Some of the biggest songs in pop history almost went to someone else entirely. A songwriter has an artist in mind, pitches the track, gets turned down, and then watches it land in completely different hands and become a career-defining smash. It happens more often than most casual listeners realize.
These six songs prove that a great hook does not always find its intended home on the first try. Sometimes the rejection ends up being the best thing that could have happened to the song, and to the artist who eventually said yes.
1. “Nothing Compares 2 U” – written for The Family, made famous by Sinead O’Connor
Prince wrote this song in 1984 and gave it away almost immediately. It was written for his project The Family and released on their 1985 debut album. The song was not released as a single and was met with little to no acclaim. Prince apparently felt the material did not suit his own image at the time, so he handed it off without much fanfare.
Six years later, Sinead O’Connor found the track while working on her second album and turned it into something entirely her own. Her sparse, haunting rendition topped the charts in 17 countries, including the United States, making her a reluctant superstar overnight. The forgotten Family album cut became one of the most recognized ballads of the era, largely because O’Connor’s stripped-down delivery exposed an emotional rawness the original version never quite reached.
2. “…Baby One More Time” – offered to TLC, launched Britney Spears
Long before it became Britney Spears’ debut single, Max Martin pitched this song to an established girl group. The song was initially rejected by TLC after the group interpreted the lyrics to be about domestic violence. Group member T-Boz later explained her hesitation plainly, wondering “Do I think it’s a hit? Do I think it’s TLC?” The group simply did not see themselves in the “hit me baby one more time” hook.
The song did not stop there either. Martin would go on to offer the song up to then budding pop songstress Robyn, before also declining an offer from Simon Cowell to have UK boy band 5ive record the song. Instead it went to a sixteen year old former Mouseketeer, and the rest became pop history, launching one of the defining careers of the late nineties teen pop boom.
3. “Toxic” – written with Janet Jackson in mind, turned down by Kylie Minogue
Cathy Dennis wrote this song during a writing trip to Sweden with a very specific artist in her head. “That was written in Sweden with Bloodshy & Avant and Henrik Jonback. I went over there to write with Janet Jackson in mind,” Dennis said. The track never quite came together for Jackson during that session, so it moved on to a different pop star entirely.
The song was written with American singer Janet Jackson in mind, but was initially offered to Australian singer Kylie Minogue, who turned it down. Minogue later reflected on the decision with good humor, noting “I wasn’t at all angry when it worked for her. It’s like the fish that got away. You just have to accept it.” Britney Spears eventually recorded it for In the Zone, and it became one of her most enduring signature tracks.
4. “Since U Been Gone” – rejected twice before reaching Kelly Clarkson
This one took an unusually long detour before finding its home. Max Martin originally wrote “Since U Been Gone” with Pink in mind, but she turned it down. It was then given to Hilary Duff, but she rejected the song because she could not reach its higher notes. Two passes in a row is rare for a song this successful, which makes the eventual outcome even more striking.
The song was finally given to Clarkson after Clive Davis convinced the writers to give it to her. Clarkson herself was not immediately sold on the demo, later recalling that “it didn’t have any lyrics and the melody really wasn’t finalized… the track was done on a computer, there was no band on it.” She reworked it with heavier guitars and drums, and it went on to become one of the defining breakup anthems of the 2000s.
5. “Torn” – a Danish ballad and an alt-rock single before Natalie Imbruglia’s version
Few covers have surprised casual fans as much as this one, largely because the song traveled through three different versions before Imbruglia ever touched it. In 1991, songwriters Anne Preven and Scott Cutler wrote this song with Phil Thornalley, and it was first recorded by Danish singer Lis Sørensen as “Braendt,” appearing on Sørensen’s 1993 album. Preven and Cutler then formed their own band to record an English language version.
Preven and Cutler formed a band called Ednaswap, and released the first English version of “Torn” on their 1995 debut album. That version drew little attention on its own. It was only when producer Phil Thornalley later worked on Natalie Imbruglia’s debut album that the song found its way to her, and her 1997 recording turned a fairly obscure alt-rock track into an international hit.
6. “Alone” – written for a short-lived act before becoming a Heart classic
Songwriters Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg penned this power ballad in the early eighties, and it first appeared on record through a little-known group called i-Ten in 1983. The song went largely unnoticed at the time, buried on an album that never found much of an audience outside a small circle of listeners.
Heart picked it up years later for their 1987 self-titled comeback album, with Ann Wilson’s vocal delivering the kind of dramatic build the song had always seemed built for. It became one of the band’s signature hits and a staple of eighties power ballad playlists, proof that a song’s first outing does not always hint at what it is capable of.
What connects all six of these songs is not luck so much as timing and fit. A songwriter can have a clear picture of who a track belongs to, and still be wrong. Rejection, in these cases, was not the end of the story but the detour that led somewhere much bigger. Each of these tracks eventually found a voice that matched its mood, even if that voice was never the one the writers first imagined.
