype created by the press.
9. Guns N’ Roses — Chinese Democracy
The Masked Marauders, admittedly, doesn’t fit the technical definition of a “lost” album. But it’s such a perfect satire of a “lost” album — and subsequently appealed to the public because it so uncannily resembled the properties of “lostness” — that I’m including it here. The central appeal of a “lost” record is the promise of artistic greatness so overwhelming it can only exist in one’s anticipatory imagination. For The Masked Marauders, the selling point was mathematical — the accumulated talent of each individual member must add up to something greater, even though the opposite is normally true for supergroups.
A similar math equation was set up for Chinese Democracy — the mass of the world’s biggest rock band multiplied by millions of dollars just had to yield… something huge. Through the back half of the ’90s and most of the aughts, Chinese Democracy was invoked as both a punchline and as a totem of guarded optimism among a dwindling number of diehards. Even as Slash and Duff and the rest of GNR exited the sessions, word trickled out that Axl Rose was conjuring an unholy amalgam of Zeppelin, Nine Inch Nails, the Sex Pistols, Tool, and whatever else was on his iPod. It was also possible, many guessed, that Axl had lost his mind. An infamous 2000 Rolling Stone article portrayed his “lost years” as a rabbit hole of past life regression therapy as well as fixations on UFOs, channeling, mystical crystals, and so on.
After a while, Chinese Democracy seemed destined to be a permanently lost “lost” album. Then, against all odds, it finally came out in 2008. And it was… fine. Which is quite a drop from how monumental — either as a success or a disaster — it seemed when it was still “lost.” GNR, like others mentioned in this column, had missed their window.
8. Prince — The Black Album
Prince might very well have more lost albums than anybody. His vaults are reportedly filled with music he held back from release, some of which has leaked out via the bootleg market. A number of those albums are widely known among Prince fans, particularly works from his insanely fruitful mid-’80s period, like Dream Factory and Camille.
But my personal favorite is The Black Album, which was slated for a 1987 release until Prince decided at the last second to withhold it, on the grounds that he could no longer endorse the album’s relentlessly down and dirty funk-rock music after a profound “spiritual epiphany.” His label, Warner Bros., had already printed up 500,000 copies, most (though not all) of which were destroyed. It instantly became a treasured bootleg as the more spiritually minded (but still horny) Lovesexy arrived in its place. The Black Album officially came out, briefly, in the ’90s, before being pulled again. Now you can find it online, and it stands as the one of the filthiest slabs of funk in his catalog.
7. Wilco — Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The one big “record company maleficence” album on the list, and the most famous modern example of the suits getting in the way, getting it wrong, and creating a legend in the process. I won’t recount the story, as I’m guessing everyone has seen I Am Trying To Break Your Heart by now. But there really was a time when Wilco’s label wanted an alt-country record (in 2001, even!) instead of songs like “Jesus, Etc.” and “Heavy Metal Drummer.” The improbability diminishes the album’s “lostness” somewhat; Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is as foundational as Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits at this point. But its original reputation really was predicated on being the record that was rejected by the label, and then available for free online. It was a mystery, and then a cause, and then an acknowledged masterpiece. I think Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would have reached that last step with the “lostness” aspect, but it wouldn’t have the same mythos.
6. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — Human Highway
It’s 1973, and four of California’s most beloved millionaire folk rockers have absconded to Hawaii to work on their first album in three years. They hang out, they smoke weed, they snort some coke, and all the sudden, they’re no longer speaking. Later, they reconvene at Neil Young’s ranch for rehearsals, but the vibes still aren’t working. The album known as Human Highway once again fails to coalesce. So, why am I putting it here? Because the songs each guy was bringing to the table were incredible. You can hear them on the solo albums they put out at the time, and on the big live reunion album they recorded the following year. That’s the beauty of Human Highway: Just take 12 of those songs, and put them in any order you want, and you have one of the great “lost” albums of the mid-’70s.
5. The Who — Life House
The best example of the “rough draft” subgenre, and also a “too ambitious (and insane) to live in this world” “lost” album. I know the story by heart: Pete Townshend comes up with his next rock opera, which set in a future dystopia where rock music is outlawed. His goal is to combine his spiritual beliefs with cutting-edge synthesizer technology. Which he does, though he has trouble realizing his other ideas. Like the one about performing the songs for the same audience in the same theater for months at a time, so that the fans will eventually become characters in a nutty concert film he wanted to direct. Or the one about collecting the audience’s personal information, putting that data into a computer, and from that producing a single musical note that will induce mass enlightenment.
Life House was never going to work as a tool for creating a hippie utopia. But Pete did write some good tunes: “Baba O’Riley,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Song Is Over,” “Getting In Tune,” and so on. So, Who’s Next (made with future Combat Rock producer Glyn Johns, a true “rough draft” polisher) was born.
4. Bruce Springsteen — Electric Nebraska
Here’s the problem with Electric Nebraska: The regular Nebraska exists. And it is perfect as is. That’s what those songs are supposed to sound like. And because the songs sound like that, Nebraska will always be unique in Bruce Springsteen’s catalog. Electric Nebraska, meanwhile, is composed of eight outtakes that sound a bit like Born In The U.S.A. and a bit like The River. The E Street Band, road-tested and at the peak of their powers, take Bruce’s quiet meditations on regret, guilt, and trauma and turn them into pile-driving rock songs. Because that’s what they do, and they’re extremely good at it. But it was never going to be more than just an interesting subplot to this album the world has recognized as a masterpiece for 43 years. Electric Nebraska is not a full-fledged album in its own right. It’s the musical equivalent of a DVD “making of” extra.
And yet… for reasons I already stated… I’m putting it here at No. 4. Or, rather, I’m putting the idea of Electric Nebraska here.
3. Bob Dylan — Great White Wonder
One of the original “lost” albums, this 1969 bootleg is a mishmash of music from various sources, including the famous “Minnesota hotel tape” from 1961, some studio outtakes, a live clip from The Johnny Cash Show, and, most famously, seven songs recorded with The Band during the so-called “Basement Tapes” sessions in 1967 in upstate New York. I’m putting it at No. 3 for historical reasons, though all the music is available in better and expanded form elsewhere, via official or easily accessible bootleg channels. Great White Wonder nevertheless deserves credit for codifying the principles of “lostness,” primarily that alluring idea about a shadow world of music beyond the public’s reach that is better, realer, more authentic and more precious than the records you’re “allowed” to hear. A flawed concept, to be sure, though buying in sure does make listening to “lost” albums more fun.
2. Kurt Cobain and Michael Stipe — Proposed Collaborative Album
As far as I know, they never recorded together. But this remains the great “what if?” album of the ’90s, and the “lost” record I thought the most about in my teens (and beyond). Before he died, Cobain talked about making music more in the vein of R.E.M., particularly their funereal 1992 LP Automatic For The People. And he talked about collaborating with Michael Stipe, who had taken on the role of a big brother figure in his personal and professional lives. The posthumous MTV Unplugged In New York feels like an approximation of a “Nirvana meets early ’90s R.E.M.”-type vibe, but I still fantasize sometimes about what Cobain and Stipe might have achieved had they been able to meet up in the studio in the mid-’90s.
1. The Beach Boys — Smile
It had to be this one. In the realm of “lost” albums, it’s where everything comes together. One, it’s a “too ambitious (or insane) to live in this world” album, structured like an intricate puzzle of interlocking musical and lyrical motifs that can only fit one way… but how? Two, it was a rough draft for future Beach Boys music — possibly all their music moving forward. If you never heard it, it sounds good on paper (psychedelic pop with Van Dyke Parks lyrics!) and it sounds funny on paper (songs about barnyard animals and the cyclical nature of American conquest!). It’s a record that’s amazing to think about, especially as a crucial turning point in Brian Wilson’s life and career. But it’s even better to listen to — it’s among the rare “lost” albums that lives up to expectations. Best (and most miraculous) of all, Brian Wilson finished it in 2004… and it totally worked! Tragedy and triumph, chaos and comedy, pathos and perfection — he lost it all and then found it for the rest of us. Smile is “lostness” defined.
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