If Metallica released a country album I (along with lots of others) would be curious enough to check it out.
Metallica fans would run the other way.
Do you want new fans? What do you want the new fans to be fans of?
What about the old (loyal) fans? Are they worth losing in order to gain new ones?
If you lose the old fan but don’t gain the new one, are you still glad you took the risk?
You’ve written and recorded the songs.
Now you’re practicing the songs for the show.
So when do you go from practicing the songs to working on the show?
One possible answer is…once you’ve practiced the songs until they’re ‘perfect’, have one more rehearsal.
Without any music to get better at, creative people need the next creative outlet which is to try something new. A different part, a dance move, a new section, a different delivery, a different groove.
And now you’re working on the show.
Important to note…Most artists and bands want to rehearse the song properly before getting creative with it for the show, which is when the preceding idea applies. But you don’t have to do it that way. You can take of the training wheels from the start. There’s no rule that says you have to know how to play the recorded version before you can come up with the live version. The live version is the only one you’re ever going to play. So it might be helpful to just start there.
Just because you make a plan to be wildly successful doesn’t mean you will be. But everyone who has become wildly successful has made a plan to do so…so if that’s what you want, you might as well.
Every successful artist has a manager. Doesn’t mean you’ll become successful by having a manager…but it’s an even longer shot if you don’t.
If an artist writes a song and it becomes a hit and then you ask them, ‘what other songs have you written’…it’s unlikely they will replay with, ‘none’. So it’s probably to good idea to follow suit and write lots of songs too, especially if you want a hit.
There’s no hundred step program to achieve what you want…but there’s probably a hundred commonalities of the people who have achieved what you want.
New artists are starving for attention.
‘If people would just pay attention we could get this thing off the ground.’
And often the proposed solutions revolve around making it more comfortable for people to walk in the door, click on the link, check out the video.
‘How can we make people comfortable?’
But what if you went the other way instead?
What if you created sharper edges, took a firmer stand and went to the extremes…creating discomfort for many, thereby making it the perfect a select group.
I listened to a podcast a while back with Shep Gordon who managed Alice Cooper. Their strategy was simple…They figured out all they had to focus on was getting parents to hate Alice Cooper and then the teenagers would come running.
When discontentment in regards to a certain situation goes away, it doesn’t mean that contentment will come to take its place.
Often when the discontentment of one situation is eased, discontentment in another area simply fills it back in.
When we are discontent we look for (quick) solutions to ease it. And it’s quite interesting that adopting an attitude and posture of contentment usually isn’t one of the things we try.
Instead we’re happy to move from discontentment to discontentment, wondering if we’ll ever get to the end of the line. We won’t.
We have to switch lines.