The thing that gets to me about it is that people don’t seem to acknowledge this. Successful people are so happy to feel like their success is “self-made” that they genuinely believe they have the answers, because they’ve done it. If they were even slightly self-aware they wouldn’t be offering such advice in the first place.
You’d think someone like Rubin who professes spirituality would have practiced gratitude enough to realise how lucky he is.
Survivor bias at its finest.
I’m really fascinated by Rubin and have listened to several podcasts with him, e.g. his Broken Record interviews. Gotta say, there’s lots of interesting things he has to share and I like the way he is phrasing his questions and answers in general. What I really like is his “only make stuff you yourself truly like” message. And he definitely seems to have a good way of creating some sort of energy or vibe that makes talented people produce good music.
That being said, I feel like he’s getting a bit too esoteric right now. And tends to talk about high concepts most of the time, which then leads to a lot of generalization or over-simplification, as with the statement about following your dreams.
Yeah, it smells a bit of survivorship bias: The ones who succeeded although success was very unlikely, are the same ones to frame their success as a result of determination and bravery. And economic means and safety to take those risks are of course also part of it, as you pointed out.
I hope I didn’t come across as someone believing that Rick Rubin’s success is a matter of pure luck. I do believe that the individual is critically important. I’m just saying a person with a Ricks inclinations and drive who is born into poverty in rural India might become a success relative to their situation but unlikely to be the next Rick Rubin.
Pulling the luck thread a little bit more, we are all a product of chance. We are made up of the genetics of a mix of random people who chose to breed. We are also products of our upbringing, experiences, etc. I think we could all work harder with what we have and strive to be better and that is a good thing. Is it likely to make you the next (insert wildly successful person here)? I personally doubt it but perhaps that’s why I’m not that person.
Rick said something about how there is probably someone that would be passionate about the job you don’t like. Come on now. I think the world is full of jobs that aren’t terrible but that you would find very few people certainly passionate about most of them.
I find his YouTube interviews to be a good way to start the morning. He really has an unmatched positivity that doesn’t come off simply as some yoga mat toting lifestyle coach. Last one I watched had to do with him only being able to lose weight after he quit veganism. He was up to 300+ lbs at that point. But, I certainly don’t try to apply any one person’s advice to my mess of a life but listening to such people does help to nudge my mind towards more positive thoughts. Anyways, we are all sophists on some level, it’s just that most of us don’t think of ourselves as such.
podcast idea: long form interviews with loads of musicians who’s biggest gigs were in front of 25 people, where they discuss all the bad decisions they’ve made and who they blame them on.
edit - it can be called “Don’t Do This” or something.
I really enjoyed his talk with Andre 3000. You can’t deny that Rick definitely is, or at least was very good at what he does.
But like DefJam, Rick and the LA philosophers up on the hill of Shangri-La aren’t really living in the real world, amongst the people. But they have some good ideas and some bad. Like everyone.
I’m not religious, but I always liked the thought about no false messiah. We can like or dislike something Rick does or says, but ultimately we don’t know him, and shouldn’t believe that him or anyone else we don’t know personally are more than human.
I think with almost every successful person, there is a varying degree of wanting to be successful along with love for the craft. To simply, and only do what you love, will probably not get you to Rick’s level of success. In some ways you need a drive to be famous and rich.
There will always be luck involved, and if you only do what you love the more luck you need. To maximize your chances of “making it”, I think you have to do many soul-sucking activities. But also doing what you love of course.
How dare he advocate for hard work and determination, with his hateful message of self belief and positivity j/k
On one hand he is saying don’t look to others to be your saviour, nothing wrong with that.
On the other hand he is Rick Rubin, a highly respected and successful rich record producer who for most of his life hasn’t known financial hardship.
Undoubtedly not everyone can achieve the things he is taking about, but some can if they want it, personally I think if you haven’t got your shit together by about age 25, for the vast majority of people you have missed the boat, of course there are exceptions. I guess he is directing his words toward people who have the means but not the motivation.
Life is hard, and short.
who want to have their shit together by 25?
Sociopaths!
I’ve done the whole “burn your life and start over” thing a few times. This was in regards to my career, social circle, and city I lived in. However what afforded me that ability was the fact I had nothing to lose. It’s easy to throw it all away when you make shit money with no prospects and very few friends. My family life was also toxic.
Now i’m in my late 30s and wouldn’t dream of it. My job in ad tech isn’t creatively fulfilling, but it pays well, and I’m in a great relationship. We’re getting a dog together next month and kids probably aren’t far off. Barring an insane windfall of cash I suspect I’ll lose the ability to “Rick Rubin it” once that happens. However moving somewhere tropical and being a professional beach bum sounds like a decent alternative, at least. Time will tell.
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“Repetition is a form of change.” - Brian Eno
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"It’s not fair, we watched it getting higher every day for years and now we should be able to enjoy watching it get smaller.″ - Harvey Gerson of Livingston, New Jersey
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As impressive as Rick is in what he has done and how he provides some insightful and needed perspectives on and around the music business, he is talking from the perspective of the music business, whether he even realises it or not.
I want to see how his insights work for people who aren’t already hugely successful by that worlds measures. Sure, it has some gems in there and for sure there is something to consider when applying his thinking to a totally different world outside that pretty ugly music business world, but I’d also argue it falls over pretty quickly, or, at the very least requires some pretty dramatic tweaks when it comes down to the details.
Notice Rick is always coming from the artist/creative struggles perspective and rarely from the issue with capitalism literally taking hours and energy from us.
As someone who has come from a poor family then a broken family, with various struggles of employment, and seemingly a life long battle of being broke, Ricks words come across as both inspiring and narrow.
I take what is useful from him, and throw the rest away. He’s just a guy who become successful whose sharing what works for him and his music business clients. Let’s not forget that. Seems a nice fella tho.
People that want to “make it”.
My personal philosophy is fake it until you make it to death.
Before saying something as dumb and needlessly shitty as “fuck Rick Rubin” this would probably be worth considering (relevant bits in the first couple minutes):
TLDW: People give advice because it’s what worked for them. So one must temper any advice received with perspectives from their own reality. Since the same guy that gave slightly glib advice also said that, I’d say he’s not too bad.
You’re never going to bubble up to hear from the people who lived and died impoverished, even the percentage of persons who became famous after they died were already networked with the famous and influential while living.
The modern, toxic self-help social media/podcast/youtube “insights” and “life-hacks” industry is all noise at best.
I don’t doubt that Rubin has good personal insights to offer, I enjoyed watching Shangri-La as a tone poem but trying to find useful specific or even abstract insight through interviews is far more unrewarding in practice over trying to do the hard work of actually doing and “being myself” whatever that is.
My problem with a lot of this is that it triggers an emotional response in lieu of the hard work, it rarely inspires one to do the hard work. And thus people keep on the rollercoaster of feeling shallowly “inspired” in ways that get them by without developing the tools to self-validate.
Sure, much of (not all, certainly!) the behavioral medication involves fitting (or not) into the mold of a “good productive worker” according to what markets dictate and pushing through day to day. Or other good “productive” member of society for other approvals. Friends who have left marriages in Provo UT for… reasons citing the state’s extremely high usage of antidepressants to get by.
I would probably be much more productive if I was proximal to Rick Rubin and Shangri-La and had attention sucks removed from my existence.
I would be less productive if I consumed media where he provided guru-like tidbits without any such changes to my physical environment.
I’ve watched a bunch of his interviews that pop up, and I think of him of like the Kitchen Nightmares for bands.
For me there’s nothing as out of touch than people who hang their ego on “how many records” they sold or how many grammy’s records won that they produced.
I got interested in him over bands I actually like, but the huge catalog of bands he’s worked with, I’m embarrassed to call music.
He is currently the king of commercial crap that get’s forced down peoples throat’s through add money.
I like some of his philosophy, but it’s not that mind blowin or unique.
To the OP, I don’t think your being too cynical, you nailed it.
I cant imagine having to hold that job up, having to hear countless shit songs and pretend you really believe in how good they are.
He is simultaneously talented, and a talentless hack
Popularity never amounted to quality in my book
To be fair, this is all anyone can do, speak from their own experience. It is difficult to generalize to the entire population because there is too much variety in experience, life, circumstance, wealth, health, etc. The self help genre is littered with books that only apply to 5% of the world’s population.