Matt Nathanson – HuffPost 5.20.11

Mike Ragogna: Matt, what is your advice for new artists?

Matt Nathanson: My favorite thing is this idea that I’m realizing that as I progress through my career, I wish somebody had said to me its all about listening to people’s advice but not taking it as gospel. Art and your expression of art–everybody tries to pretend they know better than you, but really, you know better than anybody. So, I think I spent most of my career trying to find my center, while spending a lot of time being knocked off my center by people being like, “You need to be like this.” In my pursuit of pleasing people, I think I went astray in the way I made records. There is a certain kind of confidence that only comes with time spent, which is kind of cruel because if you had it at the beginning, you could do wonderful things with your first records. Sometimes, people luck into doing amazing things with their first records, but for me it was kind of like nobody knows you better than you know you, and you’re sort of your best friend. So, the more you trust yourself artistically and in decisions that you make, the better off you’ll be. You’ll at least feel that wherever you end up, you got there yourself. It’s a little hippy, but it really is fundamental because in this industry, everybody wants to tell you who you should be.