Average Jane Rolls with the Punches

Remember last month when I was all excited about my band’s latest song, Predator?

I posted it to GarageBand.com and entered it into their review system, then sat back and waited to see what that community thought of it.

Well, they hated it. A lot.

The negative reviews came fast and furious. To paraphrase: It’s not metal…well, not contemporary metal anyway. You guys must be OLD. The lyrics are stupid. The vocalist sounds like Geddy Lee from Rush. (We actually got a Best Male Vocals nomination somewhere along the line.) The guitars suck. There’s no hook. The chorus is horrible.

It went on and on and on.

At first it was kind of a slap in the face to be reading all of these terrible criticisms about a creative work that I had been quite proud of. Every time a new one came in, it was as bad or worse than the ones that came before it. Clearly we had a flawed song on our hands.

The band discussed things and agreed that the reviewers had some valid points. We really aren’t a metal band by current standards. "Hard Rock" is a better, more all-encompassing category for us. The chorus is too repetitive and needs to be rewritten. Even though we’d worked hard on the guitar sound, we hadn’t really gotten it where it should have been before releasing the song.

The internet offers some fascinating opportunities for creative people to get good, solid feedback on their work before they try to do something commercial with it. Of course, you may also get rude comments from bored teenagers in Denmark, but that’s just part of the experience.

Learning to take criticism is a tough thing to do. The ego gets bruised and pouty for a while. Ultimately, though, it helps you change things for the better. But I’d still like to teach some manners to a couple of the little punk reviewers!