Sarah’s Advice: Work Hard and Fake It

Posted by Sarah on Dec 14, 2011 in Sarah's Corner | 1 comment

A few years ago I spent approximately a year playing dress-up as a music journalist. I wrote articles, music reviews and did a few artist interviews. After about a year I left the position to run my own music news blog, and after a short stint at that I closed up shop completely on the music front. As it turns out, being a music journalist wasn’t the job for me. Don’t get me wrong; I was pretty awesome at what I did (if I do say so myself), but I didn’t quite have the cojones to cover the music industry.

Case in point? Rabid pop music fans. After writing a marginally positive review with a few ‘eh, whatever’ type comments about a Katharine McPhee music video I was blindsided by a rash of emails, tweets and comments from some of her fans who didn’t like that I gave her video essentially one thumbs-up instead of two. I later stumbled upon the forum where my article was being discussed and where a number of fans had gathered to plan out their strategy to systematically annoy the crap out of me until I apologized. Of course, I never apologized. Instead I think I made some comment about Katharine McPhee fans being crazy which led to even more emails and then I somehow ended up sitting in a dark corner eating cake.

However, that’s not the point. The point is…writing about the music industry is hard. At least it was for me. I’m not one who takes easily to the role of critic, nor am I one who handles being the target of a systematic ‘annoy her until she breaks’ project very well. Hate mail makes me cry, and when you write about music you step into some serious hate mail territory. People love their music. I get it. I love music too; it’s the reason I got into the whole thing to begin with. But…I guess I’m better suited to sit down, avoid being anyone’s target and bounce in my seat along with the music. You probably won’t be seeing something I wrote in Rolling Stone anytime soon….or ever.

Dark corner-save me from rabid fans-chocolate cake meltdown aside…I must admit that I did learn a lot during that time. The biggest lesson I learned? Fake it until you make it. Okay, I know “fake it until you make it” sounds so cliche and ridiculous, but trust me…that’s one cliche worth taking to heart.

I had just moved back to my hometown after a crazy rollercoaster ride with the little job offer that was bullshit. (That’s a story for another day). After several email exchanges with the PR firm for an up and coming male singer/songwriter I was offered an interview with their artist. Score! At first they offered to let me interview him backstage at his show that upcoming Saturday in Los Angeles–an opportunity which would have been awesome if A.) I lived in L.A. or B.) I had the money to get my ass to L.A. in a hurry. Unfortunately, neither applied to me. So, after several more email exchanges which included me making it sound like I just wouldn’t be in town that weekend (which wasn’t a lie…), they agreed to have the artist call me for a phone interview.

On the day of said interview I sat in my new makeshift office nervously staring at the wall, waiting for the phone to ring. My makeshift office consisted of a desk made of two cardboard boxes and a floor pillow in an otherwise empty room. I was tapping my pen against the cardboard and reviewing my questions when the phone rang. Please don’t let me fuck this up.

The interview itself went off without a hitch, unless you count the slight delay on my end caused by my recording device. Oy. Other than that though, things went great. He never suspected my cardboard box desk, and at least 50% of the time I managed to ask insightful and journalist-y questions. His answers were colorful and painted with British humor, and the conversation before and after the interview was lighthearted. When I ended the interview I actually managed to sound like a seasoned professional.

After the interview I immediately got to work on the article, pulling my favorite quotes from the recorded interview. The energy was just pulsating through my veins as I tapped away on the keyboard crafting a charming and at times funny portrait of this energetic artist. Within the hour I was done. That was probably the quickest turnaround I’d ever had on a project. I spent the next hour editing the piece before sending it off to his PR people with information on when it would go live. By the end of the day his PR people had responded to my piece with excitement. They loved it. The only problem? The artist had used the word “saucy” about half a dozen times throughout the interview which ultimately found itself into the article at least once. They didn’t think their artist would say the word “saucy” since it didn’t quite fit the image they were trying to project. While I could have easily left the word “saucy” in the article, I figured that would only piss them off and screw up any future interview opportunities with them. So I removed it. They thanked me. The article went live. Feedback from my readers was pretty fantastic. I had officially interviewed a major label artist. …And no one had to know about my cardboard desk or floor pillow. No one had to know that I didn’t live in L.A. No one had to know that I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was doing. No one had to know that I was totally faking it.

More people in the industry began to contact me. More opportunities to interview even bigger artists came up. I was faking it until I made it, and it was working.  …And it would have continued working if I had been able to handle rabid pop music fans and their ‘annoy her until she breaks’ campaigns. Alas, I wasn’t. But at least I learned one very important lesson: Even if you have a makeshift office and zero clue about what you’re doing, working hard and faking it will take you further than any mahogany desk and leather office chair could.