Talk to any music journalist and you’ll hear a story of a song that entranced them on first listen, only to disappear into the ether forever. For The Believer — welcome back! — Ross Scarano pulls together a veritable Moth session of such stories, from a lost Johnny Cash number to a Kelis track that lives only on YouTube. A perfect reminder that for any cultural text we consume, an iceberg of what-could’ve-been lurks below.
In 2013, her favorite artist at the time, the Atlanta rapper and heart-on-his-sleeve balladeer Future, played an in-progress version of his sophomore album Honest for the magazine’s staff. One track, a gem of brooding horniness called “Good Morning,” imprinted on her in such a way that when a version of the song, with a similar melody and different lyrics, appeared months later as the Beyoncé single “Drunk in Love,” she felt as heartsick as she did proud. Both songs were produced by Detail and seemingly written around the same time, with the bigger star unsurprisingly winning rights to its release. (Future does not have a writing credit on Beyoncé’s song.) “‘Drunk in Love’ is an incredible song,” she says, “but it felt tragic that Future never released his version, which I thought proved his talent beautifully and which I had been waiting to hear again for months.” “Good Morning” was never commercially released, but there are rips and performances of it online. A decade later, Future remains a chart topper, but the real heads will always wonder about the path not taken.
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