Own Your Story: The Lesson Taught To Me By Sony, Universal & Red Bull Records Executives.

In 2012 I was on top of the world.

I’d finally left education, I’d got my first car, and the band I was in suddenly started receiving a lot of attention. We played a couple of small festivals, which lead to some larger festivals, and a sponsorship from Fred Perry. We found ourselves regularly sat in the offices of the largest record label and publishing companies in the world, telling us that our music was great.

There was just one problem though.

To sell us they couldn’t just sell our music. We had to have a story they could sell.

“The context in which your band sits is very important,” they would explain. “Indie isn’t really selling right now, so we’ll need to work out the angle. The concept of your band is equally as important. Are you white hat, or black hat? Are you friendly and relatable, or rebels?”

To be honest, we didn’t have a clue. We just wanted to write music and perform it for people.

So they gave us a story.

They told us to wear sunglasses, to dress a certain way, and not to smile in photographs. We worked with producers who chopped up our songs and tried to straighten out the ‘mistakes’ in our playing. We met famous people and tried to act cool in front of them, even though we were just four music nerds completely out of our depth.

By the end of 2013 the interest had mostly faded.

It was exhausting acting out the story we’d be given, because it wasn’t authentic. It killed our energy for the thing we loved.

In 2014 we lost our management and agency representation, changed our band name, and started again. Despite never reaching commercial success, it was the best thing we ever did. It gave us back the control of our narrative.

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