How to Not Sell Out
Wearing what appears to be a stylish trash bag and dumpster jeans, he stops the music cold.
You can see it in his face, you don’t even have to wait for the words. The rockstar is less than pleased
Adam Levine is in the studio for “Girls Like You,” and he has just finished laying down what seems to be the first or second take of the first verse of the song.
“I spent laaaast night on the laaaast flight to you.”
But now, there is silence. He furrows his brow and looks at the lyrics.
“Can we go back to the beginning of that?”
All the sound engineers pipe up:
“Sure thing, man.”
“The auto tune is awesome in here”
“Yeah, you’re sounding great, though.”
“It sounds amazing.”
Now — PAY ATTENTION to what happens next.
I’m sorry to shout. I don’t mean to. It’s just that some days I hear the voice of victimization too much and I want to scream. Sally cannot make her art career take off though she has been trying for five months. Bill can’t get his business off the ground because of all these darn taxes and laws and stuff. John Boy is unable to get any publisher to look twice at his manuscript even though all his friends tell him it’s great. The deck is stacked against him, he decides, despite his having zero proven readers and zero knowledge of genre and has taken zero classes on writing proposals.
Back to Adam, who glances briefly at his crew and says, vaguely:
“No, yeah, I think it’s going to be really cool. It’s going to be really nice. Let’s do it again. Can we do that verse again? I want it to have the right feeling… the right tone.”
Right now, Adam is worth an estimated $60 million. He is married to a supermodel. His band is one of the most recognizable in the world.
And in the face of praise and applause for a job well done, he says this:
“Let’s do it again.”
Often we get caught up in the system, the machine, the business of art. How are we to succeed? Who are we to rub elbows with? What do we have to do to win? Who will sponsor me? Where are my mentors?
These are the wrong questions.
The right question is this:
“How can my creative work be better than it was yesterday?”
Adam Levine, already a massive success, is not playing Adam vs. The Industry. He is playing Adam vs. Adam. In a world of trinkets, his core desire is to create better art.
May we all be so focused.
Much love as always ❤
— Todd B
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