I enjoy music, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call myself a music head. I have friends who can recite full discographies, pull deep cuts on command, and spend a small village’s GDP on concert tickets each year. Those are the true music heads. I’m just a creative with taste who can comfortably hold down the aux for ten minutes.
By the time I was old enough to curate my own taste, the music industry was a well-oiled machine. It churned out artists who played by the rules and who it believed to be deserving of the limelight. It wasn’t until platforms like LimeWire, Napster, and later, social media, that the scale began to tip in favor of artists, their independence, creative freedom, and the ability to bypass traditional gatekeepers. But even with all that newfound freedom, artists could only go so far on their own.
To me, the machine bankrolled the entire process. It paid for the publicist, the tour manager, the stylist, the sound engineer, the studio sessions, ecetera. The machine was the process. And given how many hands were in the pot, it made sense to run things with business-like acumen. After all, we live in a capitalist society. Capitalism is the inevitable leech that finds its way into everything. It drains creative endeavors. At best, you learn to live with a little less blood in your system than normal. From afar, being partially bloodless and selling out is just the cost of doing business, especially if money and fame are the end goals.
But money and fame aren’t always the goal of making music. There are benefits, sure, but they aren’t the reasons people create songs.
Songs are vessels. They hold deep emotion, lived experience, and the kinds of truths that can’t be spoken plainly. Through layers of edits, vocal stacks, autotune, filters, harmonies, and wordplay, that truth gets abstracted. But, it’s still there, just disguised.
This isn’t a new idea, but it is this type of reframing that was necessary for me to see music not as a business endeavor, but as a creative act in its purest form.
I wouldn’t say I thought it was imperative to create music without a business plan. But the great American capitalist that lives in me, and lives in all of us regardless of our admission, was just confused as to why someone would want to create music if the end goal wasn’t mass consumption. With this thought of mass consumption, it should be no surprise that my favorite genre of music is pop. But even the most popular pop musicians, Carli XCX, Lizzo, Sia, Estelle, Ester Dean, don’t create for the masses. They create what’s true to them. That their truth happens to resonate broadly is a byproduct, not the intention.
There is a difference between trying to be a pop star and being one. Trying to chase pop appeal and having it come naturally. It’s the difference between Camilla Cabello and Sabrina Carpenter. Benson Boone and Harry Styles. Tate McCrae and Addison Rae (though it may be too early to call that one).
When you aren’t chasing what you are becoming, you make room for it to unfold naturally, trusting in timing and alignment. A philosophy that can be best embodied in someone like Benny Blanco.
You’ve probably seen at least clips from his interview with Daniel Wall. If you haven’t, you should. Not only will you come to realize that this man co-wrote the soundtrack that was the 2010s, but you’ll also see that many of those songs weren’t planned. They came from practicing creativity as a habit and trusting the process.
Trust is a huge part of Blanco’s creative process and edge. He trusts himself when he has a good idea, never allowing too much time between idea and getting it on paper. He trusts in timing, sometimes waiting for months or even years before releasing a song into the world. He trusts in alignment, waiting for the perfect artist to bring a song to life. And he trusts in his process, knowing the best environment for him to create.
It’s this trust that builds confidence. But it also builds collaborations. Making him and those like him sought after not just because of his ability to make music, but because they have an understanding process that transcends technical ability and creative skill, likening them to that of creative mediums. Sonic alchemist, if you will.
Often obstructed by the chaos of the music industry machine, and currently trying to be “made more efficient” by AI tools, the process where so much of the spiritual act of creation lives. It’s a collaborative dance.
One person holds the story. Another person can coax it out. Another person has the ability to channel it sonically. Somebody else has the mind to carve at it, chipping away at the unnecessary parts, and the final person has the skill and emotion to carry it out and release it into the world.
It’s an act that requires trust, care, and patience.
It’s more than a product for the masses.
It’s a process of contortion, transformation, and release.
There is beauty and value in that process. Not just in the insights it produces, but in what it allows you to shed. Mental blocks. Emotional weight. The heaviness of unsaid words. All of it can be alchemized through the act of creation.
Money, fame, glitz, and glamor are all distractions. The process of releasing is the heart. The rest is just noise we’ve learned to worship.