Each week I share memorable and uplifting stories of remarkable people accomplishing extraordinary things with simple acts of self-mastery. By subscribing, you can also get a free digital copy of my book, Hard Work Is Not Enough.
You Have to Sound Bad to Sound Good
The band Wilco is probably one of the best bands you never heard of before. They are rarely if ever, played on the radio. They have spent zero weeks at number one or have ever made the top 40, yet they’ve sold over two million albums worldwide.
The band gained notoriety when their label, Reprise Records, dropped them for tuning in an album executives didn’t like. Wilco band leader, Jeff Tweedy, described what happened. “We sent the mixes as they were completed, and they hated every one, and claimed each was worse than the last.”
The label executives wanted the bold and experimental Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album to be more “radio friendly.” The band refused and lost their contract.
You Will Survive
With a setback of this magnitude, one might think that the year’s worth of writing, rehearsing, and recording an album the label deems unworthy of release, would be considered a failure by the band.
Yet, Tweedy described the moment as “liberating” because he realized he could “survive the absolute worst case scenario for an artist-being told directly, flat out, 'you suck.'”
He described the experience as an “incredible gift” because what started as terrible got better until it ended up being something he was satisfied with. And once he listened to that version, the one he liked, he said "it sounded like nothing I could have ever imagined without going through the process of it sounding wrong to me.”
Let Failure Be Your Teacher
Tweedy’s advice in his book How To Write One Song sounds like a person who prepared for this disappointing moment since he was a seven-year-old boy telling people he was a songwriter.
He writes, “You have to sound bad to sound good…being willing to sound bad is one of the most important pieces of advice that I can give you. Writing a song will teach you that it's okay to fail. And more than that, it's actually good to fail, and that you can come to appreciate the gifts of failure. Failure can be a kind of pain that you shouldn't let go to waste...It will help you deal with rejection and a lot of other areas of your life.”
The band acquired the master tapes from the label for pennies on the dollar and streamed the album on their website. Their unique sound resonated with fans, and Nonesuch Records eventually signed them. The album sold more than 590,000 copies and was recognized by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top 500 albums ever.
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Hi! I'm Jeff Shannon!
Each week I share memorable and uplifting stories of remarkable people accomplishing extraordinary things with simple acts of self-mastery. By subscribing, you can also get a free digital copy of my book, Hard Work Is Not Enough.
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