Today I want to talk at you a little bit about ego. It’s something I know a little about. No one really gets to be my age without a few reality checks. I’ve lived proud. I’ve lived humble. The perfect place for most people, and me is somewhere in the middle, tilting towards humble.
In the music business, I have found that in general, the bigger the bio, the smaller the talent. My dad used to say, “Empty barrels make the most noise.” I think he knew what he was talking about. As for musical artists, we’re put a rather precarious position, which is unique to performers. To really get a jumpstart on a performance career, we have to impress people. We have to give them a good indicator off stage that we belong on stage. So how does one go about doing this with humility? The answer is with a short, but amazing display of talent. Unfortunately, for some artists, they feel that they have to keep proving themselves long after they’ve gotten through the door. Others stay sane and level. I don’t know why some go overboard, but I suspect it has to do with insecurity.
So where should the line be drawn? What’s over the top? Cathy Lemmon and I have seen the entire spectrum of egos at Artist Development Network. We love the humble ones, of course. But we also have to deal with the not so humble and the ego-less personalities too.
People without egos are deadly in their own way. They rarely stand up for themselves. They also have a seriously hard time saying “no” to anyone. My single largest professional annoyance is working with a co-writer who has been cursed with one of these egos-less personality. They tend to have little direction, never speak up when things aren’t right, allow an entire 3-hour writing session to go by without so much as a hint that things aren’t working for them. A few days later, I find out in a roundabout way that they didn’t really like that song we were working on anyway. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen very often; but when it does, I’m left shaking my head. Why would this person shy away from the simple act of honesty? They’ve traveled many miles. They’ve paid dearly just to sit with me. Honestly, they won’t hurt my feelings. I’m a big boy; I can handle rejection. Wouldn’t it be in everybody’s best interest if this co-writer had just said, “This isn’t working for me, let’s try another approach…” I can deal with that. I embrace that.
On the flip side is the egocentric, and I’ve seen those people in my work as well. I have seen promising songs go into cardiac arrest because an ego maniac co-writer has to have his or her own way. They usually wind up destroying all the good stuff just to control the entire process. One comes to mind immediately as I reminisce. This particular artist wound up watering down her entire 3-song demo by eliminating brilliant lines of songs simply because she didn’t write them. She also made life miserable for the producers,
musicians and staff. Not a single co-writer on the team enjoyed writing with her. Our best writer wound up texting our boss from the writer’s room, midway through the session, pleading with her to never book another session with this client. That’s pretty bad! Not surprisingly, this artist’s career has gone nowhere.
What I’ve chronicled for you above are the lucky ones that have at least gotten on board with us and out of the gate and had their shot. But here’s an example of the saddest scenario:
At least once a month I wind up talking with someone that kills any prospect of working with our team long before they even get here. I had opened up a dialogue recently with a young hip-hop artist. This young man was very anxious to work with us. He had several recordings with astronomically high play counts on MySpace. It was clear that either he was a very successful indie artist in his own right, or he was manipulating the song play odometers. I asked him about his play counts on MySpace and he assured me that they were real. He also assured me that he had sold a substantial number of singles and albums on ITunes as well. I took his word for this up front. And we began to discuss marketing him to recording labels. Concurrently, he was working on new tracks to be released in 2009. It was all very exciting. But when we finally got a sneak preview of these new tracks, the rhythm of the singing and rapping had huge problems. Either an engineer botched this (doubtful) or he has really poor rhythm (much more likely). I suggested he listen to these tracks again, and that’s where everything began to go downhill. He couldn’t hear the poor timing! So I then pointed out specific places where the problems were. He still refused to admit that there was a problem.
I knew that he was looking forward to working with us. So we tried offering options. Perhaps his current producer would be willing to open up the files and fix things? “No” was the answer to that. I suggested that we produce a three songs demo for him locally with a white-hot, proven R&B producer. I even sent him slammin’ demo tracks done by this local hip-hop wizard. “No” was the answer to that, too. Even after hearing demos that were clearly heads and tails above his, he just dug in that much deeper. He fought us at every single stage. Ultimately, I had to politely pull the plug on this guy. My alarm bells were ringing loud as Big Ben at this point. He would have fought us all the way through negotiations and through marketing. And it’s sad. He’s going to release this new product shortly and it’s going to be very deflating for him. Who wants to listen to a hip-hop song that’s out of rhythm? I don’t. And I don’t think the world does, either.
So, remember folks…ego can be a plus or a minus. Next time you go on vacation, check to see how many friends and business buddies have left you a message after 7 days. If you’re gone for a week and the only message you get is from your mom, perhaps you need to reassess your ego. People really don’t like to be around know-it-alls that are full of themselves. You have to be a good listener if you want to be heard and valued. And the bottom line is: you have to show you care about someone before they will care for you. That healthy place, my friends, is exactly in the middle… tilting toward humble.
Oh, talented souls…strive to get and stay there.
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