Hit Albums Make You Famous. Scrapped Albums Make You Iconic.

On her hit YouTube show, Feeding Starving Celebrities, Quenlin Blackwell asked Charli xcx a question many of us have been wondering for years: “My gay writers threatened my life if I didn’t ask you if you would ever formally release your scrapped album XCX World?” Charli responded coyly: “I’ve been thinking of maybe… doing that.”

Since that episode dropped in late February, the internet has been alight with anticipation. XCX World — not its official name, but a working title bestowed by her fans — would have been Charli’s third studio album. Recorded roughly between 2015 and 2017 and co-produced by Stargate and the late Sophie, the album was shelved after a significant amount of the songs leaked, including what have become some of Charli’s most fan-revered tracks: “After the Afterparty,” “No Angel,” “Girls Night Out,” “Bounce,” and more.

The material occupies a conflicted place within fans’ hearts, to say nothing of Charli’s — she once teared up on stage while explaining how requests for the XCX World-era track “Taxi” upset her. Some fans are desperate for XCX World to be on streaming services, where the leaked songs they’re already listening to can at least be monetized and widely accessed. Others want it to stay firmly and safely within the fandom. “The lore around XCX World is lowkey part of her identity as an artist now, it should stay unreleased,” one of Charli’s fans, collectively known as “Angels,” wrote on X. “The ‘lore’ can’t be more important than the music,” argued another. Now, Charli’s apparent willingness to revisit one of her near-mythical works has brought the spotlight back on an age-old question: What is it about unreleased music that drives fans so crazy?

For some, there’s the simple thrill that comes with discovering your favorite artist’s catalog runs deeper than you thought. “I was so excited when I realised there was a whole vault of unreleased tracks to find, after making my way through Charli’s discography an unhealthy number of times,” a Charli superfan named Tiarna tells NYLON. “Some were scrapped demos for other artists, others distorted recordings from live shows, and some of the music probably wasn’t even sung by Charli.” When you follow an artist for this long, you develop a certain intimacy with their work — so much so that Tiarna says they’ve been able to recognize when scrapped tracks are incorporated into new releases, reworked, or finally officially released — like the once-cult-favorite demo turned TikTok hit “party 4 u.” “One’s relationship to leaked music can feel morally complicated,” they say, “but it also makes you feel closer to them because not many people have heard it.”

The way leaks grant admission into a more exclusive club of fandom is what motivated 26-year-old Nour to hunt down unreleased Omar Apollo songs that were sneakily uploaded to Spotify through the podcast section. “It had nothing to do with his music and everything to do with horniness,” they explain. “I fancied him so much that his unreleased music didn’t particularly have any artistic merit to me. [But] finding the music and knowing the lyrics made me feel like I was in the 1% of his fans. It’s very akin to being on the 1% of someone’s Spotify listeners.”

That’s not to say the lore and the drama don’t enhance the listening experience sometimes. Look at Jai Paul’s Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones): In 2013, the album — often considered one of the best pop albums of the 21st century — was leaked and illegally sold on Bandcamp, leading the Indian-British musician to retreat from public life. (Though it later got a proper release by XL Recordings in 2019.) “Even if it wasn’t leaked early, the album would have been a success because the music is so unique and memorable,” says music writer Solomon Pace-McCarrick. “But through its leak, it added an extra mystique. It makes you wonder, ‘What would this album have been, if it was fully completed?’” Pace-McCarrick says. That’s also the case with XCX World: Coming off the heels of Charli’s groundbreaking Vroom Vroom EP, but before hyperpop reached its current mainstream heights, it represented a fresh take on pop’s future — and today feels like a glimpse into an alternate timeline.

When an artist releases music alongside its visuals, we are presented with their fully realized vision. As fans, we can interpret that however we desire — but what you see is what you get. When a song or album is leaked and unfinished, however, we’re able to selfishly project our own fantasies onto it.

Rashid, 26, prefers the leaked version of Playboi Carti’s second studio album, Whole Lotta Red, which was officially released in 2020, for this exact reason. The official release took a more punk direction, excluding fan favorites “Molly,” “Cancun,” “Kid Cudi,” and “Red on Red,” and featuring only two tracks from the leaked trove. Rashid didn’t realize just how attached they were to the leaked version until the official album was released. “I think it had a lot to do with the version of Playboi Carti that I created in my head,” they confess. “I kept thinking of what could have been if that was the music that had been dropped, versus the reality of who he became musically.”

Like Playboi Carti fans, Swifties are similarly notorious for lore-building around Taylor Swift’s unreleased projects. In 2016, Swift’s rumored sixth studio album, Karma, was reportedly scrapped after Kim Kardashian leaked a phone call between Swift and Kanye West, in which the then-38-year-old rapper asked Swift’s permission to use her name in his song “Famous” from his 2016 album, The Life of Pablo. While she agreed to have her name mentioned, West never told Swift he would call her a “b*tch” on the song — and the media frenzy around their feud intensified. Around this time, according to fan pages, Swift went into hiding and her alleged album was killed. That is, until 2019, when previously unheard tracks were leaked and fans were reignited with hope that the rumored record, with themes of revenge, anger, and sexual desire, would be officially released any day.

Since 2016, Karma’s existence has been a hot topic within the Taylor Swift fandom. Swifties have penned literal essays and made video deep-dives on Karma — but internet commentator and Swiftie, Zachary Hourihane, also known as the Swiftologist, believes that the supposed album is “utter nonsense” and the leaked tracks were never part of a cohesive project.

Then why so much fan speculation about this non-news? Well, because Swift stirs it up. Swiftologist argues that fans don’t just randomly latch onto unreleased projects, but artists who actively incite this behavior. “With Easter-egging and deliberate red herrings, [Taylor] has encouraged a certain level of excavation into her basic motivations as an artist,” Hourihane argues. “Combined with the Taylor’s Version project, where she’s essentially revealed to us there’s a plethora of good, juicy, revealing unreleased material sitting around waiting for a chance to shine, makes Swifties feel like there is always an ace up her sleeve.” This mythology Swift has created around herself makes fans feel like they must always be prepared for whatever she may (or may not) release next.

For fans, leaked albums and songs are a sort of wonderland. Getting there often requires more effort, but that involvement is part of the appeal: In an era where music is more accessible than ever, it’s the albums we can’t fully access that seem to linger the longest.