How Tattoo You vs. Nebraska turned leftover songs into whole albums

Both Tattoo You and Nebraska are famous for being stitched together from unused scraps, but they went at it from opposite directions. The Stones raided the vaults and grabbed songs recorded as far back as 1972, then gave them a polish with some 1981 overdubs – “Start Me Up” had been a reggae jam called “Never Stop” for years before Mick Jagger finally rewrote the lyrics. Springsteen recorded Nebraska on a four-track cassette at home, meant as demos for the E Street Band, but decided the raw, haunted versions were the album. No overdubs, no studio trickery.

As cohesive thematic wholes, Nebraska wins by a landslide – Springsteen chose songs that all shared a dusty, desperate loneliness, bookended by the crime spree of the title track and the executed killer’s last words in “Reason to Believe”. Tattoo You is more a greatest-hits-of-outtakes: side one is rockers, side two is ballads, and while that split works, the album never pretends to be a unified statement. Both proved leftover material can hold up, but only one of them aimed for a single mood and nailed it.