Just over a week ago I found out that our video was in the APRA/What Now children's video of the year finals. What happened after I found out, was unusual....instead of being happy and excited, I felt on edge and a bit stressed about it.
Competitions are strange. They really are. We enter ...sometimes paying to enter, sometimes not....and then wait....
If you do make it into the 'finals', it's then onto the publicity. (Especially in the case of this particular competition where the winner is decided by public vote.) In this business, you have to be in the public's face as often as you can - so you try to seize every opportunity and see it as another step towards a sale. It often isn't! Turning votes, watches, people who love your songs, 'likes' on Facebook, happy dancing children at your concert...etc...into buyers, is the step in the game that's the most difficult. And for people like me, who aren't sales minded, nor egotistical (well, except when it comes to thinking my songs are awesome! ;)), nor pushy.....it's almost impossible.
When you don't get into a final, get a place or win a competition, it's always a funny feeling. It's always upsetting. You listen/watch/compare your stuff to the people who got in and sometimes you can understand the judges choices and sometimes you just can't. I find it hard to be unbiased. Very hard. And I suppose, if we as artists, didn't think we deserved to be in the top three, then we wouldn't be doing it! I can appreciate a good kids' song, but I'm very very picky.
There is definitely a sense that being beaten by someone else means you're obviously not as good as them at your 'craft'. Self-esteem often takes a bit of a beating.
I once declared I wouldn't enter any more contests!! And here I am giving myself a real battering!! This year I entered song, album AND video of the year. I didn't make the song or album final....but was lucky enough to make it into the video finals. Thanks to a lot of hard work and dedication by Aimee, her kids and Karl. And a good song.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this....there are a lot of us hard-working NZ children's entertainers/song writers...making a lot of kids happy....some of us travel a lot, visit a lot of kids, do a lot of different and sometimes ODD (and difficult) gigs. Most of us are not even close to rich - we are lucky to be making a living. We all have some die-hard fans and we are all grateful for those people who come to our concerts, buy our music and let us know how much they love us! We all write very different songs, for different age groups.
I'm not sure a competition is the way to 'measure' our success...perhaps the kids' faces/smiles/laughter/dancing/happiness/singing and sometimes hugs is??
What do you think?
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