When a beloved artist passes away, after the deluge of superlatives and retrospectives subsides, bereaved fans often hold on to the hope of unreleased music to rekindle a moment of novelty amid the humdrum nostalgia that posthumous fandom can often be. The recent hullabaloo surrounding the alleged impending release of unheard “mind-blowing” Prince tracks plays into a long history of genuine discoveries, longstanding myths, hoaxes and unfortunate duds when it comes to claims of unreleased music.
On the occasion that the rumors beget reality, a discovery of new music is a treasure trove, a look into the inner workings of a brilliant mind, touched up with modern audio engineering and bringing the artist back to life. More often than not, though, fans are left with nothing but unsubstantiated claims and false rumors – a ghost. As we wait to see whether eager fans of the Purple One will be satiated in their hope for an immortalized Prince, here’s a look at some of the most controversial claims of unreleased music made by deceased icons.
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson’s catalogue of unreleased music stretches over three decades and hundreds – some say thousands – of songs written with and/or for everyone from Sammy Davis Jr to Siegfried and Roy to Shaquille O’Neal. Upon his death in 2009, his sister Latoya was said to have rescued hard drives filled with thousands of tracks from repossession trucks. Two years later, in 2011, hackers stole over 50,000 audio files from Sony – allegedly including the entirety of Michael Jackson’s back catalogue – but the thieves were apprehended and no music was released. In 2017, a New York-based auction house started the bidding for a rare, unreleased Michael Jackson album for $50,000 before turning an about face and only offering the album for exclusive (and presumably very expensive) private listening sessions.
Amy Winehouse
After the singer’s death in 2011, her label was quick to cobble together a posthumous album of B-sides and covers titled Lioness: Hidden Treasures. It wasn’t received particularly well and provided something of a musical chronology of her descent into alcoholism. To make sure Winehouse’s memory was not tarnished any further, Universal UK CEO David Joseph destroyed the remainder of all of Winehouse’s unfinished demos. “It was a moral thing,” Joseph told the Guardian in 2015. “Taking a stem or a vocal is not something that would ever happen on my watch. It now can’t happen on anyone else’s.”
Tupac
The story goes that shortly before he was gunned down in 1996, West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur was embarking on an album titled One Nation that was set to unite the warring coasts of rap. Names like Outkast, DJ Premier, E-40 and Scarface are often bandied about as collaborators, but beyond a brief mention by rapper Buckshot, a since-removed video and a picture of a scrawled, handwritten note, there is no actual proof of those legendary sessions, and our nation still remains divided. However, that isn’t to say that Tupac – or at least sampling of Tupac – hasn’t been prolific since his death. There have been seven Tupac studio albums, 10 compilations, two remix albums, one soundtrack album, one live DVD and countless singles and featured appearances over the years.
George Michael
George Michael died on Christmas Day in 2016, and with the loss came rumors of a hard drive filled with three albums worth of material that the Wham! singer had deemed unworthy of release. Shortly afterwards, Michael’s bereaved partner Fadi Fawaz leaked a track on YouTube titled This Kind of Love, allegedly written and recorded by Michael in 1993 for the Trojan Souls album, on which he worked with Seal, Sade, Stevie Wonder and Elton John – but never released. In September 2017, George Michael’s two sisters announced that longtime collaborator David Austin would be overseeing the release of the rumored unreleased material. Nile Rodgers, with whom Michael was thought to be collaborating near the time of his death, added fuel to the fire by tweeting that the release was “coming soon”, but George Michael’s distinctive voice is yet to hit airwaves anew.
Thin Lizzy
Irish rock band Thin Lizzy’s time came to an abrupt end in 1986 when singer Phil Lynott died of septicemia as a result of heroin addiction. Before his death, Lynott handed 150 tapes featuring more than 700 tracks of unreleased material from the Boys Are Back in Town band to a friend, who kept them for almost 30 years. In 2012, the tapes surfaced to much fanfare, and fans awaited their holy grail of a Thin Lizzy Unreleased Box Set with enough material to last 70 albums. Unfortunately, that box set never transpired. As recently as 2017, there have been murmurings of a release, but with a Lynott-less Lizzy still tramping the nostalgia rock circuit, those supposedly unearthed recordings remain out of earshot.
Jimi Hendrix
Posthumous Jimi Hendrix albums are no rarity as Sony Legacy continues to release unreleased recordings almost 50 years since his death. However, the holy grail of unreleased Jimi Hendrix material is Black Gold, an intimate, 16-song autobiographical song cycle that he recorded in his Greenwich Village apartment in 1970. At the Isle of Wight festival that year, Hendrix handed the master tapes to drummer Mitch Mitchell, who unwittingly put them in a box and forgot about them for decades. They were rumored to have been found by Mitchell, but unfortunately he died in 2008 before Black Gold could be released. In 2010, Janie Hendrix stated that the Black Gold material would be “released this decade”, but with the years counting down, gold has yet to be struck.
Davie Bowie and Queen
Last year, longtime Queen roadie Peter Hince made headlines when he claimed the existence of unreleased recordings featuring collaborations between David Bowie and Queen. The pairing famously released the track Under Pressure in 1982, and Hince claimed that not only was he in the room when more tracks were recorded, but that he was sure of their current existence. The claim was off-handedly corroborated by Queen guitarist Brian May that same summer, but as yet no material has surfaced.
The Beatles
Rumors of Beatles reunion tapes have surfaced many times since the band split up in 1970, and bootlegs of secret sessions and unreleased recordings throughout their career have popped up over the years, some legitimate, some very much not. In 2003, an opportunistic collector named Gary Zimet listed an online auction of alleged tapes of a reunified Beatles jamming in LA in 1976. The story made nationwide news, and studio owner Len Kovner admitted that members of the Beatles did record in his studio during that time period, but dismissed Zimet’s claim as likely something that was pilfered from the trash with no Beatles evident on the recording. In 2017, a seemingly genuine acetate of a 1963 demo for What Goes On sold for over $10,000. It’s also widely rumored that Paul McCartney is sitting on stashes of unreleased Beatles material like 1967’s avant-garde jam Carnival of Light, but is inhibited from releasing it due to needing approval from the estates of every Beatle.
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