Every Musician Needs Someone Who Will Tell Them the Truth
By Written by Peter McVeigh
Yes people feel supportive but quietly damage your career. Every serious musician needs honest feedback about their music, and most of us don't actually have it.
One of the most valuable things you can do for your music career is find someone who will tell you the truth.
Not someone who will encourage you. Not someone who will be kind about it. Someone who will actually tell you what's happening.
You played a gig and the sound was terrible. People in the back couldn't hear you. The mix was a mess and you lost the room in the first song. That's useful information. If someone tells you it was great anyway, you'll hire the same sound engineer again, play the same venue again, and lose another room. You'll never understand why things aren't progressing.
Yes people are comfortable to have around. they'ren't useful.
The LA Problem
I spent time in Los Angeles and I'll say this about it: I've never been told I was brilliant more often, and I've never been less sure whether any of it was true.
There's a particular culture in certain parts of the music industry where enthusiasm is the currency of all conversation. Everything is amazing. Everyone is a genius. You're the most exciting thing they've heard all year. They absolutely want to work together. They'll call you.
They don't call.
When you turn around in some of those rooms, you'll find the knives already in place. Decisions get made, opportunities disappear, doors close quietly, and nobody ever had a difficult conversation with you about any of it. You were just slowly and politely excluded while everyone continued to tell you how much they loved what you were doing.
That's a particular kind of cruelty dressed up as warmth.
The Irish Way
I'm from Ireland and I'll take the bluntness every time.
People from home will tell you straight. The gig was too long. The new songs aren't as strong. You looked nervous. The sound guy you use isn't good enough. You've heard worse.
There's a version of that directness that's cutting for its own sake, people who enjoy delivering hard truths a bit too much. That's worth recognising. But on balance, I'll take the person who says something difficult to my face over the person who says something lovely to my face and something entirely different as soon as I've left the room.
At least with the honest person I know where I stand. I can work with that.
The Industry Is Full of Conflict Avoiders
The music industry is full of people who won't tell you what they actually think.
Not because they're bad people. Often because the industry runs on relationships and relationships feel easier to maintain when nobody is saying anything uncomfortable. An A&R person who passes on your demo will almost never tell you why in any useful detail. A manager who's losing interest will gradually go quieter rather than having a direct conversation. A promoter who won't book you again will just stop responding.
The silence can feel like possibility. It's usually not.
Those same people are making decisions about your career based on opinions they never shared with you. They decided something wasn't working, that you weren't ready, that the direction was wrong, and rather than tell you, they just moved on. You never got the information that might have allowed you to change course.
Watch Who Gets Removed
Sometimes when an industry person comes in and starts suggesting that certain people around you need to go, they're right. Genuinely. Teams need to evolve, and sometimes the person who was right for year one isn't right for year three.
But sometimes the person they want removed is the one who has been telling the artist the truth.
The manager or A&R person who wants the straight-talking friend out of the picture may be trying to protect the artist from bad advice. Or they may be trying to remove the one voice that'll challenge their own decisions. The one person who will say out loud that a strategy isn't working, that a direction is wrong, that something isn't being handled properly.
Before you let someone reorganise your circle, be honest with yourself about what each person in it actually does for you.
Your Mother Isn't Impartial
Your mother will tell you the truth about some things. If the sound was bad at a gig, she'll tell you. If you looked tired on stage, she'll tell you. On those details she's often sharper than anyone because she's watching you, not the performance.
But your mother also wants you to sing ballads. She wants the songs that remind her of something. She wants you to be safe and successful and not take risks that might not pay off. Her feedback comes wrapped in love and that love has an agenda, even if she doesn't know it.
That doesn't make it worthless. It makes it contextual.
This applies to everyone whose feedback you take seriously. You need to understand the lens through which they're seeing you before you can properly evaluate what they're telling you.
Context Is Everything
Taking feedback well is a skill that takes time to develop.
The first step is learning to receive it without immediately defending yourself. Criticism of your work isn't criticism of your worth as a person. It's information about how your work is landing with a particular person at a particular moment.
The second step is evaluating the source. How much does this person understand about the kind of music you're making and the audience you're trying to reach? What's their interest in the outcome?
The third step is looking for the pattern. One person having a problem with something can be dismissed. Three different people, in different contexts, all flagging the same thing can't.
Keep track of the feedback you receive. Not obsessively, but enough to notice when the same signal is coming from multiple directions. That's where the real information lives.
Build a Circle That Will Tell You
The practical version of all of this is simple: build a small circle of people whose honesty you trust and whose judgment you respect, and then actually listen to them.
It doesn't need to be large. It needs to be real. People who have seen enough to have useful opinions. People who understand what you're trying to do. People who care about your progress more than they care about your comfort.
And on your side, make it easy for them to tell you hard things. Don't punish honesty with defensiveness. Don't ask for feedback and then argue with every point. If you make it costly for people to be straight with you, they'll stop being straight with you. And then you're back in the room with the yes people, heading for the same gig with the same terrible sound engineer, wondering why nothing is moving.
It'sn't a fun part of the job. But it's one of the most important parts of it.