So I am now officially a published artist. My music is on many different streaming platforms, most importantly for me, Spotify which is my personal choice for streaming. To me it is pretty incredible that I have released music out into the world that will make me money. Granted it probably wont even bring in enough to buy a coffee but its still pretty cool in my eyes!
I have always felt like a fraud in most things I do. Especially music. Its a big part of why my self esteem has often been low. The last year has been a hell of a journey for me musically. It started in Oct 2019 when I wrote 'What Can I Do?'. The first song I had completed in about 10 years. I remember sending it to a couple of friends asking if it even worked. I had convinced myself that the difference between the verse and chorus was jarring (it's not). Thankfully they were very positive about it and gave me the boost I needed to put the song out there.
I'd already had a YouTube channel for quite a few years where I had put up a few covers and had a handful of subscribers. I recorded a video of myself performing 'What Can I Do?' and added it to my channel. Pretty quickly people started watching it, commenting and subscribing to my channel. It was a strange experience. Part of me was really chuffed about it, part of me wondered why on earth they were doing it.
This gave me enough confidence to carry on. Next I released a song called 'Need Your Help'. I had actually partly written this song a couple of years before. I only had a two guitar parts and an idea for the melody in the chorus. I was able to pull this together into a cohesive idea after writing some lyrics and playing around for a bit. Its not my best song but it was nice to complete another one.
The third song I finished was 'Eventually', one of my favourites and the first track to feature on 'The Elephant Studios Demos'. It might sound a bit strange but I knew I loved this song when I sung the word eventually. The reaction I have had to the song title is mixed, some people think it is strange but for me it is the perfect fit. This was the first song I wrote that made me think that perhaps I could be OK at this. That's not to say that I have gained huge confidence from this, I still feel like a fraud a lot of the time.
I'm not going to work through every song I released after that but I will note the song 'Grey Matter' as it was a contender for the studio. The song always has a positive reception, specifically the intro and the chorus. To this day I still struggle to play this song sometimes and that was part of the reason for not recording it. Definitely one I want to do at some point though.
The second song on the EP is 'More Human', other than playing it live a couple of times the song was unheard before a few days ago. Unlike my other tracks which have live acoustic performances on YouTube. I felt it would be interesting to do one track that people had heard and another that was unreleased. The way this track came out gives a great indication of the type of thing I would look to do if I put a band together which is definitely something I would be interested in doing in the future.
Despite what I have achieved in the last year musically I still regularly feel like a loser or an imposter. This doesn't just apply to music but it is definitely an area of my life where I feel it a lot.
I really hate this about myself, it makes me doubt everything I do and I generally feel torn. I am incredibly proud of 'The Elephant Studios Demos' and the reaction I have had to it so far has been great but I can't help feeling that it is worthless. The logical part of my brain knows that I am wrong but the illogical part always shouts louder.
I don't like the thought of people not liking me even though that is ridiculous, it is a fact that some people wont like me or what I do and that is alright. I know that but I still worry about it. Why the hell would I torture myself like that?!
I was discussing this during CBT the other day, I really struggle to refer to myself as a musician or artist. I can type it out but actually vocalising it makes my cringe. I comes back to the thoughts of being an imposter or a loser. I'm thankful that I have been able to recognise this but it doesn't make it any easier. That is going to take time...