Rick Rubin: Why The Audience Should Come Last For An Artist

Do I ever face the inner critic of “What if other people don’t like this?”

No. I don’t consider them at all. The audience comes last. I’m not making it for them; I’m making it for me. And, it turns out, that when you’re making something that is truly for yourself, you’re doing the best thing that you possibly can for the audience. This is so much of why, if you go to the movies, so many big movies are just not good: they’re not being made by a person who cares about it. They’re being made by people who are trying to make something that someone else will like. And that’s not how art works.