The ARC of a success story.

Just like playing along with hit songs to learn the recipe for songwriting success watching the arc and story of other music careers can be very helpful as well. Netflix has made this very easy and interesting for us to do.

I recently watched the documentary on Netflix called “Clive Davis - The Soundtrack of our Lives” and it was a very enlightening and insightful two hours of my life. Clive Davis had an amazing track record for discovering fresh and undiscovered talent such as Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, Alan Jackson, Brooks and Dunn, Brad Paisley, Barry Manilow, Alicia Keys, Sean “Diddy” Combs and his biggest discovery was Whitney Houston. These artists span a great bandwidth of music genres but the one common ingredient that the movie showed and what Clive insisted upon was it ALL started with writing or finding a “great song”. Clive knew the power of a strong song and it was really displayed when he gave Santana commercial success. Until Santana met Clive he really didn’t have much commercial success other than everyone respecting him for his musical guitar chops – once Clive came into the picture and insisted on strong songs and using outside songwriters and feature artists Santana’s career took off.

Clive loves what he does, that’s why he did it, that's why he was successful at it and he will be doing it till the day he dies. Clive Davis is currently 88 years old and still working for Sony Records as an executive. Just like Clive's career arc if you love doing it and don’t focus on being successful but rather just writing a great song and enjoying the process and creativity of it - finding success in your arc will be a natural ripple effect of all your hard work.

After watching numerous musical documentaries and reading many band/artist biographies I think these are some of the key ingredients for success in the music industry in decreasing order of importance:

1. Great Songs, creativity, intuition.

2. Hard work, passion, focus, a good attitude, persistence.

3. Authenticity, networking, helping others, integrity.

4. Talent and skill.

5. Luck and being in the right place at the right time.

Performing, musicianship and raw talent/skill matter but to me it’s farther down the list than most people think and other factors played a larger role. For me the song and its ability to create emotion and connect with others was the key ingredient for so much of the success I have observed in the music industry.

Other great music documentaries, movies and biographies that I have read or watched and would recommend:

Quincy – The Story of Quincy Jones

The Eagles - History of the the Eagles

Tom Petty - Running down a dream

Journey - Don’t Stop Believing’ - Every Man’s Journey

Elton John – Rocket Man

Ray - The Story of Ray Charles

Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody

Katy Perry - The movie

The Beach Boys - Love and Mercy

Lady Gaga - Gaga five foot two

Eminem - 8 mile

Straight Outta Compton – The Story of N.W.A

Taylor Swift - Miss Americana

Chicago – Now More Than Ever – The History of Chicago

Motley Crue – The Dirt (both the book and the movie)

AC/DC – Maximum Rock N Roll (Biography)

Stay in tune, stay in touch and stay healthy.

Kent