I grew up on the music of the 60s, 70s, early 80s.  A few important influences arose in the 90s (Radiohead, mostly), but my taste in music really centers on classic rock giants like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd.

Not to say I don’t love other bands and other music.  I’m enormously into Mozart, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff.  I love Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, and U2.  I can enjoy anything from Kenny Chesney to Rush, Miles Davis to Taylor Swift, Cat Stevens to Bob Marley.

But I grew up on classic rock.  And I’ve thought a lot about classic rock.

I think there are lessons to be found there for all artists.

Especially whenever things turn weird.

Here’s what I mean:  Most of the great leaps forward in music (within a band or within a genre) seem to come from some of the weirdest forays into the unconventional.  Put another way:  A band tries something unexpected (often jarring even to their fans), but somehow that willingness to push beyond what’s safe opens up new possibilities.  For everyone.

 “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

– Hunter S. Thompson

And this holds true across all the arts.  Photographers willing to experiment and get creative change what’s possible for everyone who comes after.   Writers and filmmakers who take chances that make the popular establishment squirm redefine what future generations believe possible through language and the way stories can be told. I’m sure parallels can be found in painting, sculpture, architecture, and dance as well.

But let’s get back to the Beatles.

Specifically, their last few albums.  Each had at least a couple songs on them that aren’t just unsuited to radio, but outright WEIRD.  Heck, most of The White Album is too weird for me to really enjoy.  (My favorites are Sgt. Pepper and Abby Road. But both of those have their awkward, weird bits too, tracks I routinely skip past.)  

And here’s something to think about: the weird stuff that made those albums was clearly the best of their weird stuff.  Presumably they also wrote stuff too weird to even risk putting on an album!

Yet I’d propose that it was precisely in their willingness to push the envelope and create something unconventional that stretched their talents such that the rest of their albums stand out as some of the best music ever written.

For an even starker example, look at one of my other favorite bands — Pink Floyd.  If you’re not a serious fan, you might assume that Pink Floyd came onto the scene with hits like “Money” from Dark Side of the Moon.  But there you’d be grossly mistaken.  Pink Floyd put out SEVEN FULL ALBUMS before they reached that masterpiece.  Seven albums!  Almost all of it unbearable, if you ask me.  (A few songs are all right.  But most of it … not so much.)  

There’s certainly a lesson there in perseverance.  But there’s also the identical lesson we saw with the Beatles.  And we see the same with other great artists willing to experiment freely — greats like David Bowie, Elton John, and Prince being especially clear standouts here, but Radiohead right there as well — all of them producing any number of sensational hits, but all of them also producing a huge amount of music that never caught on and is rarely ever played anymore, even by their fans.

Or consider the huge shift U2 made with their album Achtung Baby. They had just come off of touring Joshua Tree, their greatest selling album of all time, and were at the pinnacle of their career . . . But it was time to grow beyond that.

In their documentary on the making of the album, they go on at some length about all of the extreme fringe bands they were listening to, and all the experimental recording they were engaged in as they found their new sound. Stuff I could never get into myself, but it clearly influenced what they saw as possible, what they would now be willing to try, and what doors they were then to open in their own music.

In each of these cases, the artists were willing to be ARTISTS.  They weren’t just looking to satisfy their music labels or give their fans what they’d come to expect. 

What mattered was exploring their craft and pushing beyond their limitations to find something new, something more.

Compare “Love Me Do” from the Beatles’ first album with what they were doing on Sgt. Pepper.  Compare not only the songs, but the band itself.  And then realize those were only five years apart!

That is staggering to think about.

If the Beatles had settled for writing “Love Me Do” over and over again — which must have seemed a safe bet at the time — they never would have become the iconic band they became.  They certainly never would have instigated the tectonic shift they produced on rock and roll.

Of course not everyone can be the Beatles.   (Even the Beatles eventually had a hard time being the Beatles.)

But whatever your ambitions as an artist, you CAN challenge yourself to push outside of your comfort zone and create work now and then that is decidedly NOT like anything you’ve done before.

You can try new things.  You can push the envelope.

You can take some chances and not give a damn what anyone else thinks.

Doing what you’re doing now has gotten you to where you are.  If you want to push beyond that and go further, you’re going to need to try something new.  You’re going to need to take a chance.  Get a little weird.

And don’t worry.  There are no “Art Police” waiting to beat down your door if what you create doesn’t fit in with the expected, the safe, the tried-and-true.

Not everyone is going to like your experimental work.

Who cares?

Create it anyway. 

And see where it carries you.

– Sebastian

PS: I mentioned Radiohead. I’m crazy about Radiohead. And talk about a band willing to explore some of the craziest music out there in their drive to continually reinvent themselves. Have you ever heard Thom Yorke’s solo stuff?! Talk about experimental. And if you see a list of the kinds of music HE listens to … That’s stuff so far outside my comfort zone I can’t even make sense of some of it. But clearly those influences and Thom’s own work are in there somewhere informing the direction Radiohead then takes as a band.

PPS:  The image featured on this post is by an incredibly talented artist in our AWAKE group, Litonya Knelsen.  She has been pushing the boundaries with her art for some time now, and I’m very excited to see where it leads her.  This is an exciting artist to watch.