In an Extremely Loud World, Artists Would Benefit More If They Learned to Shut Up

I know that this is a clickbait-y title, and because of that I am going to get to the point right away. I, with my 25-ish years on this earth and many years working in the music industry, have come to the conclusion that most artists are overthinking absolutely everything. With that being said, I strongly believe that all artists, musicians, writers, actors, etc. Would benefit greatly from learning to shut up. Including myself.

I am not saying to stop creating your art or to not be passionately vocal about all of the things that drive you. What I am attempting to say is that, more often than not, our own little perceptions of how things ought to be and go get in the way of just making art.

I am going to shamelessly use myself as an example in order to drive my point home here. I have been a musician for the majority of my life, and I have been writing songs for over a decade, and only this year did I decide to finally release a project of all the songs that have been collecting dust on my MacBook. There was absolutely no reason at all that I couldn’t have released these songs one by one over the past four years or so, and (if marketed correctly) probably would have served me much better than deciding to release everything all at once.

So why didn’t I do it? Well, I let the way that I self-identify get in my way. I used my status as a music student as a shield. I thought to myself, “When I graduate, I will have learned so much more, and then I will release music that’s better than what I make now."

I also let my perceptions of the process get in my way. I would think to myself, “I don’t have access to all of the best equipment, my sound quality isn’t all the way there yet, or I don’t have all of the marketing skills necessary to make the releases worthwhile.”

Lastly, I would try to work on everything else besides the music itself. For example, “I have to grow an Instagram following first in order to have the fans necessary to release music,” or “I need to get the right headspace or financial situation in order to make music.”

Any of these things sound familiar? If so, here’s the truth:

Time waits for no one. There is never the right time to do anything. The best time is now, and the best way to learn is through experience. The only way is up, so you better start climbing.