This article is more than 9 years old.
R&B recording artist John Legend knows something about producing creative content with which people want to engage. The video for the Grammy awarding-winning singer/songwriter’s latest song All of Me has been viewed over 160 million times on Youtube. Last night at Interact 2014, Oracle’s Marketing Cloud Conference, Legend kicked off the event by sharing songs and stories including his five keys for creativity.
- Study the greats – “It makes you realize what it takes to be the best.” Legend acknowledged the artist who came before him and what he learned from them. He advised “if you want to be great, know what great looks like.”
- Collaborate - “To be a great creative person, you have to be able to be a great collaborator. It opens your mind and pushes you in different directions than you may not have gone by yourself.”
- Be intentional – “While you should always be open to inspiration, you shouldn’t just flow around and wait for it to come to you. When I want to write a song, I actually book studio time, or I book an engineer and a co-writer to come over to my home studio. That way I feel like I’m accountable for my time and the time of others so I won’t procrastinate.”
- Be prolific – “You have to scrap a lot of ideas before you put anything out. For my last album I wrote about 80 songs but only put out 19 of them. Being prolific as a writer allows me choices and quality control so the songs I release are the best of the best of my catalog because I’ve written and written and written to build up a robust catalog.”
- Be inspired – “It’s not always about structure. When writing a great song, it also helps to be truly inspired by your life’s story. To write a great love song, it helps to be in love!”
