Artistic ego in music- good, bad or essential?
By: Dhinoj Dings
Tags: Songs, Music, Ego, Album, Society

Photo by Luis Ruiz from Pexels

The idea of artists imbuing their works with their ego is as true in music as in any other art form.

The word ‘ego’ generally gets a bad rap- viewed as it is as one of the more unfortunate aspects of human existence.

Objectively speaking, ego is the sense of I- which forms both the basis of your personhood or individuality and without which there is no such thing as a ‘subjective reality.’

And when we listen to an artist, more often than not he or she is singing about their subjective reality.

A song may be about a romantic experience that the artist once had which they wish to share with the audience. Or it could be about something that s/he feels they should rebel against, or perhaps the theme of a song is something a little offbeat- like a cloud drifting in the sky(Maybe, we are talking about a shoegaze album here?)

This last type of songs- the ones in which inanimate objects are the subject matter can be particularly revealing about the nature of the creator’s individual ego getting imprinted on the creation.

Sticking with our example of the drifting cloud(it’s one of those days, okay?) let’s assume that the singer sings that even though the cloud is drifting across the wide open sky, it only has the sky to move across. Let’s assume that the artist wrote this song when he or she was feeling confined in life for some reason, even after achieving pop superstardom. (BTW, we are only considering imaginary artists who write their own songs here).

In this case, what the artist mentions about the cloud having only the sky to move across is an apt reflection of his or her ego- the sense of I- which feels confined though the artist’s world feels almost as wide as the sky now that they are an international pop star.

Now, consider that in the song, they talk about the cloud being blood red in color- with the crimsonness getting brighter and brighter with every passing second. Further, imagine that they derive a strange sort of exhilaration from watching this phenomenon unfold.

In fact, at one point in the song, they sing that they couldn’t help but wait to see the clouds burst apart and a “million shards of red needles fall from the sky, plunging into his heart”(okay, that’s poor lyrics but please bear with me).

Imagine that the artist sings this with grudge against someone they believe did them something wrong.

In this case, again, we see the ego- the sense of I- getting hurt or rather the refection of that hurt in the song.

Such impinging of the ego on the material that the artist creates can not only be meaningful, without it, the act of creation itself wouldn’t be possible.

Put simply, it’s almost impossible to communicate meaningfully without bringing the ego into the picture.

This simple fact is often overlooked, especially in Eastern cultures where the notion of I, rightly or wrongly, is seen with skepticism.

But the significance of the ego as a force of creation, and through creation a potential agent of change couldn’t be over-stated.

The aim here is not to glorify the aspect of ego- its downsides are all too evident. But to paint it entirely in black- saying it’s all evil or all wrong is not helping anyone either.