“Ueaugehgugh!”
Octavia winced as Vinyl stomped past her into the room, making a beeline for the couch, emitting a single, long, frustrated groan as she did so.
“Vinyl? Are you okay?”
“Mmmpf,” Vinyl said, the noise finally subsiding as she buried her face in the cushions.
“That’s… not really an answer,” Octavia said as she closed the door. It wasn’t the first time that she had seen Vinyl get into a bad mood and crash on the couch. For the most part, all of her little tantrums had been preceded by some legitimate, though small annoyance, and tended to end within a few minutes, usually when Vinyl decided that she was hungry. Octavia slowly pushed her half-eaten bag of corn puffs out of view, just in case. “Come on, Vinyl. What happened?”
Vinyl made another angry grumbling sound.
“I didn’t catch that,” Octavia said. “You’ll have to speak up.”
Vinyl finally raised her head from the pillow, looked up at the ceiling, and said “UGGGGHHHH!”
“See, when I said ‘speak up,’” Octavia said, rolling her eyes, “I mean that you needed to use words.”
“Oh, don’t even start,” Vinyl muttered, half to herself. “It’s been a bad enough day without having to listen to that.” Vinyl rolled over. She lay on the couch so limply that she almost looked like she had started to melt.
“So what exactly made this day so awful?” Octavia asked carefully.
“Everything, pretty much. I’ve been fighting with my producer for weeks over my new single. Gotta build up hype for the album, you know? It took me like four days to convince him that it didn’t need that much bass.”
Octavia bit her lip to keep herself from making the obvious comment. It wasn’t the time.
“And before you say it, yeah yeah, I know, ‘since when do you think there’s such a thing as too much bass?’ You have to have a solid bassline, obviously, but even I know that it can’t overwhelm everything else in the song! He kept trying to mix it so you could barely even hear the other instrumentation. It took me forever to finally convince him that there was more to the genre than just that. How does somebody like that even become a producer in the first place?!”
“I have no idea,” Octavia said. “But you did convince him eventually, right?”
“Yeah,” Vinyl said with a sigh. “Eventually he just let me mix it myself. Got it exactly how I wanted it to begin with.” Her voice was heavy and tired. “It finally just came out last Friday.”
“And?” Octavia prompted.
“Well, the reviews started coming back in. They were… only alright. Not nearly as good as I had hoped.” She gritted her teeth before forcing out the last few words. “They thought there wasn’t enough bass.”
“Oh.” A brief temptation to smirk flitted through Octavia’s head, but she suppressed it. “Really?”
“Yes, really!” Vinyl shoved a magazine clipping in Octavia’s face. “Read it yourself!”
Octavia took the paper and smoothed out the crumples it had gotten from being stuffed in Vinyl’s pocket. “‘Listening to DJ PON-3’s latest single, she comes across like an old mare struggling to keep up with the young roughnecks—especially tragic since she so recently was part of that cutting edge herself. She goes loco for every frequency except bass; the result is melodic, even catchy in an anemic way, but lacking that undefinable drive that made her earlier singles so exciting. No doubt this track will be a huge hit among headphone-listening hipsters who’ll never darken the doorway of a dance club. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to hope that this was just an experiment, and that PON-3’s upcoming album will better showcase her strengths. Rating: 6.3/10.’” Octavia lowered the paper. “Well, it’s not exactly a glowing review, but it’s not that bad. And it’s only one review.”
“It’s not just one review,” Vinyl said bitterly. She reached into her bag and pulled out another scrap of paper. “Look! ‘DJ PON-3: slouching towards irrelevance?’” And another. “‘Electronic wunderkind delivers a disappointing follow-up.” And another. “‘WHERE’S THE BASS?’” She flung another half-dozen scraps in the air and flopped back onto the couch. “Some are better than others, but they’re all pretty middle-of-the-road. I didn’t get panned, but none of them are that great either.”
“They’re all like that?”
“Well, not all,” Vinyl admitted. “Pierogi Scruff gave it zero stars, but he basically hates music in general and never gives anything a good review. I got a perfect ten from Rolling Pone, but I could send them a recording of me blowing my nose into the microphone and they’d probably give it at least a seven and a half.”
Octavia began to gather up the bits of paper that Vinyl had scattered on the floor. “Since when do you care about what the critics say?”
“I don’t,” Vinyl said emphatically, a little too emphatically if anything. “But somepony else might. It just doesn’t look good if somepony looks up your song and sees reviews that look like that. Besides, what if… oh never mind.” She rolled over to face away from Octavia.
Octavia thought for a moment before speaking. “What if what?”
“You know, it’s just… I spent all that time fighting over how to mix that song, and then it comes out and that’s the thing that everybody complains about. What are the chances of that? I can’t believe I screwed that up!”
“Everypony makes mistakes,” Octavia said. The platitude was a bit cliche, but it was true and it was certainly applicable. “It’s nothing to feel too bad about.”
“That’s not the problem! What bugs me is how he was right! He’s never listened to anything that wasn’t a top ten hit, but he was right! He’s been bothering me about the different mixes and song structures instruments and production and all this stuff and I’ve been fighting him over all of it!”
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” It was another cliche, but again, it fit too well not to use it.
“I think it’s more than that, though,” Vinyl mumbled into the couch cushions. “It’s like, at first I thought he was just an idiot, but now I think I know what’s going on. He does know what he’s talking about, but it’s just not helping me! All the changes he’s making. He’s not just trying to change random things, it’s like he’s trying to take me out of the music. It just took this song to get me to recognize the pattern. Every single thing he suggests makes the music sound more like every other song. Any time I want to do anything that isn’t ‘normal’ I have to fight tooth and nail for it.”
“Yes, I can see why that would be quite aggravating,” Octavia said. “But then again, isn’t it his job to do that?”
“His job should be to help me make a good album! A good one. One that sounds like the kind of music I make! Not one that sounds the same as everything else!”
“So you want to create something less popular?”
“I… I don’t even know anymore!” Vinyl began to beat her head against the armrest. “I want as many ponies as possible to like my music, obviously, but I want it to be my music. Something that sounds like something I would make, not something that sounds like I’m riding the industry’s coattails. Even if it might not sell as much.” She rolled back over. “I know it’s kind of dumb, and I can’t expect my record company to take the hit for me, but you’d think that they’d at least want to put out something unique.”
Octavia cocked her head. “But didn’t you know about this before you were signed to your label? I know I’ve heard you complain about it before.”
“Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t be surprised. There are just so many other bands and artists who manage to put out such great music despite all of that. And I was supposed to be one of them. And now…”
“What, you don’t think you can anymore?” Against all odds, Octavia found herself getting annoyed. Not at Vinyl’s presence or even her moping, but at the notion that Vinyl would dare to consider giving up in the first place. “All of that talk about how you were going to be the next big thing and create the greatest… whatever album ever? After making me sit through that you’re just going to give up on actually doing it?” She sniffed. “I may have had my doubts that you would truly be that excellent, but I never doubted that you would always keep trying!”
“Who said I wasn’t going to try!?” Octavia could feel Vinyl’s glare through the glasses. It probably wasn’t quite as fierce as Vinyl wanted it to be. Her voice wavered as she talked. “I’m just… it’s hard to know exactly what I’m trying to do. I want to make an album that sounds like me, but I have to make something that will sell, and I have to do it with the label looking over my shoulder the whole time. It was so much easier when I was just making the music I wanted to make. All I want is to make music that I can be proud of, you know?”
“Of course,” Octavia nodded. “That’s all that any real musician wants, after all.”
“Yeah, I guess. I just- wait just a second.” She nearly sprained her neck as she turned to look at Octavia. “You actually think of me as a musician? A real musician?”
“Listen,” Octavia said. “I will admit that our tastes may differ by quite a wide margin, but after everything you’ve been through, I cannot question your dedication. Whether that song is excellent or terrible or mediocre I have no idea. But I do know that it was the result of you trying to create the best music you could, right?”
“Obviously. You think I try to make lousy music?”
“All I am saying is that just because the critics weren’t as happy as you hoped doesn’t mean you can’t still be proud of your song. Whatever anypony says about it, it’s still yours. If you aren’t satisfied with how it turned out, then take what you learned from this one and make the next one even better.”
Vinyl looked up and finally smiled. It wasn’t a very confident smile, but it was there. “Yeah, you’re right. So what if they didn’t like it as much as I did? That experiment was just a stepping stone to something even more awesome. Besides, there are plenty of albums that ended up being legendary even though the critics hated them.” She rolled back over, but now her pose was more natural, more relaxed. “I could handle that.”
Octavia cleared her throat. “I think you might be getting ahead of yourself there.”
“Better than getting behind myself,” Vinyl said with a shrug. “You don’t mind if I take a quick nap, do you? I haven’t been getting too much sleep lately.”
“Go right ahead. I was just about to head out anyway. Just make sure you lock the door when you go.”
Vinyl snored in response. Octavia shook her head.
“I guess I’ll have to leave a note.”