13 Famously Leaked Albums

WILCO
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001)

In 2001, the Chicago band was embroiled in some seriously epic drama with Reprise Records, whose execs didn't hear a hit on their newly recorded album. Yet when Wilco and the label parted ways and the record leaked to file-sharing services that fall, it was hailed as the decade's first rock masterpiece. In the ultimate screw-you to the tone-deaf suits at their old label, Wilco ended up streaming the whole thing for free on their own website — and then putting it out in 2002 on Nonesuch, which, like Reprise, was owned by Warner Bros. Music-biz ironies don't come much sweeter. —Simon Vozick-Levinson