What I Listen fo Before I decide to take on a project
Every week I get demos. Some come through my website, some through socials, some forwarded by people I know. I listen to all of them — at least for a few minutes each — and I've been doing this long enough to know within the first thirty seconds whether something has it.
What's "it"? That's what I want to talk about. Because it's not what most people think.
It's not production quality. I don't care if your demo sounds like it was recorded in a closet on a USB mic or its just singing into your phone. That's what producers are for. The raw recording is actually easier to hear through when it isn't dressed up in production that doesn't fit the song yet.
It's not how many streams you have, how many followers, or whether you've been on a playlist. I've worked with artists who had nothing and made music that stopped me cold. Those are some of my favorite sessions.
It's not even whether the song is "finished." Half the projects I take on start with something incomplete — a verse and a hook, a chord progression with a melody sketch over it, a voice memo from a car ride. Unfinished is fine. Unformed is different.
What I'm actually listening for is a point of view.
When I hear a demo, I'm asking: do I know who this person is? Not just their genre, not just their sonic references — I mean their actual authentic perspective on the world. The thing that makes their voice, specifically, worth hearing.
The artists I do my best work with are the ones who have that, even if they can't articulate it yet. You can hear it in the way they phrase a melody, in the words they choose, in what they choose NOT to say. There's a specific gravity to someone singing their own truth versus someone trying to sound like a reference track.
I worked with a songwriter once who sent me a demo that was almost unlistenable — the recording was genuinely rough, the arrangement was barely there. But the lyric and melody in the chorus stopped me completely. It was unexpected and completely specific to her life in a way that made me lean forward. That's what I'm listening for. That moment of leaning forward.
The second thing I listen for is ambition.
Not career ambition — I mean artistic ambition. Is this song trying to do something? Is there a reason it exists beyond sounding good? The best songs have an argument. A mood they're trying to create, an emotion they're trying to move, a moment they're trying to capture. Even pop music — especially pop music — works best when there's something at stake in it.
This is actually the thing I spend the most time on in the pre-production phase I do with every artist I work with. We talk about the song before we ever touch an instrument. What is this trying to do? Who is it for? What does it feel like when it's working? That conversation shapes everything that comes after.
The third thing — and this is the hardest to explain — is fit.
Not every great song is one I can make better. Some artists have a sound that isn't in my wheelhouse, or a vision that would be better served by a different kind of producer. I'd rather tell someone that early than take the project and deliver something that doesn't serve them. The fit has to go both ways. I have to be genuinely excited about the music — because that excitement is what you're actually paying for. When I'm not excited, I'm just executing. And executing is not the same thing as creating.
When those three things are there — a real point of view, genuine artistic ambition, and a project I know I can actually take somewhere — that's when I say yes. And when I say yes, I'm all in. I'll push back when I think the bridge needs to move, I'll suggest a key change at 2am if I've been thinking about it, I'll tell you when I think the chorus is perfect and we should leave it alone. My investment in the song doesn't end when the session does.
If you've read this far, you probably have a sense of whether you're the kind of artist I'm describing. If you are — I'd genuinely love to hear what you're working on.
