YOU’RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR NEXT SONG

I read an article about Adele, after she had broken the record for the biggest debut for an album ever. She was asked why it took her 4 years to come out with a new album. Her respond to that question was quite interesting. She had recorded more than another album’s worth of songs in the meantime and scrapped all of it to start over. Her response was, “You’re only as good as your next album”. She explained that she wanted the album to be great and that the previous material was good, but not great.
This is one thing that I actually believe in, but also on the other hand I disagree when the uprising artists work one year on one track and a few years on an album. The reason this theory is that when an artist is just upcoming and trying to build a brand out of their name and their music, they should work harder and release as many quality songs as they can. When that name / brand is built, then it's time to take it slower and release only the songs that they're confident enough about them that they can bet their life on.

As songwriters and/or artists, we can learn a lot from that statement. Here are my takeaways:
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1. I should hold myself to a high standard and shoot for “great” every time.
2. I shouldn’t settle for something just because it’s good.
3. I’m only as bad as my last song and only as good as the next one. As long as I’m moving in the right direction, I’m doing just fine. I can forget the failures of the past and move forward, striving to be better with every song I write.
4. If I’m an artist putting together an album, I should cut the best songs available to me every time, whether or not I wrote them.
5. Greatness takes time. Lots of time.

 
So, if you get discouraged at times, remember that you aren’t defined by the last song you wrote. You are defined by the NEXT song you write. If that one is better than the last, let yourself enjoy the forward progress. And make the next one even better!

Author

Hangi Tavakoli is our in-house established and professional music producer with more than 17 years of experience in songwriting, music production, mix and mastering. He has produced more than 3,000 and written more than 4,800 published songs to-date, including some major hits in international scale.