He is an English singer-songwriter and an occasional actor. In 2014 he was nomintaed for best new artist at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. He received the songwriter of the year award in 2015. He is Ed Sheeran and here are his top most important rules for success.
1) Connect with people:
"Carrying on the momentum i think that's the biggest challenge for any artist. You know like to get up to a stadium level for any artist is kind of the peak but then the challenge from there is staying at that level, you know to remain at the stadium level, to keep releasing records that are not necessarily a hits but just connects with people. You know i have never been worried about my record selling millions of copies but i have been really intent on writing songs that come from me but when they go out they belong to people and there people can relate to them and get into it and then they'll come to the shows. The show's always the end goal, the album, i see an album as a commercial to a show Buy the album or download the album or stream the album or however tou listen to the album and then you think 'i wanna go see him live' and you go to the show.
2) Just be you:
"I guess my advice for young performers is just do you. Like there's seven billion people in this world and there was no one like you and there is no one who is going to write songs like you and theres no one whose gonna sing like you as long as you keep it exactly yourself.
I mean imitate people to a point to get your influence and kind of help you write songs and help you learn guitar and help you sing but once you've found your voice just do thatvand stick with it and even if it sounds like it's odd and people are telling you it wont work, just stick with it and eventually it will. Because there's seven billion people in the wotld and there's bound to be one person that likes you music."
3) The more you do, the better you get:
"Have you heard this theory about the '10,000 hour theory?', so that theory works right so when i first started out, i saw Damien Rice in concert and i mentioned it in a song, i said "i wont stop till my name's in lights, stadium heights with Damien Rice" and litrally like, i watched him and was like, i wanna do that one day and wrote millionsy songs, did a million gigs and ended up kind of doing a similar thing but it litrally came from writing a song a day or two songs a day or five songs a day and just getting all these songs out of me doing a million gigs. Sometimes three gigs a day, we did six gigs a day one year at Glastonbury. But, i think, you view it as a dirty tap, when you switch a dirty tap on it's going to flow shit water out for a substantial amout of time and then clean water is going to start flowing and now and then you'll get a bit of shit but as long as it gets out of you, its fine.
So with songs, you are going to write shiy songs at the beggening, you are.
My songs were terrible, my raps were terrible, i listened to it the other day, it was awful. But i got it out of me, and the more and more you write, the more and more you experience, and then you start flowing clean water and songs starts getting better and better and better. When you are on a good streak, you are writing good songs, you will write bad songs too but as long as that song is out of you, you can move on. And its the same with gigs, you will always play bad gigs at the begenning, thats what you need to do, but the more gigs you do the better you'll get but now or then youll have a bad gig but thats alright because as long as you have got it out of you and you have experienced it.
Just saying that the more and more you do, you put in your ten thousand hours, write as much as possible, gig as much as possible."
4) Be a likeable person:
"What i have learnt about music today is that no one has to buy your record anymore, like no one has to. Usually they buy your record if youre a likable person. Adele is incredibly likable, taylor is incredibly likable, bruno mars is incrediblly likable, i like to think that im likable. You have to be likable person. But for people to be likable persons, you are have to get to know them and twitter is very much instant thought, and snap chat is very much instant thought, facebook, instant, intsant, instant. And its all right, your personality coming out through something, and you would find kids instead of being like 'oh well i will illigally download the album beacuse i want to hear it' they would be like, 'oh! I think they are nice person, im going to support that' and then they go and buy the album, and that i think is really important now a days. And I have never been disproven, anyone that comes across as a person with a bad attitude, does not sell that many records.
5) Everything has a silver lining:
"The lesson i have learnt from my break through success is that everything is not what it seems from the good things to the bad things. Everything thing has a kind of silver lining and i thing it helps you to live when you are in this industry to be a little bit concious cuz i came in this industry with very very wide eyes, going like, 'everything is so great, everyone is my friend' but then you kindof realize, the deeper you get into it, you kindof shrink a little bit"
6) Start off as early as possible:
"My dad always said to me like, if you dont need to get a degree to do a job then go out and experience it. Like, if you want to be a doctor, then go get your grades and stuff but if you want to be a musician, your education is going to come from doing shows, writing songs, practicing, meeting people, networking. So start off as early as you can."
7) Learn from others:
"Iv been influenced by many people, iv even watched a coldplay dvd numerous times and taken little tricks of Chris Martin does with the crowd, even if its just like 'Sing this part here!' And one thing i learnt quite early on was that my friend, he went to U2 and they were singing Something and he like payed money to be on front row and he was there. And there about to get to the chorus and the singer goes 'now you sing' like that and my friend goes 'No! no! No! no, you sing. I payed to come and see you!!' so now everytime when i play, i make sure that i do the whole song and then the song along happnes so i make sure people get what they paid for and then like having the crowd sing it back is the most amazing thing in the world and i kindof want to have that for the whole concert but then also you need to give so i give as much as i can then you do the sing along"
8) Commit to One thing:
"Basically i was an actor before i was a musician. But that was my main thing, i loved acting, i was in loads of theatre groups like did that in school all the time, but then i quickly realised like the weird thing is like, i can show you in 30 seconds how talented i am in music but i cant show you in 30 seconds how talented i am in acting and i realised like i cant really have a succesful acting career without having a good part first and i just dont like auditions so for me, the was a point where i auditioned for this ItV show and it was music and acting and said to myself 'this would be fun' and said that 'if i get this, no more music just acting and if i dont, no more acting just music' and i didn't and just did music and it kindof all went well but i always wanted to act, i never wanted to do somethiing for the sake of it."
9) Practice:
"I wanna play you a song, so this is my thing, when people go 'ahhh! ohhh, you're so taleneted!, you're born with natural talent' im like 'ahh umm, nope!'. Have a listen to this. Basically all im saying is that when people say that artists are born with talent, you're not. You have to really learn and really practice. This is me playing guitar and singing. Im gonna put it on the mic like this (Ed Sheeran plays a song from his past that sounded terrible). But you know what? You know what? I did practice, yeah just, i probably needed it.
10) Do something different:
On a question for singing out loud: "Theres like, certain things you can do to make your music video go viral, which is like, quite a difficult thing to do nowadays, you have to do something that makes somone click on the video, watch it, and go ' i wamt to share that with ten people'. I never appear in my music video, i always make like a little cameo if i appear at all. And im, im not very talented at much else other than music. But i wanted to make a music video where i did a ballroom dance. Like you'll say i can dance, but not on tv nor on reality, like i trained on tour 5 hours a day to learn this ballroom dance, shot the music video and wore a suit, like i dont wear a suit either , i was basically doing the opposite of what anyone thought i was as an artist and then seeing it and then everyone was like 'thats weird!' And the they shared kt with lots of other people and it just kindof blew up, but the reason i chose it for that song is that i knew that song was the biggest somg on the album so to do like most standout video for the biggest song, you combine it and it both blows up."
0 comments:
Post a Comment