The Audience Paradox

“In terms of priority, inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last.”

Rick Rubin, 
The Creative Act

 

 

In marketing, it’s a cardinal sin to not have an audience in mind. Before you even go ahead and think about the product you want to make, you have to think about the people you want to sell to, and which problems of theirs that you’re looking to solve. 

Coming from a marketing background myself, I’m not here to tell you that this isn’t important. Because it is. But as with most things in life, I reckon that there are grey areas — or exceptions to the rule which are more complicated than we conventionally think. 

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of audiences in art. What if the opposite applies in making art? Is it true, as producer and author Rick Rubin suggests, that the way to create great art is to put the audience last?

Let me share a little anecdote.

Right now, I’m obsessed with every piece of music by Incubus, who will be playing a show here in Malaysia later in April. I had only loved a handful of their songs as a teenager. But their upcoming show piqued my interest to revisit and explore more of their catalogue.  

I can say that Incubus is one of those bands that are genuinely one of a kind. They seem to care little about what the audience thinks. They’re unapologetically themselves. They do whatever they want, as they mix up genres and songwriting styles, making each album radically different than the other. 

But for me, what struck me the most about Incubus is how intimate the lyrics are. It’s as if they were written by the artist to themselves, with no audience in mind. I get the same feeling when I’m reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. It’s that awkward yet liberating feeling you get when you’re poring over another person’s private journal, hearing words that weren’t meant to be shared with anyone else in the world but themselves. 

You actually find immense comfort in this. Because you hear a lot of your own thoughts being reflected in those words. You notice your own vulnerabilities and insecurities that you’re otherwise too self-conscious to openly express. With that, you feel less lonely in going through your own life. 

Incubus’s 1999 album, Make Yourself is a hallmark example of this. The lyrics read like journal entries of a heart in turmoil, venting about how horrible the world is, and giving themselves words of encouragement to make it through another day. 

Notice how unvarnished and blunt the lyrics are in the track The Warmth:

 

“Don’t let the world bring you down,
Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold.
Remember why you came, and while you’re alive,
Experience the warmth before you grow old.”

 

This is just one of the many examples of the sort of “audience paradox” that exists in art.

If you create something because it’s what you think other people would like, chances are it won’t be good. Because the audience can see through your intentions.

If you churn out one soulless film after another filled with dry jokes and twerking hulks to please woke fanatics and make a lot of money from it, the audience is going to smell it from a mile off.

Yes, I’m talking about Marvel. 

Conversely, if you create something for yourself first, out of the ideas that you genuinely love and out of your real emotions and life struggles, chances are it will deeply resonate with other people due to its authenticity. 

And of course, another great benefit of this is that you get to be truly innovative. Because if you were only to focus on what other people want, you’re placing your art at the mercy of what is predictable or already known. 

In John Frusciante’s article titled Hello Audience, he discusses how not having an audience in mind during the creative process has helped him tremendously as a professional musician (and also partly led him to quit the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the second time in 2009). 

He explains, “The general public did not ‘want’ Jimi Hendrix’s music before 1967. They did not know that such sounds were possible. How could they have wanted it before they heard it? Did the public ‘want’ (The Beatles’) Sgt. Pepper before it came out? That would have been impossible, because no album had ever sounded remotely like that.”

As a disclaimer, I don’t mean to sound like I’m denouncing conventional business practices. After all, for many of us, business is an inevitable part of art. But there has to be a sweet spot between business and art. Because unlike in purely business terms, art isn’t a commodity. The sole bottom line of art isn’t to make a profit, but to touch lives.

Notice that the audience comes last, not that it doesn’t come at all. It can definitely be helpful to consider other people’s perspectives on your art, but not before you create your art for yourself first. As Stephen King quips in his book On Writing, “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”

And on a final note, do understand that while creating for yourself first is a path towards greater fulfillment and innovation, there is no guarantee that anything you do will turn out to be successful, at least in materialistic or quantitative terms.

At the end of the day, making truly innovative art tends to involve slaying sacred cows and stretching the boundaries of what we are used to. So, if some people absolutely love your art and some hate it, you’re likely on the right track. Whereas if everyone loves your art, it probably isn’t innovative enough.

In the case of Incubus, it’s always interesting for me to hop onto Reddit discussions of the band. Because I get to see how people rank their albums differently. For example, some may say that their latest album, 8 is their worst. Yet, for some people, it is their best, claiming that the album saved their lives. 

Or, take Metallica’s St. Anger, which is one of the most hated albums in music history due to its uncharacteristically grungy direction and tin-can drums. Sure, a lot of people hate it. But there are some who are able to let go of their purist perspective and listen to it for what it is — which is, actually, Metallica at their most vulnerable.

Nowadays, Metallica just doesn’t give a shit. They love playing St. Anger songs live, whether people like it or not. They would even tease the audience, saying, “This is from your favorite album.”

Anyway, to summarize this article, try approaching your art as being primarily for you. Creating with no audience in mind is how you get to experiment and be innovative, and have fun while you’re at it. Whether other people like it or not is just a by-product of this. 

Think of your art as your journal. When you’re writing in your journal, you’re doing it for you. It has nothing to do with other people. And you can do whatever you want. 

Let that sink in: you can do whatever you want.