I don't really look at the charts at all. If anything, I try to out-do what I've done before. I try to make music that I like and I trust my own judgement with what will work with a wider audience. If you compare yourself to the charts, you lose perspective on what you're doing and why you're doing it.
Interpretation
Focus on personal creativity rather than external validation.
Avicii emphasizes the importance of prioritizing one's artistic integrity and personal satisfaction over seeking commercial success or comparisons to mainstream charts. By trusting one's own judgment and creativity, an artist can maintain authenticity and clarity in their work without losing perspective on what truly matters to them.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about artistic integrity in a music industry conference.
I love finding out-of-the-box inspirations and blending them with what I've done in the past. And when I started to experiment with genres, it didn't sound forced. Maybe that's because it's all music that I listened to growing up, and it's all music that I love.
If I wanted to make a quick buck, there's far easier ways of doing it. What I want is to provoke people. If you want a hit song, all you need to do is rewrite an old song. It might have been proven to work, but you won't be remembered the same way.
Life's a game made for everyone, and love is the prize.
A lot of work and thinking goes into my DJing. I want the entire night to progress seamlessly and when I have to adapt the energy on the fly for the crowd on any given night, I can do so with harmonic mixes that I've practiced over and over again. I am far from the only DJ that does this and it's something I take pride in being able to do.
When you work with Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, and you tell them to jump without a net, you better know what you're talking about. Thank God I was ready for it.
As a very small girl, I listened to Charlie Parker and loved him and Max Roach and people like that.
I don't make Christian rap, but I am a Christian rapper.
Rappers act so wild, and love to profile,_x000D_ _x000D_ Frontin' hard, but ain't got no style.
Silence ought also to be the core of each concert. Remember the anagram: listen = silent.
When my time is up in hip-hop, it's going to remain what Afrika Bambaataa thought it was supposed to be. It's going to remain what Kool Herc thought it was supposed to be; what Wu-Tang Clan sees it as; what Outkast sees it as; what Snoop Dogg sees it as. People are trying to forget that brand of hip-hop.
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