The Characters of Imperfection & Perfection in Music

“Perfection” has never been more accessible than it is right now. It is in our faces, in our phones, in advertisements on our TVs, and in the tomatoes we buy at the store, but no matter how hard we seem to try, inside this “perfection” is a great well of imperfection. Fillers in our lips move, videos we watch distort in their fakeness, and fruits coated in wax to make them shine bruise nonetheless and are unfavorable in taste.  Imperfection is beautifully inevitable and that is perfectly and wonderfully okay, but we press on in pursuit of perfection.

Art and creative expression are definitive of the human condition, a medium to communicate our experiences and find connection with one another in transcendent ways. At its root, art is a manifestation of our humanity and desire to relate to one another. Trying to “perfect” something like that, to fit into a mold of what is “good” and “acceptable” and deserving of “commercial success,” is counterintuitive to the very human urge to create and the purpose of art.  Art that resonates is art that connects us; the monotony of perfection can kill good, valuable art if not used as a tool rather than a framework. The characters of perfection and imperfection ebb and flow with one another through the veins of creativity. 

This oxymoron of perfection and the striving for it exists heavily in the art form of music. The industry begs artists to stand out while still managing to fit in some mold, be authentic but not in a way that deviates too far, your songs should be specific to you but still fit into industry standards of sound.  You begin with a worktape, then you move on to a demo, then you record and tweak and tweak, then you mix, then master; every step brings you closer to some idea of perfection until it’s close enough to present it to the world. Newer technologies like AI, recording software, and auto-tune makes this idea of sonic perfection even more attainable. Songs are compressed to the gods, every note on pitch, and every instrument on time. While there is a place for processing, editing, and perfecting, the closer you get to perfection, the more you lose the humanness, and more than ever we exist in a time that craves authenticity and realness. It’s like the idea of yin and yang; when perfection surrounds us so, we crave the validation and relatability of imperfection. People always love to hear the demo version of a song and get to see behind the curtain, it makes people feel closer to the artist and creates this image of this often god-like celebrity entertainer being brought down to the same plane as the everyman. People want the art, and that isn’t necessarily just the product, part of the art is the process and the imperfection within that.

Imperfection and perfection need each other. The existence of any semblance of one doesn’t snuff out the other, it’s a balance of two complementary things that bring out the importance and message of the other. A perfect modern example of this is Charli xcx’s ‘brat’, an album that is heavily processed, every vocal tuned dramatically, electronically focused, perfectly on time, but at the same time it is messy and imperfect. It’s invigorating to be faced with such compelling imperfection and that comes from it being embraced and using the strive for perfection as a tool rather than a blueprint.  The album ended up being definitive of 2024 and the cadence of life at that time for so many. This masterful balance captured so many people, this straddling of the line between perfection and the chaos of imperfection, and that just came with embracing the process for what all it had to offer.  

A song will sound more subjectively perfect if you have the right resources. If you are in a high-end studio with expensive equipment and software, your song will sound more “perfect” than if you make it using a more makeshift setup. Everything will sound crisp and tuned, clear of imperfect takes or sounds of a car going by because your room isn’t soundproofed. But part of the story of a song is where and how it was created, and of course it sounds a bit different; how could a song recorded at a bedroom desk not sound different than a song recorded in a studio with hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into it?  Both are fantastic in their own right, and the existence of one doesn’t minimize the other; they both make the existence of the other more exciting.

A continuous voice for the cause of imperfection is Rick Rubin. He is a prolific record producer and music industry powerhouse, co-founding the label Def Jam Recordings, founding American Recordings, formerly sitting as co-president of Columbia Records and producing an astronomical amount of songs in a vast number of genres including hip-hop, metal, rap, rock, and pop music. Whilst being of the most legendary music industry folks, Rubin doesn’t know how to play instruments, read music, or use a soundboard, but this lack of technical knowledge can be freeing and shows in his work, career, and philosophy.  While there is such great value and unmatchable skill that comes from musicians and producers with deep technical knowledge, there is a liberation of art that comes from this lack of knowing. Rather than going through this filter of what is correct and what is not technically acceptable, expression and art becomes ruleless and more raw, beaming through a lens of almost childlike wonder and surprise. In some ways, learned technique is a direct line to perfection, and so a lack of thereof can open up the realm of possibility in what we create, like Rick Rubin. Yet again, perfection and technique are tools of great merit, but can turn into a box if that is your guiding light. rather than our shared humanity and imperfection. In his book ‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being’, Rubin sums up this thought saying “We’re all different and we’re all imperfect, and the imperfections are what makes each of us and our work interesting.”

Another magical and legendary tale of musical imperfection happened in 1968 at Trident Studios in London while The Beatles were recording their song “Hey Jude”.  In one of the takes for the song, Ringo had left the room to go to the bathroom and neither Paul nor the others had noticed him leave, so they began playing. About a minute into the song, Ringo made his way back from the toilets and tiptoed back into his drum booth so as to not interrupt the take. He took his seat and joined in; it was, in the words of Paul McCartney, magic. They ended up using that take. While subjectively imperfect, it was perfection and the happiest of mistakes.  The story of the song, sonically and in their time creating it, would be so different without the embrace of imperfection. It takes four legends of our time and presents them to us as four guys making music.

Imperfection is raw, relatable, open, honest, and is the connective tissue in the art we create and consume. It is intrinsically human to be imperfect and to seek imperfection, and perfection is often a valiant distraction from our humanity. There is time for the unreachable, but when that is overdone, things are stripped of the magic of the “that could be me” or “that is me” feeling that draws us so closely to music and the arts.  Whether it is two parts of the same whole, opposite sides of the same coin, or the yin to a yang, perfection and imperfection exist together but we only run from one; we shouldn’t.