Sometimes artists make albums because the muse strikes them.
On other occasions, grubby commerce is involved. The results can be awful – or surprisingly good.
The so-called 'contractual obligation album' exists as a unique byproduct of the music industry’s rigid legal machinery. When creative relationships sour or bands dissolve, artists often find themselves legally tethered to a label for one final release.
These records frequently serve as a divorce settlement between musician and executive, resulting in collections of studio offcuts, live recordings, or even intentionally uncommercial spite-projects. While some acts use the opportunity to clear out their archives, others treat it as a final act of rebellion, proving that the intersection of art and commerce is often a volatile, unpredictable battlefield.
Here are 13 albums bands made to release themselves from onerous record contracts. And you know what, a few of them are not half bad...
1. Todd Rundgren The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect (1982)
This amusingly titled 1982 album was Rundgren’s last release with the Bearsville label and is perhaps surprisingly excellent for a contractual obligation release. While no one would claim that it stands among the top rank of Rundgren albums, it marked a return to the pop/rock sound with which he made his name and spawned the hit single 'Bang the Drum All Day'.
Played and produced entirely by Rundgren himself, the album also includes an excellent cover of the Small Faces’ Tin Soldier and ranks as a minor gem in Todd's extensive catalogue.
2. Buffalo Springfield Last Time Around (1968)
Released in 1968, the third and final Buffalo Springfield album was an odds-and-sods collection compiled by Jim Messina and Richie Furay to fulfil a contractual obligation after the group had split up. Furay, Messina and Rusty Young had already formed under-appreciated country rockers Poco, Neil Young had embarked on his solo career, and Stephen Stills has joined forces with David Crosby and Graham Nash.
So the band was a great incubator of talent, despite the warring egos. Perhaps tellingly, the cover montage shows Young looking in the opposite direction to his bandmates. The album itself was generally warmly received and was a minor commercial hit. It included some of the best songs its participants had recorded up to that time, including Young’s 'I Am a Child' and Furay’s 'Kind Woman'.
3. John Lennon: Rock N’ Roll (1975)
The mid-1970s were a troubled period in the life of former Beatle John Lennon.
His last solo album prior to becoming a ‘househusband’ was a contractual obligation dating back to 1969. Lennon’s Beatles song 'Come Together' had opened with the line “Here come old flat-top”, which was a direct lift from Chuck Berry’s 'You Can’t Catch Me'. This led to a lawsuit from the song’s publisher, Morris Levy, as a result of which Lennon agreed to cover at least three songs published by Levy.
The former moptop initially reneged on this agreement, whereupon Levy threatened to re-file his lawsuit. Eager to avid a potentially bruising encounter with m’learned friends, Lennon embarked on his rock’n’roll covers project. The timing was certainly right, as old timey rock’n’roll was enjoying one of its periodic revivals and Happy Days was a TV hit.
But initial recordings with Phil Spector as producer took place during Lennon’s infamous ‘lost weekend’, when he temporarily separated from Yoko Ono, and were reportedly messy, drunken affairs. Subsequent sessions produced by Lennon himself proved more successful. The critical response was mixed, but the album proved a success, peaking at number six in the UK and USA, and spawned a hit single in Lennon’s cover of 'Stand by Me'.
4. Led Zeppelin: Coda (1982)
Released in 1982, a couple of years after the band disbanded following the death of drummer John Bonham, Led Zep’s last album fulfilled a contractual obligation to Atlantic Records and helped pay off a pesky tax bill. Coda was a compilation of offcuts from across the band’s career and was very much a bits and pieces collection.
But we all went out and bought it anyway, as we did anything connected to Zeppelin. It might be the weakest release of their career, almost half of which came from the In Through the Out Door sessions, but Zeppelin’s standards were pretty high and its was great to hear the likes of 'Poor Tom' from the Led Zepelin III sessions as well as live recordings of 'We’re Gonna Groove' and 'I Can’t Quit You Baby' from 1970.
5. Jimi Hendrix: Band of Gypsys (1970)
Hendrix’s first album without Experience bandmates Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, and his last before his death six months after its release, was recorded to fulfil a deal with his former manager. Recorded live at the Fillmore East in January 1970, Band of Gypsys introduced Hendrix’s new outfit, featuring Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, and is widely credited with kicking off the whole funk-rock genre. The album peaked with the magnificent epic 'Machine Gun', but was not universally praised by critics on release.
6. Monty Python: Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album (1980)
The Python team’s 1980 release is exactly that, compiling newly written material and old sketches to fulfil a contractual obligation to Charisma Records. It’s a scrappy affair, whose good moments include Eric Idle’s censor-baiting song 'I Bet You They Won't Play This Song on the Radio' and his Gracie Fields parody, 'Sit On My Face', which provoked a certain amount of controversy on release.
Less successful musical moments included 'I Like Chinese', which probably wouldn’t be allowed today despite its overt anti-racist intent. Despite this being a contractual obligation album, Michael Palin appeared on Top of the Pops to promote its release. Possibly as a result, it became the highest selling Monty Python record, reaching number 13 on the UK album chart.
7. Love: Four Sail (1969)
By 1969, Arthur Lee was the sole remaining member of the Love line-up that had recorded the brilliant Forever Changes a couple of years earlier. But the band still owed an album to Elektra Records to fulfil their contract. So Lee swiftly assembled a new line-up and label boss Jac Holzman then selected ten of the songs they recorded in an LA warehouse for release.
Unpromising, huh? Lee certainly thought so, hence the nudge-winky album title. But although many contemporary reviews were dismissive, the album has gained in stature over the years. The murky sound mix doesn’t distract from the quality of the songs and Four Sail is certainly a lot better than subsequent albums released under the Love name.
In 2014, it was ranked at number one in the NME’s list of 101 Albums to Hear Before You Die, being acclaimed as “a beautiful, majestic record”.
8. Heart: Magazine (1977)
American rock band Heart, fronted by the Wilson sisters, certainly had a hard time with record labels.
Initially, they were signed to the Canadian independent label Mushroom Records, who released the band’s debut album, 1975's Dreamboat Annie. However, a major falling out occurred when Mushroom published a sleazy advert for the album which implied that the sisters were, in fact, lesbian lovers. (This wasn’t the last time the siblings had to endure such male chauvinist piggery, which inspired their best song, 'Barracuda'.)
Heart subsequently signed with Portrait Records, but Mushroom believed they were still owed an album, so compiled one of their own, comprising five unreleased studio tracks and a couple of live recordings. Titled Magazine, this was released in the spring of 1977, just as Heart were recording their Portrait debut, Little Queen.
A legal battle ensued, as a result of which the album was withdrawn and eventually re-released in 1978 in revised and remixed form. It’s still clearly a work-in-progress that is mainly of interest to completists.
9. Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Life (1987)
Neil Young once lamented that he found himself in the middle of the road. “Travelling there soon became a bore,” he wrote in the liner notes to 1977 compilation Decade, “so I headed for the ditch.”
In fact, Young’s ‘Ditch Trilogy’, recorded after the commercial success of Harvest and culminating in the raw, confessional Tonight’s the Night, was recorded a full decade before his commercial nadir. In the early eighties, Young signed with Geffen Records and released a string of albums that can best be described as atypical: the vocoder and synth-laden Trans, the terrible rockabilly set Everybody’s Rockin’, and the mediocre country album Old Ways.
By the time he returned to a more palatable rock sound with Landing On Water, Young had been sued by Geffen for making albums that were “unrepresentative” of himself, which provoked much media mirth. To fulfil his contract, he released Life in 1987, which was recorded during the previous year’s tour.
Despite a very 'of its time' shiny ‘80s digital production, this was a marked improvement. But by then, his audience had seemingly melted away and Life became Young’s lowest selling album. After leaving Geffen, he returned to Reprise Records where he released the acclaimed This Note’s For You (1988) and 1989's career resurgence, Freedom.
10. Bonzo Dog Band: Let’s Make Up and be Friendly (1971)
What is it with comedy acts and contractual obligation albums? The Bonzos split in 1970, following the commercial disappointment of their marvellous Keynsham album, but were obliged to reunite in 1971 to fulfil a contractual obligation to record one more album for United Artists Records.
Highlights included the first recorded appearance of Viv Stanshall’s 'Rawlinson End' (the longest track on the album) and his (bowel) moving ode to constipation, 'The Strain'. Future Monty Python collaborator and the Bonzos’ other principal songwriter Neil Innes contributed a “tasteless guitar solo” and vocals on Fresh Wound.
11. Emerson, Lake and Palmer: Love Beach (1978)
Like picking at a suppurating sore, we keep returning to this one. ELP’s final album (until they inevitably reformed) was not only uniformly dreadful but also came about because of the trio’s need to fulfil a contractual obligation.
After 1977-78's bruising Works tour, the prog rockers' preferred option was to have a nice long rest. But Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun was eager to remind them that they still owed the label one more album – and his preferred option was that this should be a more ‘commercial’ release. Which is why side one of 1978's Love Beach is taken up largely with poppy Greg Lake/Pete Sinfield compositions, Keith Emerson’s mediocre epic 'Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman' being relegated to side two.
The awful cover, which has ELP dressed up like the Bee Gees, positively screamed: “Do not buy this album!” Alas, enough people did for it to be certified gold in the UK. How many of them still play it is another matter. My copy was relegated to the loft of shame long ago.
- Love Beach does not, strangely enough, make it onto our list of 1978's best albums
12. Van Morrison: The 'Contractual Obligation' Sessions (1967)
This is the ultimate example of artistic petty warfare. To escape BANG Records, who'd released the album Blowin' Your Mind! without his consent, Morrison recorded thirty-one "songs" in one session, featuring nonsense lyrics about ringworms and "big Roy." Musically, they are intentionally unlistenable—a series of repetitive acoustic strums and improvised grunts. There is no hidden brilliance here; it is a purely functional act of spite designed to be so commercially worthless that the label would have no choice but to release him.
13. Prince: Chaos and Disorder (1996)
Released during his high-profile battle with Warner Bros. (when he famously performed with 'Slave' written on his face), Prince explicitly stated this was for "contractual reasons only." The lack of his usual meticulous production is evident; it feels like a collection of rough-edged rock jams. However, even a distracted Prince is pretty formidable. While it lacks the visionary pop of his peak, the guitar work is fierce, making it a surprisingly gritty, enjoyable rock record for completionists.
And then there's the case of...
Marvin Gaye: Here, My Dear (1978)
While technically a "divorce settlement" album rather than a standard label exit, Gaye’s double-LP was fuelled by a legal mandate to pay his ex-wife. Initially dismissed as a spiteful, indulgent mess, it has been reclaimed as a masterpiece of raw, emotional soul. You can certainly feel the bitterness, but Gaye’s genius was such that his 'mailing it in' resulted in a deeply personal, complex groove that far outshines most artists' best efforts.
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