10 Famous Albums That Left The Best Song On The Cutting Room Floor

During the recording process of an album, an artist might record 20 or 30 songs. Maybe even more. Of those, only about a dozen will make it onto the final tracklist, while the others will either wither away in a vault somewhere or eventually find their way onto a future rarities and b-sides album.

And sometimes the best song recorded for that album doesn't actually make it onto the album. That's because crafting an album is about much more than compiling "the best" songs. It's about finding the songs that fit the vibe the artist is going for, while striking a delicate balance in overall tempo, pacing, and storytelling.

Some of the best songs a musician ever wrote ended up as strays because they didn't fit that vibe or they disrupted the album's momentum in one way or another. Despite their objective awesomeness, these tunes had to be left on the cutting room floor for the good of the album.

So go on and give these loose gems a listen, and then, if you feel so inclined, scold the parents of these orphaned tunes who couldn't be bothered to give them a proper home.

Cut Song: "Rock Star"

Before you Hole fans start fury-commenting about how "Rock Star" was on Live Through This, you should know the song most commonly referred to as "Rock Star" today is actually called "Olympia".

See, as the band was preparing to release the album, they pulled a last minute switcheroo, replacing "Rock Star" with "Olympia", but since the artwork was already finished, the song titles themselves were not properly switcherooed, leaving "Rock Star" where "Olympia" should have been, and causing literally dozens of people to wonder which version of "Rock Star" is the true version of "Rock Star".

Ahem...anyway, the original version allegedly didn't make the cut due to the following lyrics:

"How'd you like to be Nirvana // So much fun to be in Nirvana // Say you'd die"

Live Through This was a much poppier version of Hole than the visceral punk that appeared on their breakthrough album, Pretty On the Inside. It didn't feel like a proper pop album, though. It felt like a pseudo-punk band trying to satisfy two wholly disparate groups of listeners without fully committing to either one.

The original "Rock Star", on the other hand, hit the sweet spot the rest of the album was aiming for, producing one of the best shoegaze pop songs of the 90s.