“Sounds like 99% of ’em are shit! It’s the one percent I’m interested in.”
– Dick James in the movie “Rocketman”
The 1% music publisher Dick James was referring to turned Elton John into one of the bestselling musicians of all time.
It’s my favorite quote from the movie about Elton Johns life.
The one percent were indeed golden.
But.
What’s so easily overlooked is that the 1% wouldn’t have happened without the 99%.
You must get the bad stuff out in order to get to the gold. (And it can be a lot of bad stuff.)
It’s no difference for the geniuses. They make tons of bad stuff around the 1%.
Most of it, they don’t publish. It goes to the trash directly.
But they keep going and looking for the 1%.
If you’re willing to invest the time and effort, as Dick James concludes in Rocketman:
“You never know. One day, you might have enough for an album.”
