Ben Folds – HuffPost 10.12.12
Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?
Ben Folds: My answer stays pretty much the same. I thought VH1 had it right with their old moniker, “Music First.” That’s what I think for young artists. Keep it about your art. It’s really easy for someone to say, “Well things change. Everything’s changed because the music distribution system has changed.” That doesn’t change your music. You make great music first. That’s the main thing. It’s easy to take your eye off the ball. It’s never been easier to take your eye off the ball. If I want to screw around on GarageBand writing something pretty, I might just kind of swipe over and see what my emails were or look something up on the Internet. You can do all kinds of crap. You can take a self-portrait. I think it’s important to stay focused on whatever it is you do. Stay focused on your art. The distribution of what you do is not important unless you’ve done great work.
MR: Wow. “The distribution of what you do is not important unless you’ve done great work.” Absolutely great. When I ask that question, I often get the art side, which is what you’re talking about — get your creativity together before you start marketing it — but then I also get the other side, which is, “You’ve got to get on Facebook, you’ve got to get your social media together.”
BF: Yes. By the time you write a great song or a great album, Facebook might not even be on the Internet anymore.
MR: [laughs] Yeah!
BF: We don’t know, we just really don’t know. Things have changed so much in my time, but the thing is with all the changes, it’s almost like that change has stunted music in some ways. I think it’s drugged people out. Really, a band that gets together thirteen years after they broke up shouldn’t even be close to relevant. It should be a nostalgia act. I’m not saying that we are relevant; I don’t think we ever were. But I don’t think we’re any less relevant now than we were. Consider 1948, and a band has been together in 1948, and they split up and they got back together in 1960? I would say they would be in for a big change. But I don’t think between 1998 and now has been all that big of a change.
MR: Yeah, that’s right.
BF: 1950 to 1952 you see it go up and accelerate for a little while, 1954 and then twelve years later, it’s 1966 and acid rock has happened. You’re going from before Elvis had even hit the stage to acid rock. Everything that was relevant is irrelevant. Now, I think some of the reasons for how slow things have evolved musically is partially technology. You have half of the people falling into the bed of “I’m going to spend my time making sure that my music is marketed online.” You can’t market something that doesn’t exist or that isn’t good. You can’t even crowdfund your record unless someone knows who you are. You still have to get out and do it. You still have to have quality material and be the best artist that you can. I say stay off the computer and get good, and then use the computer to send emails.