The Paradox of Taste: Why Loving Music Makes Writing It Harder
If you love music deeply, writing it can feel strangely difficult.
Not because you lack ideas.
Not because you don’t understand theory.
Not because you need another plugin or tutorial.
It’s harder because you know what good sounds like.
The more music you’ve listened to, studied, admired, and internalized, the higher the bar becomes. And that bar doesn’t wait politely at the end of the process. It shows up immediately--hovering over the first chord, the first melody, the first lyric.
Before the song has a chance to breathe.
That’s the paradox.
When Taste Becomes a Trap
Taste is what pulls us into music in the first place.
It’s why we notice beauty, tension, restraint, and emotional weight.
But taste has a shadow.
Refined taste means:
You hear flaws instantly
You sense when something feels derivative
You recognize when emotion doesn’t land
So instead of curiosity, you feel friction. Instead of momentum, you feel judgment.
The song isn’t even finished--and already it feels like it failed.
You’re not stuck.
You’re prematurely editorial.
Last Saturday, for the first time in about three years, I wrote my first piece of music.
A simple instrumental with an underlick and a simple song structure.
My intention was just to get back in the swing of things.
To write a piece of music using some of the techniques I’ve recently learned and see how they panned out.
But immediately upon finishing, the judgment was already sneaking in, and it made me feel like what I had created wasn’t good enough for my taste, that I wasn’t good enough to be doing this.
Why Beginners Finish More Songs Than “Serious” Musicians
This is uncomfortable, but true.
Beginners often finish more songs than people who “know what they’re doing.”
Not because beginners are better.
But because they’re less aware.
They don’t hear every mistake.
They don’t recognize every cliché.
They don’t carry the weight of comparison.
As skill increases, tolerance drops.
And unless you learn to manage that shift, taste becomes a brake instead of a guide.
Taste without restraint turns into self-sabotage.
The Skill Nobody Teaches: Delayed Judgment
Professionals don’t have lower standards.
They have better timing.
They understand that creation and evaluation are different modes, and mixing them too early kills both.
Great producers don’t avoid bad drafts.
They expect them.
They let rough ideas exist long enough to evolve. They allow awkward versions to pass through the system.
Taste is not meant to stop you at the door. It’s meant to shape what survives later.
Borrowed Confidence Beats Original Brilliance
Most unfinished songs die under the pressure of originality.
We want the first version to feel new.
Personal.
Distinct.
But originality doesn’t appear at the beginning of the process.
It emerges after repetition.
Early work is allowed to borrow:
Structure
Pacing
Emotional reference points
This isn’t weakness.
It’s apprenticeship.
You don’t earn originality by aiming for it.
You earn it by finishing enough work to develop a voice.
Write Past the Discomfort Point
There’s a moment in every song where enthusiasm fades, and resistance appears.
That moment is not a signal to stop.
It’s the threshold.
The rule is simple:
Finish the song--especially when you hate it.
Discomfort doesn’t mean the idea is bad.
It often means your taste is ahead of your execution.
That gap is where growth lives.
A Final Reframe
Loving music doesn’t make you a musician.
Finishing music does.
Taste is not your enemy--but it is not your judge.
It’s a compass.
Not a verdict.
Your job isn’t to sound good immediately. Your job is to survive your own standards long enough to improve.
And that, quietly, is the real work.
I love the reframe that taste is a compass, not a judge. That’s such a clean distinction, but I’ve been confusing the two for years. I’ve been letting my taste decide too early whether something deserves to exist, instead of letting it guide where the work should eventually go. No wonder so many ideas never make it past the intro. This issue helped me see that the problem isn’t high standards. It’s bad timing. Creation needs permission first. Judgment can come later, when there’s actually something to shape. Thank you Idris for these grounded tips with direction and Happy Friday!
This really resonated with how I move between my sketchbook, my journal and the canvas. I’ve noticed that the more I study color, composition and emotional restraint, the harder it becomes to let an image exist in its raw state. I’ll start judging a painting before it’s even found its shape. Reading this helped me realize that my journal is where the work is supposed to be messy, where taste can spill without consequence, so the painting itself doesn’t have to carry that weight too early. Finishing, even when the piece feels unresolved, has been the only way I’ve ever discovered something real hiding underneath my standards. Thank you Idris Elijah for this meaningful and enjoyable look at finishing your work!