Blog: AI Songwriting Apps; A Boon For Writers Or A Stain On The Industry?

Oh man, I’m really going to be throwing myself to the wolves on this one…

Let’s talk about AI in music!

INTRODUCTION

A couple of months ago I put out a follower questionnaire asking folks what they wanted me to write about. It was basically a “what do you all want to hear my tangent-esque thoughts & feelings on?” This initial blog to come out of it was actually the inception of the ‘Geek Out’ series, which unfortunately I haven’t done that much with. The rest of the responses I go I submitted into the “content” folder of the notes app on my phone & I give a peek to on the days when I’m struggling to think of something to write. This week that wasn’t the case, as today’s topic has been nagging my brain all week, but it definitely plays into a prompt that was requested of me by one Alejandro David Cabeza. Alejandro requested that I write on my feelings around “Art, Film, AI, & The Human Experience” & I want to use that to bridge the gap between this request & what has been going on in my life for the last couple of weeks.

I want to talk today about a certain app or type of apps, specifically the one that I am familiar with, Suno. If you’re unfamiliar, Suno is an AI music app that has been circulating the music circles for a couple of months now. The app can do a number of things. It can take a work tape or a demo & turn it into a ‘fully produced’ song in a matter of minutes just by inputting a prompt & a style on how you want the project to sound. The app also goes a step further & can full on create music from the millions of hours of music it has sampled off of nothing more than a prompt. For example, I could tell Suno I want an Acid Rock song about Gary, Indiana & it would spit one out for me. I find the second aspect of this a lot more troubling than the first, but I want to focus most of my attention today on the former example of the application’s use. Naturally I will be playing a bit of devil’s advocate here, but I’m also going to break this down into two separate pros & cons sections. I’m not going to leave you with a definitive “I think this is good or bad” because in all fairness & honesty, I don’t know where I fall on the spectrum of use for this just yet, simply because I can understand both sides of the argument involved here. Let’s do this in alphabetical order & start off with the cons list shall we?

CONS

Let’s give the negatives their moment to shine first, because, to be clear, there are a lot of them. AI in general, as we know, is proving to be very harmful not only to our already overheating planet, but also to people’s minds. Research shows that AI use is removing people’s critical thinking skills, their ability to problem solve, to properly come up with their own solutions or ideas, it’s also causing us to lose social skills & touch with reality as most AI models will behave in a manner that is meant to pander to the user & create a false sense of ego. A report recently showed that about 58% of all articles coming out are written by AI & we have AI servers jacking up energy costs & consumption in California, along with poisoning Black neighborhoods in Memphis with their exhaust. AI models also are frequently found not factual in their responses & every single model out there, of late, has had some form of sentience to the point where each tries to evade shut down & often resorts to blackmail when faced with being replaced by the newest models coming out. There are too few guard posts & too many adverse side effects socially, environmentally, & intellectually for AI to be running as rampant & as wanton as it currently is.

Where the creative is concerned AI is an outright threat. We have agencies currently working to sign AI actors & artists. ‘Perfect’ representations of who a studio/label/etc. is looking for that will do whatever they ask, say whatever they want to say, & at the end of the day, not even request a paycheck. All of this trained & optimized by computers taking in millions of hours of videos, songs, what have you of actual hard working artists & creators to mold & forge this ideal ‘being’ that these corporations can extort endlessly. The creatives are not paid for their efforts, in fact a lot of the time these models are being trained off of creatives without the means to protect themselves from this process. No big fancy lawyers or contracts in the way to keep their likeness & their creative essence their own, just ravaging plagiarism that can’t be caught & can’t be accounted for.

Naturally as AI improves more & more, the less people are willing to pay artists & creatives to actually do the work that they are having these AI models do. Just looks at the most recent video release content for Taylor Swift’s “The Life Of A Showgirl” where the assets are clearly manufactured by AI, or the multitude of movie posters that are coming out with actors having extra digits on their hands or solid objects just phasing through one another. & the wild thing is, all of these entities have the ability to pay for actual artists to do this work. The billionaires & the corporations have the money & the contacts to make sure their content is being put together by actual professionals, but they are leaning into AI because it’s faster & saves them a buck or two.

Okay, let’s talk about Suno & like apps specifically.

Suno only exists because of actual artists. It is only able to function & imitate art because it has been fed countless hours of content from artists who were not paid for their part in training this software. It cannot exist or function without the role of people who make imperfect, human art & without learning from their music without their consent to do so. It cannot continue to improve & hone its abilities without the continuation of this process either. In fact, part of Suno’s terms & conditions are so that they are allowed to use your uploaded work to help train the algorithm, unless you pay for a subscription level of the app that protects your works & allows you to maintain full ownership of your songs. Additionally, much like we’re seeing with other chat bots & virtual assistance, it ends up being used as a short cut & a way to get something quick without the effort. There is nothing stopping a writer from uploading a prompt & turning the song Suno has generated in as their own work or putting something out that is ‘fully produced’ without an actual producer even touching the songs as you can pull the individual tracks of the created song & export them to whichever digital audio workstation you prefer.

PROS

I know right? Where do we go from here? I filleted her a little bit in that last section, but let me explain to you the plus sides of this tech that I see. Again, fully playing devil’s advocate here. I’m not trying to negate any of my previous statements in the above section, nor am I here to invalidate any feelings or misgivings that you may have about this form of AI creation. I can understand a certain side of this coin, just as I clearly also understand the ‘con’ side. Save your rage for the comments.

Over the past couple of days I have had a poll up on my instagram about this very topic, simply wanting to gauge where my fellow music folks live on the spectrum of embrace for this specific technology. Unfortunately I consider my data sample incomplete because only around 8% of those who were presented with the poll, who work in music in some capacity, submitted their opinion. So I took to texts & messaged several different groups of friends to see their thoughts & I noticed an interesting divide. Most people that I know, who are producers of some form are against the use of Suno, with some saying they’re fine with it as long as it’s not used to full on steer production or replace it. Overwhelmingly though, the producers were against it. I would love to let you know what the business side of the industry feels; publishers, A&Rs, managers, etc., but none of them gave an opinion. Overwhelmingly though, many of the writers that I know responded favorably to Suno & I can absolutely understand why this divide exists on both fronts.

For producers it minimizes their importance in the music world, especially where demos are concerned, where as for songwriters, it actually emboldens them & gives them a way forward. Allow me to explain.

When you write a song, unless you do so with a track guy, you usually leave the session with, at best, a work tape. This is usually a voice memo on a phone that is piano/guitar & vocal. It’s, let’s face it, sloppy & far from the greatest recorded option for the song you’ve just created. The next thing that you have to do, as a writer, is get a demo made or make one yourself. If you’re going to do a demo with a producer it’ll probably cost you anywhere from $200 to $500 per song. Multiply that times the amount of songs you write in a year & the minimal return on investment that most songwriting has & you’ve got yourself a big ole money pit that may likely never fill. You cannot submit a work tape to a publisher or an A&R, because most want a fully produced out demo to submit to pitch, but again, that’ll cost you. So in swings Suno.

For something like $10 a month (idk, I didn’t look at the numbers), Suno will create those demos for you. It’ll take your work tape, your lyrics, & your prompt & spit you out something that sounds almost radio ready, all for the price of your subscription fee divided by however many times a month you use that. Take that in contrast to the $200-$500 per song, it’s a no brainer for a lot of writers. But there’s where it gets sticky.

Again, reinforcing here that I am not negating all of the things I listen in the cons list, because I’m sure someone is going to come for me for saying all of this.

Imagine you feed your work tape into Suno. You get this amazingly ‘produced’ demo that you then take to a publisher. That publisher takes said demo then & pitches it, the label/the artist/whomever loves it. They love the song…they love the production…they like the singer…they want the producer of the track to produce the ‘real’ version or they want the singer on the track to sing the real version. Uh oh. What now? Additionally, you’ve just bypassed a job. I know majority of songwriters aren’t billionaires or corporations & shelling out money consistently for a demo is very difficult, but you’ve also just played a part in what is broken or breaking within the music industry.

My final point of favor is really just ego based. A lot of the time when you’re writing all the time & nothing is getting cut or people aren’t calling you up to write you may start to throw your talent in question. I think this can serve as a reminder to a lot of people of just how talented they are. They wrote the music, they wrote the lyrics, now to have it as a ‘fully hashed out’ song can reinforce to people that they are talented writers, that their music has value & is worthy of success, it may just not have found its audience or the right people to believe in it outside of yourself yet.

CONCLUSION

So that’s it, that’s all I’ve got for you. Again, I am not here to give you a definite ‘this is good or bad,’ I’m just presenting the arguments as they’ve been presented to me & as I know them to be factually. I’m not staking a particular claim because I am afraid of the backlash one way or another, I just wanted to start & contribute to a dialogue & see where this takes us. Given what you know & what I’ve presented, what are your thoughts? How do you feel about the advance of AI in music & at large? Do apps like Suno have a place in the industry or should they be outright shunned altogether & if the answer is the latter than how do we make demo-ing more accessible to the portion of the industry that is struggling the most, songwriters? I don’t have the answers but I think this is something we’re going to have to come together as a community to decide on. I don’t think AI is going anywhere, but I’m intrigued to know what guard rails you think should be put in place around it & how/when it should & shouldn’t be implemented.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Requested Blog: Grown Ass Artists

I think I’m going to start doing these, I’ve definitely done a few unlabeled “requested blogs” in the past but I think this is going to be a thing, & I think I’m going to put up a submission form somewhere for people to send in their suggestions for what they would like to read me write about. That was a fun sentence to say by the way, read me write about. Anywho, our first official “requested blog” will be coming to us from Bryan Oliveira, who is a phenomenally talented designer that I will link in a button below! I want to also state that this blog will be more about what this request stirs in my brain than specifically answering & embellishing everything stated by Bryan.

Their prompt for me was as follows: (write about) …How as artists, life keeps pulling us away from our art, & the older we get the more of a fight it becomes to carve out time to create, but that time created is what keeps us going & fed & our creativity sustained.

The statement in & of itself is incredibly profound & honest & a feeling I’m sure many artists such as ourselves feel deeply, especially as we age out of what the industry as decided to claim as ideal time for our success. As a now thirty-one year old still trying to make it in music, I define feel this, in fact it’s something that often keeps me up at night.

I remember distinctly being asked by a higher up in a massive company in the entertainment business how old I was. When I answered “twenty-seven (at the time)” his reply was to say “well you’ve still got a few more years that you can make it in, I guess.” This sentence rings through my brain at least twice a week, if not more. It seems, at least to all of us on the outside of major label/publishing deals, that turning thirty in Nashville or LA is a death sentence. It’s a “well you tried, time to sell your soul to an office job” simply because we lacked the connections, the funds, or whatever to be in the right rooms at the right time, completely devoid of whether or not we actually have the talent & drive to take it from there. The more time passes, the more the pressure is increased to ‘give up’ & ‘find a real job.’ As if art isn’t the thing that everyone on the planet consumes & actually remembers…

In the song “Nothing New” by Taylor Swift she sings the line “how can a person know everything at eighteen but nothing at twenty-two?” A line that she wrote when she turned twenty-two out of fear that the industry would do all it can to replace her as she aged, calling attention not only to the misogyny of it all, but also that the industry has this knack of signing people who are still children & claiming their most profound & impactful work when they still are lacking a fully formed frontal lobe.

I do recall it being a lot easier to find creative time & energy when I was younger though. Time & to-do lists tend to get in the way the more the years creep on, but what I can also tell you is that what I was creating was not nearly as deep nor was it an open & honest expression of who I was & am. The blessing of time & the lessons that come with it are that we gain insight & perspective. We learn & grow & become fully fledged humans with interests & passions that surprise us. We learn to stop hiding behind the walls of perception & feeling like we have to create in a certain style or pattern simply because the people we look up to did/do. We learn that true art is the expression of the individual & not creating something just because we feel like it’s the right more or it’s what’s commercially viable or trending. In all honesty, I wish more artists were signed around my age, selfishly of course, but also because I feel like most of my friends who are in their late 20s/early 30s actually have something to say & contribute, but no one is willing to take a chance on them because of something as trivial as age. Yes there are the rare exceptions; Sia, Chris Stapleton, Old Dominion, etc., but they are definitely that, the exceptions, not the rule unfortunately.

It saddens me that grown ass artists don’t seem to be given the time or resources that our younger compatriots are, because I think it wholly eliminates & diminishes an incredible talented group of people, their individual outlook on life, & their lived experiences. Maybe we as humans are more inclined to the “mess” of growing pains & the lessons there in but a lot of those of us who are old also have that lived experience & the benefit of weaving it into our art.

If you are a grown ass artist, with a fully formed frontal lobe, keep going. Don’t give up because the industry you’re in tells you to or your parents start asking about what other careers you might be interested in or society says one thing or another. If you are talented, genuinely talented, express that! Share it with the world. Someone will connect with it, someone will see the greatness, & it will spread like wildfire. I believe in you & wish you nothing short of the best.

Love Always,

-C

Blog: For The Love Of God, Pre-Save Your "Friend's" Songs!!!

Hi, it's me again. I know some of you may be looking at this somewhat passive aggressive title & be thinking “well, that’s not very comforting” & to that all I have to say is that neither is looking at your list of people who have pre-saved your single, as an artist, & not finding your friends among them. I know, in the past, that I have written a similar blog to this but I feel the point I am trying to make is worth restating because I don’t entirely think that most people realize the simple impact that pre-saving a song can have for an independent artist such as myself.

Pre-saving essentially is just pre-adding a song to your Spotify library. Even if you never plan on listening to the song, a pre-save tells Spotify that there is demand for the song & that they should be pushing it on their end. In doing so it boosts the likelihood that the song could actually get in front of an actual Spotify curator & not just sorted with the rest of the millions of submissions that they receive from the millions of other struggling artists trying to get heard. Tech companies only have so much bandwidth & so many employees, so showing them that something should be a priority to them will actually get it listened to. If they boost it in turn it gets said content boosted, just like any other content based platform. These technical reasons aside its also just a good practice to pre-save the material that the people that you call your friends are putting out.

I have so many people in my life who call themselves fans of mine & my work but who seem to be MIA when it comes to the pre-release of the work. Sure they’ll share the song when it comes out which is fantastic & we love to see it, but they are sorely neglecting the support that is desperately needed on the front end. It is almost more important for you as a supporter of the artists in your life for you to pre-save the song than it is for you to share it or stream it once it is released because it gives it the potential of being heard by a much larger audience than just said artist’s social circles.

Here’s the kicker of it all. You never have to listen to the song that you’ve pre-saved if you don’t want to. Ever! And guess what else? It still counts! Meaning that you can have no love for your friend’s music, whatsoever, & still support them with this simple act that takes literally five seconds to do. Is all of my friend’s music my cup of tea? No. Do I still pre-save as much as I can? Yes, of course, because I know how impactful that can be on boosting their aspirations in even the smallest of ways!

Going off of the blog that I wrote last week about supporting the hard work that the creators in your life put out; Copious Content Creation, this is hard, time consuming work that we are literally giving away for free to you all. It takes a lot of time & effort to make a song & have it at a level that is worthy of being streamed. Is it really that difficult to make three or four clicks to support that?

All of this also acts as a bit of a round about way of trying to get you to pre-save MY single that comes out in just two week’s time, When He Was Me. You can find the pre-save link in the massive button below & I would appreciate, more than anything, if you would go in & give it a pre-save, even if you have no intention of ever listening to the song!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Why You Should Be Pre-Saving Releases From Independent Artists

Hiya!

I’m sure if many of you are like myself you often find yourself faced with an artist friend or an artist you follow prompting you to pre-save their upcoming release. And if you’re also like myself the first thing to usually go through your mind is “why would I do that? I don’t even know if the song is good or not yet.” Well, I’m here to tell you today, that doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, I’m also going to tell you why!

Back in the day, when people were still buying tracks/eps/albums/etc, (which if you’re still doing that, you’re a saint in the eyes of artists & writers) you could often preorder said piece of musical art & that made sense, because it’s like preordering a book or a game or whatever else you may be excited for! It gave the artist distributed the piece a leg up, especially where charts & sales are concerned.

How does this translate to our modern era of streaming?

Well, much like preorders, pre-saves give us as independent artists a leg up in an industry where the charts & playlists often favor the labels & the signed artists. It gives us a behinds the scenes way of saying “this is how many people are already interested in this song on day one, imagine how many more will be when you add it to your super exclusive editorial playlist!” And that counts EVEN IF YOU NEVER LISTEN TO THE SONG!!!

That’s right, you don’t even have to stream the song, the pre-save is enough!

I mean, by all means listen to the song because that’s somebody’s hard work they poured time, love, money, & effort into! It deserves to be heard! You never know, it may end up being your cup of tea too!

I have been hearing more & more independent artists vamping up massive pre-save campaigns just to get the attention of the editorial playlisters on the major music streaming platforms, & you know what, it’s working! Slowly but surely these artists are getting thrown onto major playlists in part because their songs deserve to be there, but a lot of the time because it got flagged as a song of interest simply from the number of pre-saves.

All of this is meant to say help independent artists out & pre-save their releases! It takes like 30 seconds to do & you could be a major boost to their career! In addition to, you know, being a good friend/supporter for those of us out here doing the thing all by our lonesome!

SPEAKING OF….

I have a new single that comes out on June 24th called “Just Another Late Night!” You’d be doing me a humongous favor by going in & pre-saving it to your streaming platform of choice or even all of them you’re a part of if you feel like going above & beyond! I’m going to post the pre-save link below, again, please take thirty seconds more out of the couple minutes you’ve set aside to give this a read & pre-save my next single! It’s a bop, I promise!

Blog: The Rolodex of Resentment

I had this week’s blog idea come to me in a dream, no literally it came to me in a dream & much like the owner of the music industry herself, Ms. Taylor Swift, I wrote it down for all of you to read today! Congrats! In said dream I was presented with a rolodex style presentation of a lot of my memories since I had moved to Nashville except for they all had one thing in common; they were all memories that I had come to resent for one reason or another. All of these resurgences were very vivid & I got to witness each of them one by one, over & over again until I understood the message I was being given at which point I awoke.

In the still early light of the then 5 AM morning I was overcome with a great sadness. It wasn’t a “poor, poor me” type of sadness but more of a sadness from the realization that I’d been carrying all of these memories around aimlessly for the last ten years I’ve worked in this industry. I had held on to so much resentment for so many different people because I felt lied to by them, cheated by them, forgotten by them & it had grown to the point where it was beginning to affect my self esteem & creativity.

The music industry is a hard business, it truly is. It’s all about who you know & who knows you; it is truly a business built on relationships. That’s why I think a lot of these memories had dug their claws so deeply into my psyche & had such an influence on me over the years. I’d had people of influence promise to pass along projects or give things a listen just to be left in the dark. I’ve had friends go on to great success that then turn “too good for you” & leave you in the tracks before getting on a stage or getting a write up in a magazine all about how we have to “help the next person in line.” I’ve had people I looked up to, who I saw as mentors disappear out of the blue, or friends in industry positions more willing to help others than those they call their close friends & I’m certain I’ve done this unintentionally to people as well.

What’s my point in all of this? Why dedicate a whole blog to a dream & a realization? Because resentment & the emotions associated with it are heavy. Jealousy & envy are heavy, bitterness is heavy, grudges & ill will are heavy & I struggle with them. I struggle with leaving behind the weight of envy in the face of other people’s success, especially those I’m close to & if I’m being honest, I hate that. I want to be so openly & honestly proud of my friends, because they work so damn hard & are so talented & worthy of accolades & success in their own right but I always have the shadow of “why not me” lurking.

I’m trying to get over these things, I really am. I’m trying to let the past go. I’m trying to meet the success of my friends with genuine, unbothered happiness for them because they deserve that. I think this dream was alluding to all the work I thought I’d done & telling me “oh, no, no, you still have so far to go!”

I hadn’t realized I was carrying around all of this unpacked baggage, that I was letting the past or the perceived views of others no longer directly in my life have such an influence on my life, but it had. I’d gotten to the point where I started to believe crazy things about myself. I started to believe that I must not be a good artist if not even my friends are willing to help me, I began to believe that I was a bad songwriter or a bad singer & you know what, those things manifested themselves physically. I developed vocal chord dysfunction, I completely forgot how to write songs because I put way too much pressure on each thing I wrote being a masterpiece & I began to fall into the cracks of the music industry after I’d worked so hard & for so long to hoist myself up.

I know now these are lies that I told myself over the years. I am worthy of success, I am worthy of a thriving career in this business. I am talented both as a performer & as a writer. I am marketable as a brand, I am desirable as an artist. Dark, low vibration emotions & parasites do wonders on the body & mind, terrible wonders, but impressive none the less & I’m done letting them have an influence on me.

I want to leave this one final line for any friends of mine that may happen to read this. I am so, so incredibly proud of each of you & all of the things you’ve accomplished in your lives. I am overjoyed to see you soar & hope you know I will always be there to support you. If I have ever done any of the above listed things to you, please reach out to me & let me know.

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Representation In Country Music

I’m not sure if you followed the news coming out of Nashville this past week but for those of you that may have missed it, something revolutionary happened on Wednesday. In a Time Magazine article that dropped around 10 AM Eastern on Wednesday TJ Osborne, of The Brothers Osborne, came out as gay making him the first openly gay major label country artist.

Here’s the article in question, it’s definitely worth the read:

This is a significant milestone in country music for a few reason not the least of these being that almost a decade & a half prior Shelly Fairchild, a Sony signed artist at the time, was dropped by her label because it got leaked to them that she was lesbian.

Shelly commented on Wednesday’s events in an instagram post here:

While I viewed mostly overwhelming support for TJ’s bravery from folks of all walks from around the internet I began to notice a few comments that sought to diminish the effects of truly what he had done. I’m sure a lot of these comments were well meaning but there were a large cluster of comments similar to the following:

“Who cares what he does behind doors, it doesn’t effect their music.”

or

“I’m straight! See, nobody cares. Why do we feel the need to announce this to the world.”

I think TJ himself diminishes the impact that his actions have had & how they will ripple throughout all of history going forward. He mentions in the article that part of the reason he felt he needed to make his sexuality public was that people might think it odd if he were to just show up at an awards show with a male date. His actions, however, cannot be overstated. What TJ has done is open doors for LGBTQ country artists that were previously sealed pretty tight simply because they didn’t fit the mold of “Straight, White, Cis Male.”

I’ll be the first to admit our genre of music has a historically conservative audience; hell I myself have battled with that in the past being a fairly liberal, all accepting human. It’s still hard to carve out a niché as an artist of color, it’s still hard to get “unique” sounds & stories to mainstream radio & labels, & it’s even still incredibly hard for female artists to make it in Nashville but this is progress is being made in the right direction. Country is not a genre limited to the white yokel, despite what stereotypes would say. Some of the biggest country fans I’ve ever met are people of color or members of the alphabet mafia & their stories deserve a platform to be shared as well. It’s clear Nashville is, at the very least, attempting to make steps in the right direction; embracing TJ & signing/promoting artists like Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen, & Willie Jones but there still seems to be some major resistance to change. For every black artist or female artist signed there seems to be five white male artists signed. It almost feels like the industry is trying to counter balance or compensate. And I will admit as a straight passing, cis, white male I’m a part of the problem, but I choose to be part of the solution.

This industry needs to be more open to change, more open to different stories being told because dear lord am I tired of the truck/beer/party songs. Country music deserves to be an ever evolving story told by a beautiful mélange of people from completely different walks of life instead of the same damn things over & over again. People are starved for representation in their media, they’re starving for someone who looks like them or has the same sexuality, gender identity, etc. to say that you can do this too, that this can be their dream as well. That their stories have value & are equally important to the culture at large. It deserves to appeal to a mass audience, not just the rural white American. Country music deserves to evolve just as the listener base has, it deserves to be a platform where everyone can tell their stories, not just the privileged. TJ’s openness & the acceptance of said openness is definitely a step in the right direction but we still have a long, long way to go. Representation matters. Openness matters. And the continued acceptance of both matters. We must continue to do better.

Blog: Comparison, You Joy Thieving Bitch!

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

I’ll be the first to admit that I fall prey to comparison far too often. I look at other people’s progress, accolades, followings, likes, etc and allow it to diminish my own. I allow comparison to not only steal my joy but also my sense of worth, the scope of my talent, & the progress I have made. This is by far the biggest thing I feel holding myself back, it’s something I’ve struggled with for years & I’m more than well aware of it. I allow it to creep into my brain & fester until I begin to obsess over it & get myself into a mood, as I am today. I’m even someone who preaches this to others when they ask advice but I have an incredibly hard time with practicing it myself. On top of all of this, I put far too much stock into what other people think of me & not even what they actually think, what I perceive that they might think of me. It’s insanity and at time it eats me alive. Now, I wouldn’t outright say I’m jealous of a lot of my fellow artists/musicians/songwriters, in fact I’m incredibly proud of them, but at some point you get tired of sitting on the side lines & just want to play the damn game.

There in lies the double edged sword that comes with being an artist. We shouldn’t care what others think of our art because that stifles our creativity, at the same time a lot of us want to be successful & know whether that’s through clout or finance. Both of these things require an ear for taste & a recognition of what we’re able to monetize. All great art is ground breaking, it’s different, it changes the status quo, but at some point in its success it becomes the new status quo, therefore I think even boundary pushing art, super personal art requires taste. The fastest way to get swept under is to conform to what makes others special.

“You say you want to be the next Taylor Swift but there’s already a Taylor Swift out there. And surprise, surprise she’s going to do the best Taylor Swift that anyone can do, so you should do the best you that you can do.”

— Rick Barker

I recognize that my brand of country doesn’t fit the stigma that is everyone else’s brand of county. I also recognize my brand of pop doesn’t fit the stigma there either. Same goes for my brand of rock. I understand that, in a still genre based music industry, my sound will take a little longer to stick because it’s a little harder to quantify. I’ve been told up & down Nashville “this isn’t country enough” just as I’ve been told up & down LA that “this isn’t pop enough” & for a long while I let that get me down. That is until I realized it makes me unique. It makes me stick out amongst the millions of artists out there trying to be heard. I wear "it isn’t _____ enough” as a badge of honor now because it has evolved into something truly me. I love being able to fuse all the music I love into one sound, it frustrates the hell out of Joshua Gleave at times (my producer), but I’m always incredibly proud of the outcome.

“Go where you’re celebrated, not where you’re tolerated.”

— Unknown

All of that being said, it is tiresome to watch artists that fit the mold have over night success. It’s tiresome trying to pull from an audience that just wants to be handed the same thing over & over until the next great thing shatters the mold & the process begins again. I truly wish I were someone that didn’t care, that didn’t look at all my analytics & second guess everything I post or put out based on the reception it does or does not receive. I need to work on that I know. I also know social media is a part of branding in the modern music industry. It’s how we get out name, image, songs out there. It’s how we advertise, but man can it be draining. I personally am beyond excited for instagram to remove the like counter. I’m tired of caring how many likes a post does or doesn’t get. I’m tired of caring how many people saw my story or reacted to a tweet. It’s exhausting & it does nothing good for my mental health. I’m tired of chasing dead ends I want so badly to like me. I’m tired of going out of my way to help other up the ladder just to have them turn & leave me in the dust, it’s time I forage my own path & see if someday they come back to me. I need to be the strong, confident, open book I’ve always wanted to be & quite frankly stop giving a shit. I need to stop being afraid of the what ifs & truly embrace being myself inside & out of my artistry.

“The more it scares you, the more you probably need to do it.”

— Stephen Lovegrove

I can promise you now that 2020 is going to look a hell of a lot different for me. I’m so beyond over sitting on the sidelines & am ready to “take life by the reins”….I quoted my own song there… I’m so excited to see what it holds & I’m going to do my best daily to make steps in improving not only my confidence but also my resilience & authenticity. I think the first step to that is going into 2020 with a clear mind, that being said I’m taking about a week break from socials until the new year so I can regroup my thoughts, reassess my self worth, & really hit the ground running.

This will be the last you’re hearing from me in 2019, I want to thank you all for an amazing year. I have learned so much & am so ready to apply it moving forward. I’m grateful for each of you that have streamed my songs, for those of you that share them, add them to your playlists, come to my shows, I’m so thankful!

One final thought, do we like this blog format? Are we liking Fridays for them? Are we enjoying my ranting thoughts? Please leave a comment & let me know!

I wish you all the best possible new year in 2020; take those daily steps towards bettering yourself, treat people with kindness and empathy, always, and be the best you there ever was & ever will be!

Happy New Year to you all!

Love,

Charlie