Successful Artists Give Terrible Advice

Don't listen to successful artists advice, here's why.

Imagine asking a lottery winner for advice on how to win the lottery?

They'd tell you about their lucky numbers, maybe their pre-purchase ritual. All completely worthless information dressed up as wisdom.

Successful artists suffer from the same problem: a sample size of one. They can only tell you what worked for them, but they’re blind to the thousand variables they'll never recognise.

Ask any successful artist for career advice and you'll be misguided, especially when they get specific.

Specific Advice: The Survivor's Delusion

Celebrities offer advice that worked for them, expecting it to work for everyone else.

The Weeknd: "Once you've changed who you are or who you've portrayed in your music, the fans, they'll catch it... Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed."

Dave Grohl's advice: "Just play live... I just know that when you walk into a club and you see a band that blows you away you are going to follow that band; you are either going buy their CD; or, you're going to find them online".

Dave Grohl's advice to play live and build a following through clubs is like telling someone to invest in Manhattan real estate. That ship has sailed.

The infrastructure that made his path possible; a thriving club scene, strong listenership at local radio stations, major label A&R scouts in every city has been bulldozed and replaced with algorithms and playlist curators.

Read: You are not Rick Rubin

The Times They Are a-Changin'

Artists who built careers when MTV actually played music videos can't comprehend why you can't just "make great art and get discovered."

Those who went viral on TikTok in 2019 with a 15-second clip don't understand why the same strategy yields nothing in 2025. Now, the platform is saturated with 34 million videos uploaded daily and an algorithm that's moved on to newer engagement mechanics.

When You Should Listen to Celebrities

Here's the plot twist: Successful artists can teach you about craft, not career.

Ed Sheeran on skill development: "I did 312 gigs in 2009. That's almost a gig a day. You can't do that many shows and not improve."

theblack_hoody

A post shared by @theblack_hoody

Jerry Seinfeld on writing: "There’s no writer’s block. There’s lazy. There’s scared. But there’s no writer’s block…. Just sit down and realise you're mediocre and you're going to have to put a lot of effort into this to make it good. That's what writing is."

theblack_hoody

A post shared by @theblack_hoody

This advice is replicable. It’s about deliberate practice and hard work.

Any artist can commit to daily practice and hard work. Not every artist can replicate being discovered by Scooter Braun on YouTube in 2008.

So Who Can You Get Career Advice From?

Want actual career advice?

Find a talent manager who's built careers across multiple decades and genres. Not the one-hit wonder manager who confused being in the right place with being a genius, but the battle-tested veterans with scar tissue and pattern recognition.

WATCH: NY Comedy Club Owner and Comic Manager on The Black Hoody Podcast

Why? Because managers touch and influence every part of an artist's career, and therefore see patterns better than anyone else in the industry.

Unlike artists who only know their own journey, experienced managers have a dataset. They've watched 50 artists try the same thing and can tell you why five succeeded and 45 failed. They understand market dynamics, not just artistic vision.

The Songwriter's Paradox

Even hitmakers writing #1s routinely give terrible career advice.

They'll preach about "authentic storytelling" while cranking out 300 songs annually, knowing 295 will die in a hard drive somewhere.

Songwriters are surgeons, not hospital administrators. They perfect one skill but most remain clueless about artist development, playlist politics, tour routing, or brand partnerships, AKA the business that determines whether anyone hears their "authentic song”.

What you can take away from successful songwriters is their work ethic and how they perfected their craft. I don’t know a single successful songwriter who doesn’t write hundreds of songs a year.

The Advice They Should Give

Here's what successful artists should actually say:

"I won the lottery. I'm talented, but so are thousands of others you'll never hear of. I had advantages; timing, geography, luck, you probably don't. The industry has completely transformed since I made it. The path I took has been demolished and paved over. You probably won’t get famous despite doing everything right. But if you're genuinely talented and work obsessively, you can build a sustainable living from your art without fame."

Not exactly Grammy speech material, but it's honest.

The Bottom Line

Stop searching for the secret formula. There isn't one.

Build your craft obsessively. Study the business like your life depends on it. Find managers and industry veterans who've seen every permutation of success and failure and learn as much as you can from them.

Create your own path based on current reality, not someone else's nostalgia.