8 Demo/Early Versions of Famous Songs

The Internet has made it so much easier to get access to unreleased music. Unmixed and incomplete music is often released to the dismay of the artists or sometimes by the artists themselves to create a buzz. Regardless of how it comes out it's always nice to see the origins of something great. People love a good behind the scenes story or first draft of a movie, music, play, etc so as to get some insight on the evolution of an idea to a full blown project. Here's a list of 8 songs whose demos or first drafts are available online.

‘Dear Mama’ - Tupac

The demo of this track was released a few days ago, shortly after the death of Afeni Shakur and a few days before Mother’s Day in the USA. It was released by DJ Assassin who worked on the original rendition of the track. However, due to sample clearance issues the chorus of the song had to be changed. Thank goodness for that because the final product is phenomenal.

‘Irreplaceable’ - Beyonce

I got sick of this track and can hardly still listen to it coz it was such a huge hit and saturated the airwaves so much that it kind of annoys me. I’m still detoxing from it. Nonetheless it’s a really good song. Ne-Yo wrote the lyrics to the songs for himself with StarGate on production. After hearing how the song sounded he decided it might be better suited for a girl and gave it away to Beyonce who added some harmonies and final touches to the song. It became a huge hit. Ne-Yo said he regretted giving the song to Beyonce as there was some songwriting controversy which arose when Beyonce mentioned that she wrote the song during a performance. The Beyonce version is still better though.

‘Lose Yourself’ - Eminem

Lose Yourself was a massive hit that was all over the radio and TV when it came out and rightfully so because the emotions expressed in the song are relatable.  The song was written by Eminem during the filming of his semi-biographical movie 8 Mile. As is the case with many songs the final draft was quite different from the initial draft. The lyrics are vastly different but it’s not nearly as dramatic as the final version. Nonetheless it’s still dope though.

‘Billy Jean’ - Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was known to often freestyle his songs and figure out lyrics as he goes along. One of his most popular songs Billy Jean was written using this method. Below is a draft of the track where you can hear MJ crooning phrases to the beat, which itself also sounds quite different from the final product.

‘Dirty Harry’ - Gorillaz

This Gorillaz track has a crazy drum bounce, addictive synths, and an overall hypnotic vibe. If most people would have heard an early draft of the before it came out chances are no one would have predicted that the final track would be as crazy good as it is. Personally this one of my favorite Gorillaz tracks.

‘Bleeding Love’ - Leona Lewis

This one is not so much a demo but a re-worked track with a faster tempo and different production. Jessie McCartney co-wrote this song with Ryan Tedder but the song ended up in the hands of Simon Cowell who passed it on to Leona Lewis. It was a smash hit to say the least. Jessie sang his rendition of it which is equally good in my opinion. In any case I guess he didn’t regret giving it to Leona since he has a writing credit on it so he still got paid lots of money.

‘Rude Boy’ - Rihanna (Ester Dean)

This is one of those tracks that when I first heard on the radio made me quite uncomfortable. I was not used to Rihanna singing songs with such vulgar material. But it’s a catchy tune though. When you reach superstar status like Rihanna’s you don’t have to bother writing songs, people do that for you. This is one such track. You can hear the original which was done by Ester Dean below.

‘Halo’ - Beyonce (Ryan Tedder)

Ryan Tedder is such a brilliant song writer. He wrote the massive Beyonce song Halo which you can hear below. As good as the original track was Beyonce took it to the stratosphere. The production is more polished, the vocals are tighter and the final version has a really huge, larger than life sound compared to Ryan’s draft.