There’s a particular species of musician haunting every open mic, every Instagram reel, every “networking” event in this city. You know the type. They’ve got 47 followers, a two-song EP recorded on a USB mic, and they introduce themselves as “an artist” with the gravity of someone accepting a Grammy.
I’ve been playing jazz guitar in New York for a while now—Cellar Dog, The Bitter End, Tin Marín, places where you show up, you play, you get paid (sometimes), and you go home. It’s not glamorous. Most nights, you’re background music to first dates and birthday dinners. The bartender is louder than your amp. Someone’s always asking if you can play “something they know.” And that’s fine. That’s the work.
But somewhere along the way, a whole generation convinced themselves that wanting to be an artist is the same as being one. That posting a cover on TikTok is equivalent to years of shed time. That calling yourself a “creative” absolves you from actually creating anything of substance.
Welcome to the delulu era.
What Is Delulu, Exactly?
For the uninitiated, “delulu” is internet slang for delusional—specifically, the kind of self-aggrandizing delusion where someone genuinely believes they’re operating at a level they haven’t remotely earned. In the music world, it manifests as a strange inversion of reality: people who’ve done almost nothing acting like they’re on the verge of everything.
It’s not confidence. Confidence comes from competence, from accumulated experience, from having been tested and survived. Delulu is confidence’s unhinged cousin—loud, unearned, and weirdly fragile when confronted with reality.
And it’s everywhere.
The Delulu Checklist
You might be suffering from delulu if:
You spend more time curating your aesthetic than practicing your instrument. Your Instagram grid is meticulously color-coordinated, but you can’t play through a jazz standard without a chart in front of you.
Your bio says “musician / producer / visionary / creative director” but you’ve never played a paid gig. You’ve never actually directed anything. The slashes are doing a lot of heavy lifting.
You talk about “your sound” like it’s a proprietary secret when it’s actually just you, GarageBand loops, and whatever the algorithm told you was trending last month.
You’ve declined opportunities because they weren’t “on brand.” Someone offered you a gig and you said no because the venue “didn’t align with your vision.” Your vision is currently a bedroom and a ring light.
You describe yourself as “slept on” when nobody’s heard of you because you haven’t done anything yet. Being unknown isn’t the same as being underrated. Underrated implies there’s something to rate.
You’ve got a “team” that consists of your roommate who occasionally films your stories. You refer to this person as your “creative partner.”
You network aggressively but never actually follow through on anything. You’ve exchanged numbers with a hundred musicians and collaborated with zero.
You genuinely believe you’re one viral moment away from making it—and you’ve believed this for three years straight without changing your approach.
Where Does This Come From?
I think about this a lot, actually. Why now? Why is this particular brand of delusion so prevalent?
Part of it is the internet, obviously. Social media flattened the visual distance between amateur and professional. With the right lighting and the right filter, anyone can look like they belong. The aesthetics of success are more accessible than success itself. You can buy the outfit before you’ve learned the craft.
Part of it is the way we talk about artistry now. Somewhere along the line, we decided that self-identification was enough. You are whatever you say you are. “I’m an artist” became a declaration rather than a description of activity. And sure, there’s something democratizing about that. But it also severed the word from any actual meaning. If everyone’s an artist, no one is.
And part of it, honestly, is that being a working musician is really hard and really unglamorous, and the delulu mindset is a way to skip the painful part. If you’re already great in your own mind, you don’t have to sit with how much you don’t know. You don’t have to grind through the years of being mediocre in public. You get to feel like you’ve arrived without ever making the trip.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s what nobody wants to hear: obscurity is the default. Attention is earned through relentless, unglamorous work—years of it. The musicians I respect most? They’re at jam sessions on Tuesday nights when nobody’s watching. They’re taking gigs that pay $75 and a free drink. They’re studying, transcribing solos note by note, failing publicly, and getting better anyway.
They’re not thinking about their brand. They’re thinking about their sound—their actual sound, not the one they describe in their bio.
I’ve shared stages with guys who’ve been playing professionally for decades. Guys who’ve toured with names you’d recognize. You know what’s striking about them? They’re humble. Not falsely modest, but genuinely aware of how much they still have to learn. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. That’s not a cliché; it’s a lived experience. The delulu crowd has it exactly backwards: they’re confident because they haven’t learned enough to understand their own limitations yet.
The Economy of Pretending
Here’s the thing that really gets me: delulu isn’t free. It has costs.
It costs you growth. If you already think you’re great, why would you practice? Why would you study? Why would you take criticism seriously? The delulu mindset is a growth-stopper disguised as self-belief.
It costs you relationships. Other musicians can smell it. The people who are actually doing the work don’t want to collaborate with someone who’s convinced they’re doing them a favor by showing up. The scene is small. People talk. If you’re known as the person who’s all image and no substance, doors close quietly and you never know why.
It costs you opportunities. I’ve seen talented people turn down opening slots, session work, or “lesser” gigs because they thought they deserved better. Then they wondered why their career stalled. Meanwhile, the musicians who said yes to everything—who showed up, did the work, were easy to work with—built actual networks and actual reputations. The gig you think is beneath you might be the one that leads somewhere. But you’ll never know if you’re too busy protecting your imaginary status.
And honestly? It costs you the joy of the thing. When you’re performing an identity instead of making music, you miss the actual experience. You’re so worried about how it looks that you forget how it feels. The best moments I’ve had on stage are the ones where I forgot anyone was watching—where I got lost in the tune, in the conversation between instruments, in that feeling of being inside the music. That’s why we do this. Not for the aesthetic. Not for the followers. For that.
The Role Models Are Telling You Something
Every great musician I’ve ever admired has stories about the years of grinding. About playing empty rooms. About being broke and unknown and wondering if it was worth it. About getting humiliated by musicians better than them and using that humiliation as fuel.
Coltrane practiced until his lips bled. Charlie Parker shed for years in Kansas City before anyone cared. Even the overnight successes weren’t overnight—they just had their difficult years before anyone was paying attention.
The mythology of genius is comforting because it suggests some people are just born with it. But the reality is more demanding and more beautiful: the greats made themselves through thousands of hours of deliberate, unglamorous work. They weren’t delulu. They were obsessed—not with the image of being an artist, but with the actual pursuit of mastery.
If your heroes put in that kind of work, what makes you think you get to skip it?
A Little Self-Awareness Goes a Long Way
Look, I’m not immune to this. I’d be lying if I said I’d never imagined bigger stages, record deals, the whole trajectory that probably isn’t coming. Every musician has those moments. The fantasy isn’t the problem. The problem is when the fantasy replaces the work instead of fueling it.
The antidote to delulu isn’t self-hatred—it’s honesty. It’s looking at where you actually are, accepting it without shame, and figuring out what comes next. It’s asking yourself uncomfortable questions: Am I actually getting better? When’s the last time I learned something new? Am I putting in the hours, or am I just performing the idea of putting in the hours?
Play the gig. Record the song. Put it out. Accept that most of it won’t land. Keep going anyway.
That’s what separates artists from people who just like the idea of being one.
The Path Forward
If any of this hit a nerve, good. That’s the point. Not to make you feel bad, but to shake something loose. The delulu mindset is comfortable, and comfort is the enemy of growth.
Here’s what I’d say to anyone who recognized themselves in this post:
Start small and finish things. One complete song is worth more than fifty ideas in your Notes app. One real gig is worth more than a thousand networking conversations. Execution beats intention every single time.
Find people who are better than you and get close to them. Not to network—to learn. Sit in. Listen. Watch how they practice, how they prepare, how they carry themselves. Absorb everything you can.
Accept feedback, especially when it stings. The criticism that bothers you most is usually the criticism you most need to hear. Don’t dismiss it. Sit with it. Let it make you better.
Show up consistently. Talent matters less than you think. Showing up—over and over, even when it’s hard, even when you don’t feel like it—is what separates people who make things happen from people who just talk about it.
And finally: let go of the timeline. There’s no deadline. There’s no age by which you need to have “made it.” There’s just the work, stretching out in front of you, for as long as you want to keep doing it. The only question is whether you’re going to do it honestly or not.
The Music Doesn’t Care
The music doesn’t care about your branding. It doesn’t care how many followers you have. It doesn’t care about your aesthetic or your bio or your carefully curated image.
It only cares whether you showed up. Whether you put in the time. Whether you were honest with yourself about where you are and brave enough to keep going anyway.
That’s all any of us can do. The rest is noise.
Love the article and your website interface. Its look “Apero”.
Thank you very much, Richard!