Eight successful people grateful they got canned

[napoleon]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/02...tter/index.html

 

4. Wilco

 

In 2000 and 2001, the Chicago rock band Wilco recorded an artsy album that departed from the band's previous folk-inflected work. The record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, didn't sound quite like what the band's label, Reprise Records, was hoping for. Although the album isn't aggressively grating, it wasn't full of the radio-friendly rock that the cash-strapped imprint needed to churn out a few hit singles. Reprise refused to release the album and dropped Wilco from its roster. As part of their severance from the label, the band got to take the master tapes of the record with them.

 

Without a label to release the album, Wilco decided to simply stream it on their Web site for free. As critical buzz for the record built, Nonesuch Records (like Reprise, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers) bought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and gave it a commercial release in 2002. The record was a critical smash; it topped many critics' best-albums lists for the year. It was also a commercial success, selling close to 600,000 copies.