10 Rock Songs That Were Written For Somebody Else

In the world of rock and roll, it pays to write your own stuff. Though some of the greatest rockers of all time like Elvis Presley weren’t really known to put pen to paper when writing songs all that often, it’s much better to rely on yourself to come through with something amazing than to wait around for someone to write something for you. Sometimes songwriters get backed up though, and even some of their greatest songs get thrown to completely different artists.

Though these songs may have ended up on the artists’ album, all of these songs were meant to be sung by completely different people. While this should be a bit of a red flag for die hard fans of these artists, it’s much better to hear these songwriters write in different styles. It’s bound to get boring after a while writing the same thing over and over again, so these were songs to put them in a different mold and make something that was much more adventurous than what had come before.

The plans to be a ghostwriter didn’t come to fruition for a lot of these acts though, so we'll just have to end up settling with these songs as album cuts, being subtle glimpses into what could have been for them. Rock and roll might sound larger than life, but these songs are what happens when you work under cover.

It's always a bit of a 50/50 split as to whether any supergroups are going to be genuinely super when they come together. For every band like Velvet Revolver who had some promise behind their sound, there's always a band like Damn Yankees who's music is nowhere near the pedigree that the musicians hold in their main outfits. Even when Traveling Wilburys gave us the textbook example of how to do a supergroup right, the whole thing came together as kind of a fluke.

Handle With Care was the song that started the entire project, only it was meant to be a George Harrison solo song from the beginning. After releasing his amazing solo outing Cloud 9, George needed a B-side for one of his singles and called Jeff Lynne in to help him with producing it. Using Bob Dylan's studio, George had also invited Tom Petty down to the session, all while Roy Orbison was using the studio at the exact same time. The title was even a bit of a throwaway as well, just taken from a shipping container in the corner of the room with 'handle with care' displayed in block letters on the front.

The B-side was finished, but when George brought it into the label, he was told that it was too good to be relegated to the flipside of a single. George may have been going back to the drawing board for a throwaway song, but he also had one of the greatest classic rock collaborations sitting right beneath his feet.