How To Make Your Creativity Beat The Algorithm (w/Live Performance) - Dylan Gossett - #1155

I’m bringing this live show around the UK and Ireland in October. Dublin’s gone, but there are limited tickets elsewhere; it’s a custom thing I’ve spent more than a year building, and I genuinely love doing it.

That opening song was about Austin, Texas. “Coal” began fast: pressure making diamonds but me still feeling cold—that’s a song. I built it verse by verse in our apartment, phone balanced on the dog kennel before drinks with work friends. Julia was so stoked she started showing everybody videos, and I was like, cats out of the bag.

You then sat on a song that reached half a billion streams. That’s mad. One of my mates was secretly doing the same thing—guitar, great voice, no urge to tell people—until we basically bullied him into playing.

I left “Coal” alone for maybe a year or two because I wasn’t online or releasing anything. Camping with Caden and our wives, I played it, and Caden made me sing it again. Julia said, just put something on TikTok. I hated the idea, but tried it, and somehow it became enormous.

I was in Austin working event operations at Circuit of the Americas, after starting as an intern and basically living there in my parents’ RV. Formula One season can mean twenty-hour days. Life with Julia and our dog was good, but I was working hard, not feeling like I was moving, in a pit like everybody gets sometimes.

That’s why it lands: people put effort in and expect a neat return, but life stores the work before it pays anything back. “Coal” feels like improving yourself while still feeling alone and like a failure. That’s a hell of a summary.

Yeah. I’m grateful for the real-world stuff before music happened. If it blew up five years sooner, I don’t think I’d be touring like this. Music’s also a business; some days I feel more like a manager than the dude who strums a guitar. Those years gave me something to come back to.

Success crowds out the work that got you there. The baker who loves baking ends up running payroll. You’ve got to protect walks, fishing afternoons, and time marinating in ideas, even when they look less productive than emails.

Expectations move. I wrote “Coal” because I loved picking up the guitar; it was recorded on my laptop at the edge of the bed, and we had to pull it down to fix the mastering. Today I might go, what is this, dude? But I’m living my dream. Four years ago, stressing about album rollout or Nashville signings would’ve been the dream. Julia’s the best teammate.

The first clip did nothing. I kept posting, released another song first, then tried “Coal” again with a little traction. I held the strongest payoff back instead of shaving it into a tiny clip. Another take, another weather day, any small thing, and we’re not here. I believe things happen for a reason.

Once stripped-back material works, doesn’t authenticity become a marketing costume? There’s polished at one end, raw at the other, and the middle is brutal. Acoustic guitar can apparently be the whole admission price now.

I wouldn’t fake authenticity; people are too smart for that. I’ve resisted formulas, ads, endless pre-saves, and posting the same song fifty times. Maybe that cost me something. Teams can seed songs into moody truck-video accounts, and that gets ears, but it can’t make an ordinary song stick.

Ticket sales matter more than another viral blip. Shows growing means people want to come. Touring’s tougher because everyone’s out there, and fans may only afford one show. A stadium date for Julia and me can become a four-figure day with travel, parking, shirts. We’re lucky we can keep playing; that’s what I’m protecting.

A big moment can arrive before somebody’s ready, and maintaining it’s harder than getting it. Mine happened after Julia and I got married and settled in. I’ve unfollowed country accounts because social media becomes promotion, comparison, noise. I need a life outside the industry.

You need life for art to imitate. If a marketer consumes only marketing people talking marketing, where does a new thought come from?

I used to be the guy I’d want Dylan to make music for. I have to find my way back to him. Writing starts on the couch while Julia and I watch whatever bullshit’s on TV. I sing nonsense until a melody and a word arrive. I’m noodling because I love it; that’s where the stuff I like comes from.

I’m more open to collaboration now, but writing may be my bigger passion than singing, and I’m particular about what a song says. If I have almost all of one and just need a bridge, part of me wants to finish the thought myself.

That ownership question is coming for everybody with AI. Easy output is tempting; do you preserve the difficult last bit that makes it yours?

Your phone asks to answer messages and summarize things. I turned that stuff off. Technology isn’t evil—I’m not hand-washing clothes for the honor of it—but art and sentiment are different. The win hits because you failed, kept failing, then made something that connects. If everything is handed over, where are the highs and lows?

Perfection can sand the life out of music. Now you can build a flawless performance note by note. I like imperfections remaining. The funny danger is trying so hard to manufacture naturalness that it becomes performative real.

Technology also lets a kid make a laptop song and compete with huge releases; “Coal” is proof. But once something works, thousands ask how to replicate it. With AI, you can usually feel whether you’re making the music or something else is doing it for you.

Country can be where guys say things they’d never drop in the group chat. At our shows, dudes have arms round each other singing every word. It’s kind of dude therapy: music gives distance from vulnerability while letting people feel it together.

There’s a push and pull between expanding and giving listeners what they came for. People hear a porch acoustic clip and want that forever. I don’t want to get trapped as the acoustic sad-guy thing. I make what I love and try not to overthink it.

That’s audience capture: people fall for a version of you until you resent the shape you made yourself become. The opposite is criticism capture. Both can warp the work.

Instant feedback makes it harder. You walk offstage and opinions are waiting on your phone. I’d rather feel out the new record than calendarize singles. I miss albums arriving as twelve unknown songs. There’s a line between serving the music and servicing the system.

I’ll leave you with “Clothesline” from the new album. It might be a single; I don’t know yet. That’s the point—I’m keeping room to decide by feel. The album lands September twenty-fifth. Appreciate the heck out of you, man.

Thanks for coming in. Goodbye, my beauties.