Silence Your Inner Critic

No one knows your group’s weaknesses better than the members of your group. You know Ilsy’s high C is hit and miss. You know Kwame is a half beat behind on his box step. You know you’re not the first group to cover this song. Heck, you’re lucky if you’re among the first 50.

You can find any number of reasons to quail when you go in front of a crowd, or to more generally believe that your group hasn’t yet arrived at the level of success you were hoping for. But one of the great keys to not just singing, but performing is to turn off the reproachful part of your brain, and just focus on the moment.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t be open to feedback or think of ways to improve later; it is to say that there’s a great deal to gain from letting loose on stage. Think of all of those YouTube videos in which small children do something silly, or a cat falls off the side of the table. Do people watch these videos because they get a mean-spirited high out of making fun of simple creatures? Well, maybe a few of them do, but by and large, people give these sorts of videos hundreds of thousands of views because they’re enamored with the good-natured, ingenuous nature of watching someone who doesn’t know enough to be self-conscious, and instead just is.

Silence your inner critic. Let go of what you may be doing wrong, or where someone else may have come up short and sing your heart out.