Travis Terrell

So many of my artist friends are SPINNING their WHEELS.
What I mean by that is they are always in a revolving holding pattern of:

1. Write songs for months. Stay silent on social.
2. Record an EP.
3. Release the EP on FB, iTunes, and Spotify.
4. "Maybe" do an EP release show.
5. Do some Instagram selfies at the EP release show.
6. Forget to reply to comments on Instagram.
7. Play a couple of shows.
8. REPEAT

The world doesn't work like this anymore. It's the old way of releasing and it isn't getting you any further down the track as the EP before and the EP before that.

Don't fall into this holding pattern! Think creatively about the release and marketing just as much as you did on the music and don't wait a year to put out new music. And make sure you release the best music you possibly can!

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results” -Albert Einstein

Everybody knows this song. It has been covered more than 300 times by artists like Bob Dylan, U2, Bon Jovi, Jeff Buckley, John Cale, and many many many more.

It is a work of genius.

What is amazing about this song though is the evolution of it. It took the Canadian signer/songwriter Leonard Cohen 5 YEARS to write Hallelujah. He tinkered with it. He labored with it. Wrote 70 verses to it, rewriting and rewriting. He was tortured by it.
He then recorded it and his label CBS said it was horrible. Finally a very small indie label in France released the song, going nowhere. Then John Cale recorded it, changed some verses, the instrumentation, the feel, and it went nowhere. Then Jeff Buckley covered it, changed it once again, and it went nowhere. Not until Buckley died tragically did the song get recognized as a work of genius.

That's over 15 years of re-writing, re-vamping, re-recording, and re-thinking Hallelujah!

Genius is a funny word. We all have notions of what genius means and for most, it means doing something remarkable, unbelievably fast. Bob Dylan wrote the song "I and I" in 15 minutes. Hank Williams wrote "I Saw the Light" in 15 minutes. Picasso did hundreds of paintings in a very short time.

But for some, Leonard Cohen being one, genius takes a long long long time to manifest itself.

Just because you can't make remarkable things happen quickly doesn't mean it isn't remarkable.

RIP Mr. Cohen. Thank you for your patience and your persistence to keep plugging away at Hallelujah. The world needed this song.
#leonardcohen #hallelujah