Five demos better than the record versions
Demos never turn up in the movies. If biopics are to be believed, songwriting goes as follows. First, you come up with an important saying, preferably in a dramatically appropriate moment, like an argument with a significant other. Second, you meaningfully turn down another bump of cocaine resting gently on a groupie’s cleavage to sit at a piano.
Then, montage time, and finally, you’re playing Wembley Stadium. Freeze frame. Credits bit from American Graffiti where they say what happened next. ‘Best Actor’ Oscar in the bag. The truth is that making music is long, arduous process. One that can often feel like it never ends. You go through the same song over and over again, making early versions of the song which in the industry, are called demos.
The problem is that there’s never a big flashing sign that says “FINISHED!” when the song hits its most perfect form. You’ve just got to go on faith and confidence in your ability that you’ve got the track where it needs to be. So, sometimes, the finished version of a song is not quite as good as the one five versions ago, before your stoned producer suggested you replace that kickass piano hook with an improvised sousaphone solo.
To be clear, none of the studio versions of these numbers are bad. Nothing is outright ruined in translation because the core song is so strong. These are just a few numbers where, for whatever reason, the bands and artists in question overegged the pudding slightly and turned ten out of ten demos into nine out of ten songs.
Five demos better than the record versions:
Lana Del Rey – ‘National Anthem’
This list could have been entirely made up of today’s pop divas having their demos leaked, their fanbase swarming them, then bemoaning the more professional versions that eventually make the album. This spot on the list was a tossup between Lana’s satirical look at whether wealth corrupted or defined the American dream or Grimes’ original version of Realiti that she uploaded on YouTube before re-recording it for 2015’s Art Angels. I went with the one that is undeniably better than the released version.
This take of ‘National Anthem’ is a rawer, more powerful beast than the feigned, dead-eyed hip-pop of the version on 2012’s Born To Die. Stripping out the synth-string backing for a menacing guitar riff makes the track prowl where the released version plods. Lana’s mannered singing on the released version does chime with her vision of the so-called “American dream”, turning people into lifeless conformists chasing the glamourous dollar. However, her rawer, more passionate vocal here conveys a rich vein of anger toward that sentiment, which powers the song much more than what we heard on the record.
Evanescence – ‘Bring Me To Life’
You really can’t blame Evanescence for this. They have said on numerous occasions that it wasn’t their intention to let a rap verse anywhere near the song they’d earmarked as their breakout hit. However, when you’re an up-and-coming band, sometimes you’ve got to make a deal with the devil to make it big, and Evanescence had the misfortune of coming up around the cultural No Man’s Land that was nu-metal.
The initial word from the label was that eight of their debut album’s 11 tracks had to have rapping on them and after a truly heroic amount of back and forth, the label finally put their foot down. Their debut single had to have a rap verse delivered by a man, or the album wouldn’t come out. The single they released is still one of the biggest rock hits of the century, but one listen to the demo rapless demo means they did that despite the label’s best attempts to kneecap it. Say what you will about Evanescence, this song crushes and would have been just as big a hit without it, mark my words.
Bruce Springsteen – ‘Born In The USA’
It’s a cliché at this point to say this song is misunderstood. That it’s “secretly” a screed against the Vietnam War. That its stadium-slaying synth hook and chorus so unreconstructedly American it could soundtrack a Hulk Hogan entrance singlehandedly made Ronnie Reagan endorse the music of Springsteen, a proud draft dodger in his youth. What’s not focused on is the fact that the released version probably sounded dated by 1988, and today, it sounds more like a relic than a song.
Springsteen’s intense acoustic demo, one actually included in the same tape that later became Nebraska, shows not only the song’s dark, bilious heart right off the bat but also its propulsive momentum. Put this on Darkness On The Edge of Town, and it would be ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’ nearly a decade earlier. Arguably, the song’s zenith came when Bruce took that momentum away for the Springsteen On Broadway version, turning the song into an absolutely harrowing talking blues. No surface. All impact.
Prince – ‘I Feel For You’
Let me be 100% clear about this: I am not talking about the pop masterclass that is Chaka Khan’s version of ‘I Feel For You’. That is absolutely the best version of this song and one of the best pop hits of the 1980s. I’m talking about the demo version of the song that found its way onto Prince’s self-titled second album in 1979 and surfaced posthumously as part of that record’s 40th-anniversary celebrations.
The album version is decent, though that chintzy synth line running through the centre of it couldn’t have aged worse than if the song was about the warm, cuddly nature of OJ Simpson. This demo stripped back to just ‘His Royal Badness’ and an acoustic guitar, shows off the sheer songwriting chops behind the grooves. The warm 7ths and sharp fretboard flourishes were arguably more funky and soulful than any version of the song until Chaka and Stevie got a hold of it a few years later.
The Beatles – ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’
Considering that EMI employees were literally forbidden from destroying tape used to record anything a Beatle so much as sneezed on, there are at least a few demo versions of basically every song the Fabs recorded. Number six on this list would have probably been John Lennon’s solo demo of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, but that’s not quite the marvel of the released version. This version of George Harrison’s masterpiece, and it truly hurts to admit it, eats the released versions in lunch.
True to his reputation as the quiet Beatle, ‘…Gently Weeps’ is a song that gets more spellbinding the more you strip it back. The studio version is terrific but a little overstuffed in a way that takes away from the heartbreaking beauty of the core song. The melody also comes alive when taken up a few steps, the way it is on this devastating demo version. It’s so good that I’d put the version on Love, the Beatles remix album by George and Giles Martin that spruces up this demo and adds an absolutely haunting string section to the mix, as the definitive version of one of the Fabs’ best moments.
