From
Drake to Carly Rae Jepsen to Bad Bunny, 2020 has been dominated by records breathing life into leftover songs
In 2002, Alanis Morissette released Feast on Scraps, a collection of unused songs recorded for her fifth album, Under Rug Swept, released 10 months earlier. Its (ironic, don’t you think?) title seemed to sum up the will-this-do status of the leftovers album, typically released to fulfil record contracts, posthumously, or as niche collectables for diehard fans. As the CD single has dwindled, taking with it the idea of the “B-side”, you’d assume there’d be no need for them in 2020. And yet, offcut albums have dominated the charts this year.
Last August, for example, Drake released the Care Package album, a hotchpotch of older songs that for various reasons had previously only existed on SoundCloud,
YouTube and people’s iTunes libraries as illegal downloads. Last month, he followed it up with another one, Dark Lane Demo Tapes. That same month, fellow Canadian Carly Rae Jepsen released Dedicated Side B, a collection of songs that hadn’t made it on to 2019’s Dedicated (she did the same with 2016’s Emotion: Side B, released a year after its parent album). Puerto Rican reggaeton sensation Bad Bunny, meanwhile, chucked out Las Que No Iban a Salir in May, a compilation of songs that didn’t quite make his two albums proper.