10 Blatantly Unfinished Albums (That Were Released Anyway)
2. Suede - A New Morning
A record that reeks of unfulfilled potential, Suede's fifth studio album is stuffed with stripped back bare songs that sounded as though they were coming from a completely different band than the pioneers of Britpop, at times feeling more like an acoustic singer's parody of Suede's themes (loneliness, alienation) than the genuine article.
Some of the songs here are admittedly pretty nice run of the mill mid-tempo pop tracks, but even the record's best bits were a huge mis-step away from what fans had come to expect from Suede. Suffering from both a lacking overall vision and a dodgy track list, fan favourite B-sides ("Simon") and other songs recorded around the same time ("Attitude", "Golden Gun") were bafflingly left off the album, despite being largely better than the unfinished-sounding songs that made the final cut.
A stark foil to its overinflated predecessor Head Music, A New Morning was so poorly received that the band broke up shortly after, reuniting in 2010 and releasing the mighty return to form that was Bloodsports a few short years later. Now three records into the second phase of the band, Suede thankfully hasn't released another dud since, seeming to have learned from their mistakes. Indeed, even lead singer Bret Anderson noted that the band's fifth output doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the band's discography.