The pressure to make it perfect

One person’s graffiti is another person’s art. (Image by Noémie Girardet)

In Stevie Wonder’s delightful “Sir Duke,” off of his masterpiece double album, Songs in the Key of Life, you’ll find a terrible marriage of lyric and melody in the second verse:

Music knows it is and always will
Be one of the things that life just won't quit

Not only is the line itself a bit nonsensical, you have this weird accent on “the,” which is a big no-no. And a line that begins with “be,” separated from its helping verb.

If it had been my song, I would have changed it. I wouldn’t have let it see the light of day with a lyric like that.

And that is why Stevie Wonder is a celebrated musical genius who has sold a gazillion records, and I am not.

You can find these little imperfections sprinkled across the entire music world, from out-and-out mistakes, like wrong notes and rhythms, to matters of taste like Kanye and Jay-Z auto-tuning Nina Simone on “New Day” or the way Elton John pronounces “don’t discard me” in “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me.” Whatever I would have suggested to fix or change, I would have been wrong.

I can’t help but observe that everyone’s most popular posts on social media are the ones that they, themselves, appear in, even if they aren’t professional models. Sure, we like polish and gloss, but we also connect to vulnerability, weirdness, and humanness. Not all rough edges need to be sanded down.

When it comes to sharing my work with the world, it’s tempting to keep refining and perfecting. But there are two risks there: The finished work, mired in development, may never get out there. Alternatively, it may become so sanitized and unobjectionable that there’s nothing left of it by the time it does emerge.

There’s a lot to learn from the stuff I love and the stuff I don’t. I love the muddiness and low fidelity of old 78s of Lead Belly and The Carter Family, but I also marvel at the smooth technical and sonic perfection of a song like Glen Campbell’s “Witchita Lineman.” I get annoyed with the aggressive informality of certain YouTubers (“Hey guys! Welcome back to my channellllll!”), but I also roll my eyes at others who are so painstakingly lit and made up that they appear to have no flaws of any kind (or even pores).

In short, my preferences are entirely personal and illogical. Whether I find a performer’s mistakes endearing or irritating depends on how much I like them; whether I find them overly slick or pleasingly refined is related to a certain je ne sais quoi that I am the sole judge of.

When it comes to our own work, it’s the same way. Someone may connect with us not just in spite of, but because of the little quirks we’re trying to tamp down. And no matter how antiseptically flawless we might try to make ourselves, someone can find fault with that, too.

Therefore, maybe the best thing is to let go of trying to fix who we are and what we do. There’s no pleasing some people, but guess what? They’re not our people.

Freed from the pressure to make it right, we can let ourselves be gloriously wrong. The song gets made and the work gets published. We can enjoy the confidence that comes from doing our best, even if it’s not the best, because we understand that “the best’ in the eye of the beholder.

We can never get it right enough for the people who aren’t going to like it anyway. But whatever we’re trying to make, if we let it be what it is — if we let ourselves be who we are — we won’t be wrong, no matter what nitpicks could be made.

I would have questioned Bernie Taupin. “‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me’, Bernie? Are you sure? That seems inappropriate.” But it’s been a million-seller two separate times. What do I know?