Happy singer with happy songs: Cyndi Lauper, Stevie Wonder, Keith Urban
Happy singer with sad songs: Adele, John Legend, (early) Coldplay
Sad singer with happy songs: Fountains of Wayne, Jellyfish, lots of power pop
Sad singer with sad songs: Kacey Musgraves, Pete Yorn, James Taylor
Uniformity and juxtaposition are powerful tools in music.
It depends on what you’re measuring.
Are you measuring the amount of fun you had, the audience had, how big the audience was, how few wrong notes you played, how many people bought merch, what gross ticket sales were, how many autographs you signed, how many people bought the VIP package?
Artists get asked this question all the time but maybe the more interesting question is…
How will you know if the show was good?
That’s what it says on the side of all the construction dumpsters around town.
But here’s what we know…
-If you call the number and rent a dumpster, you’re not going to get that actual dumpster.
-You don’t care that you’re not getting that actual dumpster.
-What ‘Rent Me’ really means is you’ll get something that resembles and functions like the one you see here…and we all agree that that’s the point.
So if you’re in the dumpster business it pays to be generic and have plenty of supply.
On the other hand, if you’re an artist…
Being new to town is scary because there’s a lack of connection.
So the first thing you want to do when you’re new to town is…not feel so new to town.
The real tricky part is after you’re not new to town anymore, did you connect with the right people? Are there cooler people to meet? Are you on the right path? Are you moving up? What’s the trajectory?
When you’re new to town you give yourself a lot of grace and patience for not doing everything just right. After all, you’re new.
Not being new anymore is a lot to handle. So some people move and start the cycle over. But at some point you have to stay and answer the harder questions.