Record labels forgot these songs existed. One man rescued them

It was a tough project. DeConstruction had been bought by BMG, then acquired by Sony, and eventually closed down. No-one was sure who owned Nayler’s master tapes.

“It was a nightmare,” she says. “No-one wanted to talk to Rob.”

Out of options, they sent a blanket email to 75 people at Sony. Within two minutes, the archive team replied and agreed to track down the music.

Nayler’s album, She, was finally released in January 2023. Next month, she goes on tour with dance producer Robert Gillies, who has remixed Naked & Sacred for his next single.

“After all these years and all that hard work, I just feel really, really happy,” she says.

It’s a similar story for Alexis Strum, who was signed and dropped by two major record labels in the early 2000s.

She was left with two fully-completed albums, recorded at a cost of £500,000, that were never released.

“Emotionally, it was huge,” she says. “It’s like having a painting that no-one’s ever seen, or a book that no-one’s ever been allowed to read.”

Some of her unreleased songs were recorded by Kylie Minogue and Rachel Stevens, but a small group of dedicated fans clamoured for the originals.

“Rob told me people had been exchanging my demo CDs on eBay,” she says. “I didn’t even know anyone knew about me!”

With his help, Warner and Universal not only handed over Strum’s masters, but agreed to write off her debts.

Her most popular song Cocoon recently hit 500,000 streams (“half a million more than Universal thought it was going to have”) and, when we speak, she’s back in the studio.

“I’m a mum and I’ve been working in IT, so it’s really weird to be like, ‘I’m going to be a pop star’ again.

“It feels so ridiculous that it’s actually plausible.”