Joey Cape vs. Vinnie Fiorello: The Potential Flaw of Appreciating One’s Own Creative Endeavors

A few years ago, I was reading about Less Than Jake’s upcoming album on their website. Songwriter/percussionist Vinnie Fiorello had posted an update detailing how excited he was about the album. He said he had a copy of it and constantly listened to it in his car, driving around Gainesville, drumming on his steering wheel. In short, he thought the album rocked. He LOVED it (he might have actually used ‘love’ in all caps to describe it). While I didn’t really delve into it at the time, it definitely struck me as odd, and more than anything, I counterintuitively became more worried about the quality of the album. If I like a band’s music, and they say their new stuff is great, why should I be worried?

I got the album when it came out, and I didn’t really like it at all. It generally lacked all of the elements that I liked about their music. Rather than the quirky songs with fanatical bass lines and creative vocal harmony, I found the new album to be little more than fairly unoriginal rock music. That was the last album I bought from them, and that fact has much less to do with how much I liked that album than what Vinnie said about it. I think most everyone with a critical ear would admit that even their favorite artist/band has songs they don’t care for, and enough of those songs can make an album, but a bad album isn’t enough by itself to shake my faith that a band can still put out good songs. Vinnie’s glowing endorsement was a sign to me that the band was clearly going in a direction that I opposed.

All talk of directions aside, my question is this: Is it a flaw for a musician to like their music? Before I’d even heard the new LTJ album, Vinnie’s affinity for it raised red flags in my mind. Perhaps I had subconsciously surmised the direction the band was taking from the progression of their previous records, but I don’t think that’s what triggered in my head. Rather, I suspect that on some level, I simply could not identify with being a satisfied creator. My experience with writing songs is far too limited to draw on, but if I can take anything from my other efforts (writing, for instance), it’s that I’m never satisfied with anything, sometimes to a paralyzing extent. I can’t help but be aware that everything I’ve done could be better, potentially much better, and that makes it very difficult to even say something is good enough, much less great or exceptional.

Then there’s this excellent interview with my favorite artist, Joey Cape, in which he discusses exactly this in response to being asked to pick his favorite song that he’s written:

[I don’t like my songs. I think it might be an actual flaw when people that write music tell you they love the music they write. I don't really understand that. Most songwriters that I meet are always trying to perfect their art or trying to be better at what they do, so they're just basically not all that satisfied with anything they do, and I think that's what makes most artists at least capable or good at what they do.]

If I was leaning towards that opinion before, hearing it from someone I respect more as an artist than anyone has only strengthened that stance. I don’t mean to say that it’s impossible for a good artist to appreciate his work, but I figure it’s likely that any artist that does has reached his peak, and that peak is probably far lower than I’d like it to be.