On Wednesday afternoon, five-time Juno winner David Usher spoke at the MeshMarketing, a conference devoted to helping public relations and marketing professionals gain fresh insight into their craft. The charismatic singer delivered a captivating presentation on the nature of creativity and how anyone can learn to be more creative.
Usher began his presentation by sharing an anecdote about a recent layover he had at Heathrow Airport. While waiting to board his plane, Usher was approached by fan who told him that she loved his song “St Lawrence River” – and it was at this point that Usher began to serenade the audience with the song. The conversation that the two were having eventual led to the women admitting, “I’d love to do something like that, but I’m just not creative enough.” It’s this sentiment, and Usher’s belief in how wrong it is, that formed the basis of his 45-minute presentation.
For Usher, creativity is not something a lucky few are born with. Instead, it’s a skill that takes hard work and discipline to develop and hone. According to the 46-year-old, “Creativity is not a science. But it’s also not magic, either. It’s a learnable skill, and anyone can learn to be more creative.” Learning how to be creative, however, takes time and practice, and to that effect, Usher offered several tips to attendees to help get them started on the path to being more creative.
According to Usher, the greatest obstacle to being creative is a combination of fear and resistance. As we grow up, we learn the rules and limits that govern our lives. That is, the codes of love, life, work, and law become intrinsic to how we function as a human being, and we quickly learn to love those rules, because they bring about predictable and dependable outcomes. After all, it’s as Usher says, “When I’m driving a car, I love the fact that you will stop at a red light.” Real-life needs rules to function properly and effectively, but being creative, by its very nature, entails stepping out of one’s comfort zone and embracing potentially disastrous outcomes.
One of those potential outcomes is rejection, and, let’s be honest, few of us are prepared to deal with being rejected. But even a successful recording artist like Usher had to learn to deal with it. In 1994, when Moist, the band David Usher was fronting at the time, released “Push,” it quickly became popular in Canada and other countries around the world. But after the song’s subsequent release in the United States, Beavis and Butt-head lampooned the song, saving particular scorn for David and his voice. According to Usher, he learned a valuable lesson that day: “Sometimes you will get that kind of Beavis and Butt-head type treatment. You won’t die from it. Instead, take a deep breath, and move on to your next project.” It’s an age-old lesson, to be sure, but one that’s worth repeating.
In addition to rejection, one of the most common reasons people delay being creative is the excuse of not having the time or space to be creative. That is, we are constantly waiting for conditions to be perfect before we try to be creative. Unfortunately, conditions are never perfect, and waiting for them to be perfect means that you will be waiting a long time. This fact was beautifully illustrated by the singer when he played a demo recording. The recording features Usher quietly singing a song he was working on at the time, but, in short order, his young daughter enters the mix, singing Green Day’s “Good Riddance” and she quickly overtakes her father.
Usher’s final tip to attendees was to look everywhere and anywhere for inspiration. To illustrate this point, he told the story of he came up with the idea for the song “Black Black Heart.” In 2000, he heard Eminem’s “Stan.” Usher was captivated by the song – in particular the element that British singer Dido added to it – so he decided to try and rework the song’s melody and grove into one of the songs he was working on at the time. At the same time, one of Usher’s friends was trying to incorporate Léo Delibes’s “The Flower Duet (Lakmé)” into a more mainstream 4/4 time song. When his friend told about what he was trying to do, David had a moment that he described as a “creative collusion.” He thought their two disparate ideas could be made into a cohesive and compelling whole, so he went ahead and combined them. The result was one of the most popular songs he’s released to date.
Usher ended his presentation by reiterating that creativity is learnable skill. Promising that those who consistently work at embracing and refining it will be rewarded. Best of all, however, those who embrace working at being creative will develop a skill that is transferable to any field – whether that be music, marketing and public relations, or the world of high-tech startups.
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Igor Bonifacic is a writer working for the Toronto Standard. You can follow him on twitter at @igorbonifacic.
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