Please note: MusicTAP does not advocate for the interaction or acquisition of unsanctioned material. However, if you are a Styx fan and the title drew you to this article, odds are likely you have already heard this.
Son Of Edge
In the waning weeks of December 2025, word broke of a leak of tracks by Styx either written and recorded during, or shortly after, the revival album Edge of the Century (1991). This unofficial leak was dubbed “Son Of Edge.” The response to the news wasn’t so much of the Internet ablaze as it was a light retort of “How nice,” with a minor adjustment of the monocle.
The nine cuts emerged whack-a-mole style on YouTube, with one posting going offline as another went live. Nothing truly dies in the digital world.
But how were the songs actually? Were these victims of circumstances or rightly moved off the slate? Let’s take a look, but in order to understand the Son, we should talk of what came before.
Edge Of The Century (1990)
After a long dormant period, Styx returned at the dawn of the last decade of the 20th Century. It did so famously without co-guitarist, co-lead singer Tommy Shaw, with whom bandleader Dennis DeYoung sparred regularly. Shaw found a career spark with Jack Blades (Night Ranger) and Ted Nugent in the supergroup Damn Yankees.
To fill Shaw’s spot, Glen Burtnik, an A&M Records labelmate came in and was a solid replacement. Burtnik brought youth and attitude, as well as a sophisticated sense of rock and pop, so on paper he gave Styx something the band needed to fan away the lingering fumes many intuited from the Kilroy Was Here (1983) album.
The difficult reality was that the band had a hard fan to spin, literally and figuratively. Aside from the hits “Mr. Roboto” and “Don’t Let It End,” Kilroy turned many Styx fans away with its flamboyant, theatrical, and often offputting tracklist. This new album and configuration had one dominant goal: to offend no one.
That put Burtnik at a disadvantage, and hamstrung DeYoung in a sense as well. Such a protective and cautious approach caused Edge Of The Century to park itself firmly in the middle of the road, occasionally rockin’ but too self-conscious to commit fully. The signifiers of the Styx sound show up around corners here and there, but never go totally pomp-tastic. (To hear what Styx/Burtnik was capable of when loosed from the constraints, check out the better-than-you-thought Cyclorama album.)
It’s not a “bad” album. It managed two notable accomplishments. The track “Love At First Sight” rode that light-rock goal onto grocery store Muzak playlists for many years to come, keeping the Styx brand within earshot.
More significantly, in the midst of the Desert Storm conflict, radio DJs did in-house remixes of “Show Me The Way,” adding dialogue from in-country family members of soldiers, causing the song to be a hit through means unrelated to the track’s actual intent. So it is not a “failed” album either. It is solidly a piece from its time, but also one that had made so many mainstream compromises that it barely resembled what came before.
And worse for Styx, it was only a year short of the alternative rock blunderbus shot that would cripple legacy bands for a long time. This is meaningful because Styx would have shared the A&M label with Soundgarden, its sister supergroup Temple Of The Dog, and Gin Blossoms had the tracks comprising “Son Of Edge” been retained.
Back To Edge
Are these songs lost classics or clear castaways? Neither nor.
The nine songs comprising this leak are “All For Love,” “Don’t Give Up On Me,” “Beneath The Moon,” “Nothing In Common,” “Love On My Mind,””Devil In Me,” “It Takes Love To Make Love,” “Watching The World Go By,” and “Someday We’ll Fly.”
What’s notable is that, if these were potential cuts for Edge Of The Century, they are almost equally split between DeYoung and Burtnik contributions (with no James J.Y. Young leads in this batch). It’s significant because it suggests either DeYoung is not as dictatorial here as is commonly believed, or that there was a heavy thumb on the scale from A&M Records as to what landed on the album and what did not. Biases are nasty little creatures so the truth, much like these compositions, likely falls somewhere in the middle.
All For Love
Being an unreleased series of tracks, there is no specific opening song, but “All For Love” sounds like the most obvious choice. It has the most Styx-like arrangement and mirrors the rah-rah, affirmative tone so many rock openers of the era exhibited. Think Def Leppard’s “Let’s Get Rocked” from Adrenalize or “All You Got” from RTZ (Brad Delp and Barry Goudreau from Boston). Enjoyable but expected, and following a tone that would be purposefully obliterated by the alt-explosion to come.
Don’t Give Up On Me
A Glen Burtnik-fronted track, this is definitely Def Leppard/Bad English-coded, but if you are inclined to AOR-melodic rock, this chunky hard rock ballad serves it up well. This, among a couple other offerings, leads me to believe this was not a cast-off from the Century prospects because it has “single” written all over it.
Beneath The Moon
A rather lovely Dennis DeYoung soft rock ballad, it leans too far into his solo output, and thus feels apart from an intention to reignite whatever Styx was supposed to be to its fandom. Think “Babe” without the band’s standard bells and whistles and more “Desert Moon,” and you are there.
Nothing In Common
DeYoung again, but not as attractive as “Beneath The Moon,” instead giving that “ready for your soundtrack” vibe like Bryan Adams tunes from the times. It’s not an awful song, just seemingly too purpose-built for comfort. (Side note: Adams was also an A&M labelmate, so pushing Styx into “Everything I Do, I Do For You” or “All For One, All For Love” territory would not be an unfounded label strategy.)
Love On My Mind
A soul-tinged track, “Love On My Mind” gives Burtnik room to swagger, but not enough in my opinion. I imagine in its inception, it might have swang the hips harder, nodding to The Black Crowes with conviction. (Be careful what you wish for. Putting a pin in this…) As it stands, it sounds good but noticeably safe.
Devil In Me
This is another Burtnik-sung cut and provides more of the attitude I was missing from “Love On My Mind,” and still I don’t know how to feel about it. Styx doesn’t do sexy that well. Romance? Sure. Overly sincere, puppy-dog romance though, not the kind of “we’re gonna tear each other’s clothes off tonight” vein this track insinuates. Above all the Burtnik cuts here, this would have made a fascinating solo effort. As it stands, it has the scent of learning that your overly pious, church-going relative had hot, sweaty sex once.
It Takes Love To Make Love
From the title, one braces themselves for another ill-fitting boudoir attempt from the band, but instead is an earnest DeYoung soft-rocker. It’s a less shouty cousin to any number of Michael Bolton hits of the time, and it goes down pleasantly. The pattern is clear, with Burtnik’s songs turning up the heat and DeYoung’s asking, “But what do you feel in your heart?” At this stage, a snarling, snarky J.Y. cut would have been welcomed, or even an injection of weirdness to shift the too-regimented balance.
Watching The World Go By
I believe this is a Burtnik composition, and here is presented with just his voice, an acoustic guitar, and light synth filling out the background, and it works. It has the same effect as many Tommy Shaw cuts in previous years did, stepping back to take a breather, hopefully prepping the listener for a bombastic big finish.
Here’s the tragedy. Glen Burtnik is a strong singer and songwriter. He had, and can still, carry himself proudly in these areas of his career. That made him a valuable asset to the Styx organization. He wasn’t some yutz off the street meant to fill out the sound. And given his two official releases with the band, I cannot say he was underutilized. Still, he had a lot more to offer than we got in this era.
None of that statement makes logical sense. I suppose some scenarios simply don’t work out.
Someday We’ll Fly
This was headed for the shopping malls and grocery stores. Tender yet toothless, it sounds professional and nice…too nice. It picks a lane and stays there stubbornly. It is competent but marks itself as the most likely to be a b-side or disregarded bonus track.
And Yet…
…I don’t think any of these songs deserve to slide ignominiously into lost media. Most of these are good, a couple are quite good, even if all of them firmly land in the times in which they were created. Nothing here was going to reshape the band’s legacy, but I don’t think it would have tarnished it severely either.
I do think these will remain as curios in the Internet Of Things, because the only reasonable place for them would be as an addendum to a deluxe version of Edge Of The Century, and there presently is no groundswell for such a thing. Hell, there are no proper deluxe versions for any of the Styx albums, including those classic titles one might deem worthy of that treatment.
The next official Styx album would be Brave New World (1999), with Burtnik out and Shaw back. After that, Cyclorama (2003) with DeYoung out, Shaw staying, and Burtnik back for one last go round.
Whatever Son Of Edge might have been or what might be, you cannot say it is unprofessional. And if the fortunes of pop culture between the end of the ’80s and the dawn of the ’90s had been different, I could envision a viable space for this to have existed legitimately. I hear songs from then that “made it” – that are more egregious – every day, percolating from many corners.
In my mellowing post-middle age, I have a renewed appreciation for Styx and, sure, most of that is the opiate of nostalgia, but in the end I found more to like about Son Of Edge than not. I can say that knowing I no longer yearn to be seen as hip or cool, admitting admiration for these songs won’t bring on that “oh, ick” it once might have.
Let’s call it praise, not resounding, not faintly damning.