Another famous example is Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. He recorded the songs on an Teac 4-track cassette machine at home as demos, took them to the studio to r

Another famous example is Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. He recorded the songs on an Teac 4-track cassette machine at home as demos, took them to the studio to record with his band, but felt that they didn't work as well as the demos, and so the demos became the final album. (One of the songs from these sessions, "Born in the USA", ended up getting a studio version on a later album.)