I don’t watch a lot of TV. In fact, I can’t recall a show I followed out of sheer entertainment with the exception of NBC’s The Voice a couple years ago.
On any random season, at the beginning, there was no particular artist which stood out yet but the common theme that intrigued me more than the performances was this whole aspect of finding yourself as an artist.
Out of thousands of contestants, none of them would have made it this far if they didn’t have the vocals, the charisma or natural born eagerness to want to be a singer. That’s already a given. What isn’t obvious is in seeing who each of the contestants were artistically yet. At that moment, they sung songs simply because that was the central theme of the show but I failed to see a great deal of uniqueness as far as their delivery.
Regardless of what type of artist you are, personal style is essential if you want to succeed and avoid being labeled as “another performer” or “another” of anything.
Every week the contestants were given different songs to perform and very often it’s not so much about whether they sounded good because in reality they all have amazing distinct voices but the real differentiator came in seeing who was able to personalize something that wasn’t theirs to begin with.
I think we all have heroes and we often aspire perhaps too much to sing, draw, photograph or to do anything like them but that’s not how things work. If you’re serious about wanting to do more with your music or photography or anything, I think we should all be able to easily respond to the question of what specific type of work we genuinely want to create.
It’s not enough to say you want to take photos or that you want to be on a stage. What’s the point of being on a high-rise platform if you’re unsure on what you hope to deliver? I get it. You may not know yet because it is a discovery process which takes time but it’s an ambition we should always have in mind.
The ideal case would be having found your personal style, spend days, weeks or years polishing your craft so well to a point where there will be no one who can possibly create art the way you do. Even then, as a creative, we’re rarely satisfied with just settling with what we’re initially recognized for because there’s always that impetus inside of us to evolve.
You can’t force yourself into working in a certain way. It has to come natural to you and in return, what you yield will be as high caliber as your delivery. As unconventional as Lady Gaga may have seemed at the beginning, she more than anyone knows who she is. Her style defines her and her music classifies her at being the best in her craft.