Brian Wilson

What failed

Pet Sounds reached only number ten in America and he was mortified. He then spent a year on a follow-up, feared the public would not take it, and shelved it amid corporate pressure, legal stalling, internal conflict and deteriorating mental health. The scaled-down replacement became the band's worst-selling album to that point.

What happened next

Years of seclusion followed, then a solo relaunch in 1988. In February 2004, aged sixty-one, he performed the abandoned album in London, rebuilt from its pieces, and the studio recording released that September brought the greatest acclaim of his solo career. The following year he won the first Grammy of his life, for a piece of music he had given up on in 1967.

The point

The unfinished thing was not wasted, it was parked. Abandoning a project is not the same as destroying it, and finishing decades late still counts as finishing.