There are so many reasons why a famous band would decide to scrap a whole album. Lead singles may not do so well, disagreements among the band members could cause delays, and a lack of label backing could lead to the shelving of a potentially great album. These four unreleased rock albums from the 1990s and 2000s haven’t been officially released, but you can find remnants of them on the internet today.
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1. ‘Cigarettes And Valentines’ by Green Day
The 2000 Green Day album Warning was a stellar piece of work. After that album was released, the band got to work on a punk album to be titled Cigarettes And Valentines. By 2003, it was almost finished. Unfortunately, the masters were inexplicably stolen from their studio.
In a way, it was a good thing. Green Day had to work from the basics to make something completely different, which ended up being their famous album American Idiot. A few songs from Cigarettes And Valentines survived and were repurposed for later albums, and all of the songs from the lost album were performed and released as a live album.
2. ‘Personality #9’ by Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe planned a comeback in the late 1990s after the not-so-successful release of their 1994 self-titled album. They ended up abandoning the in-progress album that was going to feature singer John Corabi and instead opted to reunite and reconcile with Vince Neil. That didn’t work out, either. Generation Swine featured a few repurposed songs from Personality #9, but it ended up being a commercial (and critical) failure.
[Get Tickets To See Mötley Crüe Live In Concert In 2024]
3. ‘Verse Chorus Verse’ by Nirvana
After the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, DCG Records made plans to release a live Nirvana album called Verse Chorus Verse. It was going to feature a number of live performances plus Nirvana’s famous MTV Unplugged set.
The record was announced and slated for release that November. Unfortunately, remaining Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic struggled to work on it for obvious reasons. The unreleased rock album has stayed shelved ever since, though the Unplugged set was eventually released as a live album.
4. Untitled Van Halen Album Post-’Van Halen III’
The 1998 album Van Halen III was an unfortunate flop for the band, and also their first (and only) to feature singer Gary Cherone. Still, Van Halen had a lot of songs already written and/or recorded for another album with Cherone. Even Cherone himself thinks that those songs should have made up Van Halen III, but he never got the chance to prove himself. He ended up splitting with the band in 1999 and the untitled album was shelved.
Photo by Alice Baxley / Courtesy of Warner Records
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