JD Souther – HuffPost 5.25.11

Mike Ragogna: Nice. With the amount of knowledge and experience that you’ve gained over your career, do you have any advice for new artists?

JD Souther: I don’t think they’d take it. (laughs) I wouldn’t have. My dad once told me that I got where I was by ignoring everyone that ever gave me a piece of good advice. (laughs) It’s not really true because I took his advice often and the advice of a wonderful composition professor that I had in college whom I am still friends with. Career-wise, I think things have changed so much since I started. You have to remember when I first started trying to get a record deal, I was so in awe of the standards of the things I was hearing on the radio that I was a bit overwhelmed. First off, every artist had to fit through the keyhole that was guarded by record executives and that’s not necessarily the case anymore. So, for me, to get in at all was so surprising. The point is I no longer know what the ground rules are for new artists. I don’t think anyone has yet figured out the paradigm or model for success that even has a remote chance of succeeding continually. It’s obvious that anything that doesn’t cost you a lot of money and spreads virally works in your favor. But it’s also obvious that you can spend a fortune on promotion and recording and everything and still flop or be eclipsed by someone who was the flavor of the week on American Idol. The rules have all changed. There’s no way to be sure about it, but there is a way to be pure about it and that is to absolutely reject things that don’t feel true to you. What I said before about your style being defined by your limitations is true. But if you’re really doing the best you can, the thing that will emerge through that permeable cloth of limitations will be your style.