The fear of releasing

There's a moment that repeats with every song and that I haven't managed to tame. Everything's ready. The lyric, the production, the cover, the music video. All that's left is to press the button. And there, in that second, a small, silly fear creeps in, like when you're about to call someone you fancy and your finger freezes over their name.

With 273 singles released, you'd think I no longer feel it. I do. Less than at the start, but I do. And I've stopped treating it as a problem to be solved. These days I see it more as a slightly tiresome colleague who's never going to leave.

What exactly I'm afraid of

I've tried to name it many times, because a nameless fear is much bigger than it ought to be. And I've come to the conclusion that it isn't fear of the song not being liked. That happens, and I handle it reasonably well. It's something else.

It's fear that once it's out it's no longer entirely mine. While it's on my computer I can change it, improve it, bin it. The moment it's out, it stays that way forever. With its flaws, with that line I was never quite sure of, with that shot in the video I'd have cut differently. Releasing means accepting that something is finished, even though I know it never entirely is.

And there's a second layer. My songs are about love between men, exes, self-esteem. With humour, yes, but humour doesn't cover everything. When I release, I show something. Not always something intimate, but something that matters to me. And showing what matters to you always leaves you a little cold.

What I got wrong at first

At first I tried to beat the fear with perfection. I thought if the song was perfect there'd be nothing to be afraid of. So I'd go over the lyric twenty times, listen to the production until I no longer knew whether I liked it, tweak the video one more frame.

It didn't work. The fear didn't shrink. All I achieved was delaying the release and reaching the button exhausted, with the song so pawed over it had lost some of its charm. Perfection doesn't remove fear. It just postpones it and fattens it up.

Nor did the opposite work, which was releasing without looking, recklessly, so the fear wouldn't have time to show up. That left me with the odd mistake that still annoys me and the feeling of not having cared for something that deserved care.

What works for me now

What works is separating two decisions I used to mix up. One is whether the song is ready. The other is whether I feel ready. They're different questions, and the second almost always gets the wrong answer.

If the song is ready, it goes out. Even if I'm scared. My test for knowing it's ready is fairly specific: the lyric has to hold up read aloud, the production has to serve the lyric and not the other way round, and the video mustn't contradict what the song says. If it ticks those boxes, my mood that day gets no vote.

Being CEO of my own label helps too. It sounds strange, but it's true. MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS has a schedule, even if I'm the one who sets it, and when a song has a date, I talk to my fear the way I'd talk to any other artist on the label. Kindly, and without letting it delay the release. It's a little fiction that lets me treat myself a bit more professionally.

Something similar happens with the music videos, with one difference. Since I direct them, the fear there is more visual. I'm afraid an image will say something the lyric doesn't, or say it too much. A song can be ambiguous and work well. A badly chosen shot closes it, over-explains it, takes away the viewer's chance to imagine. With more than 280 videos made, I still feel that pinch before releasing each one.

Not all fear is bad. There's a version that's useful to me. It's the one that turns up when something in the song isn't right and I haven't spotted it yet. A more specific fear, more localised, which isn't "releasing makes me dizzy" but "there's something off in the second chorus".

I've learnt to tell them apart. The general fear is vague, grabs me in the stomach and points at nothing. The useful one points at a spot. When the fear points, I go back to that spot and almost always find something. When it points at nothing, I release.

What happens afterwards

The funniest thing is what happens just after releasing. The fear vanishes almost instantly. In its place comes something like relief, and a few hours later, indifference, because I'm already thinking about the next song. That contrast makes me laugh. All that drama for one second, and then nothing.

So I try to remember, in the moment of the frozen finger, that the fear doesn't last. That in an hour I'll be on to something else. That the song will go its own way without me, and that this, which used to frighten me, is actually the best thing that can happen to it.

If you too have things tucked away unreleased, whether songs, writing or drawings, I won't tell you to lose your fear. I don't know how. I'll tell you not to let it decide. It can come with you, sit beside you, complain. But you're the one who presses the button.

What I've released afraid, which is nearly everything, is at mikesaintlouis.com.