To change or not to change?

These days, following the concert I’ve been to, I was thinking what’s actually better, to keep your musical direction over the years or to change it as the wind blows, to keep sales up?

I mean I was thinking about the way people accuse Manowar (is this a subject that keeps on returning to me?!!) of not changing their music too much over time. But isn’t that a good thing? I mean, as we have a saying here in Romania, some may be still searching, they’ve found it!!

Maybe this is what being vertical in music means, to keep your way of doing things(music) no matter how wind blows, how musical genders come and go.

I was thinking about Metallica and how people accused them of selling themselves by making a music that is “connected to our times”. Or Bon Jovi, as a matter of fact. If you put songs like Living on a prayer next to the acoustic ballads they make these days, it won’t sound too much alike, maybe only the voice is the same (and I would also have something to say about it…)

Changing your music over time means adapting, means exploring new grounds, means reaching new fans (how about losing old fans that followed you over the years and can’t find themselves in the music you are making now?).

Keeping your musical direction means adding new fans to old ones, without losing the fans that followed you over time. Maybe it won’t help you too much in exploring new grounds, but it means you have a vertical way of doing things.

Now, this is an older dilema of mine: what should you be: the captain leading the ship until the last moment, dying,  or the rat running away when the ship’s sinking, staying alive?

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