Outliers and "Michelle"

The first book I read this year is Malcolm Gladwell's OUTLIERS. In it, he dismantles commonly held notions of success: the rugged pull-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps individualist who rises to fortune on his own insight, effort and moxie. Gladwell contends that success--and consequently, failure--is systemic. That is, success is as much a function of the mores and accidents of culture and context as they are the hard work that is required to achieve.

He hammers on the 10,000 hour rule: it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in most any field. His point about culture and circumstance is that the capacity to get 10,000 hours is dependent on factors over which we have no control. Bill Gates got his 10,000 hours programming through a long chain of fortuitous accidents including the wealthy private school he attended and the money/connections that this school allowed him. He might have worked hard to get his 10,000 hours, but he wouldn't have been able to get them as early in life as he did if not for the systemic factors that worked in his favor without any volition from Gates.

His other example is the Beatles. Much of their success is attributed to the year they spent playing in Hamburg's red light district for EIGHT HOURS a night. Unlike the new popular music acts that are foisted on us today through the wonders of overproduction and AutoTune, by the time the Beatles got their first recording contract, they'd already put in their 10,000 hours. They were far more polished and ready to breakout than they'd have been otherwise.

Today I want to point out tangible evidence of what this 10,000-hour apprenticeship really affords those who push through it. Yes, we all know about the seminal and transformative impact the Beatles had on popular music. But I'm talking something very specific about the creative process: "Michelle."

Everybody knows this, the Beatles' only song with French lyrics. According to Steve Turner's A HARD DAY'S WRITE: THE STORIES BEHIND EVERY BEATLES SONG, "Michelle" was a combination of Paul McCartney's infatuation with Chet Atkins' fingerstyle playing and his derision of Liverpool art students he had known who sang girls songs in Mersey-flecked French. In the original version that McCartney would play for friends, he didn't actually sing any French words: he just groaned in his best Left Bank nasal accent. Apparently, John Lennon actually liked the song, so McCartney retooled it for Rubber Soul.

My point here is that one of the Beatles' most famous ballads was a joke. McCartney couldn't play fingerstyle, and he couldn't even speak French. But when he wanted to get something that sounded kind of like Chet Atkins, and when he wanted to make fun of Liverpudlian poseurs, what he wrote was a pop music classic.

That's why you should want 10,000 hours. It's not a prison sentence. It's an opportunity to turn afterthoughts into excellence.