the TrueFans AMP— Magazine Issue 143

Helping Music Artists build real careers
—without selling their soul.

____________________

Take this job and shove it / I ain't workin' here no more
A woman done left and took all the reasons / I was working for
You better not try to stand in my way / As I'm walkin' out the door
Take this job and shove it / I ain't workin' here no more
Take this job and shove it!
— David Allen Coe

In This Issue... 19 pages (about 27ish minutes to read) You'll Get... 

• Recommends—The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters 

• Your BIZ— Rejection Isn’t the Problem. It’s Your Path. 

• Greatest Music Artist of All Time— David Allan Coe: The Outlaw Who Lived It,  Wrote It, and Never Backed Down.

• in partnerships with Marty Dodson and SongTown 

• TrueFans Guest Feature— Do It Afraid by Marty Dodson 

• P.S. from PS— Rejection Is the Job

Here’s the playlist

More than 250 music insiders. 
Six sharp New York Times critics. 
One deceptively simple question: 
Who’s writing the songs that define  
America… right now? 

• Recommends—The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters 
Now this is cool. 

The New York Times asked more than 250 music insiders and six Times critics to weigh in on who defines the new American songbook. 
The result? 

The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters. 

Unranked. Wide-ranging. Argument-starting. And seriously fascinating. This is not just a list of famous names. It’s a deep look at songwriting as craft, voice,  invention, influence, feeling, story, melody, rhythm, language, culture and legacy. 

For Music Artists, this is a goldmine. You really 'should' read the piece. 

Not because you’re supposed to agree with every name. You won’t. That’s part of the  fun. But because reading how great Songwriters are discussed—what gets noticed, what  gets praised, what lasts—is an education in itself. 

The Critics 
Jon Caramanica 
Joe Coscarelli 
Wesley Morris
Danyel Smith 
Lindsay Zoladz 

The Songwriters 
Nile Rodgers 
Lucinda Williams 
Stevie Wonder 
Jay-Z 
Paul Simon 
Taylor Swift 
Brian & Eddie Holland 
Missy Elliott 
Lionel Richie 
Dolly Parton 
Young Thug 
Diane Warren 
Josh Osborne, Brandy Clark & Shane McAnally 
Fiona Apple 
Babyface 
Stephin Merritt 
Romeo Santos 
Carole King 
Outkast 
Mariah Carey 
Willie Nelson 
Kendrick Lamar 
Valerie Simpson 
Bob Dylan 
Lana Del Rey 
The-Dream 
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis 
Bad Bunny 
Bruce Springsteen 
Smokey Robinson 

And now... 
Let the arguing begin. 

What makes the piece especially valuable are the short essays on each Songwriter.  They’re not throwaway blurbs. They’re smart, alive, full of insight, and often reveal  something useful about the actual work of songwriting. 

Nile Rodgers talks about being less a Songwriter than a “song re-writer.”
Lucinda Williams says you have to be willing to look “way down deep inside yourself.”
Taylor Swift says some lines feel scary because they feel “too true.” 
Babyface talks about how love keeps changing—and how “love sounds different today.” 

That’s the stuff. 
Not celebrity trivia. 
Songwriting truth. 

For TrueFans AMP™ readers, this one is both inspiration and instruction. Read it for the names. Stay for the thinking. Then ask yourself the uncomfortable, useful question: 

What would someone write about my songs? 

Tap the title link to read the full NYTimes Gift Article. 
The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters

How do you deal with the endless string of rejections and failures you encounter as an artist? 
If you’re serious about music…you’re dealing with rejection. Regularly. Soundfly's Ian Temple has one of the clearest, most real takes we’ve seen on what that means—and how to stay in the game anyway. 

• Your BIZ— Rejection Isn’t the Problem. It’s Your Path. 
Every Music Artist knows this part of the game—whether they admit it or not. 

You put something out into the world… and nothing happens. Or worse, something  does happen, and it’s a no. A pass. A polite decline. Or the most common response of all —silence. The email that never comes. The message left unread. The release that  lands… and doesn’t. 

Ian Temple—one of the most thoughtful and grounded voices working with Music  Artists today—wrote a piece that doesn’t try to fix this, soften it, or spin it into  something pretty. 

He just tells the truth about it. 

A normal week, he says, includes making something you care about, getting rejected,  putting work out you’re proud of, and watching some of it fall flat. Moments of real  creative joy mixed right in with doubt, frustration, and that familiar question: Is any of  this actually worth it? 

Not a bad week. 
A normal one. 

What Temple does especially well is remind us that rejection isn’t just an external event— it’s an internal experience.  

The hits that matter most aren’t the visible ones. They’re the emotional ones. The ones  that connect to every past doubt, every fear, every quiet suspicion that maybe you’re not  as good as you hoped you were. 

And for artists, that lands harder. 
Because the work is personal.  

It’s not a spreadsheet or a report. It’s you—your taste, your voice, your perspective—put out there to be judged, ignored, misunderstood, or occasionally, appreciated. That’s the trade. 

And here’s where things start to go sideways for most artists. 

They begin to treat rejection as information about their worth or their future. They read  it as a signal: This isn’t working. I’m not good enough. I should pull back. So they do.  

They play it safer.  
They dull the edges.  
They try to anticipate what will be accepted instead of expressing what is actually true  for them. 

It feels like protection. 
It’s actually disconnection. 
Because the thing that creates connection—the only thing that ever creates connection— is authenticity expressed clearly enough for someone else to feel it. And that rarely  survives when you start filtering everything through the lens of “Will this get rejected?” 

This is where the TrueFans lens changes the conversation. 

Rejection, in the traditional sense, comes from gatekeepers. Labels, editors, curators, platforms— systems that decide what gets through and what doesn’t.  

And for a long time, that was the only game in town.  
Get accepted there, and you had a career.  
Get rejected, and you didn’t. 

That’s no longer the only path. Not even the primary one for most artists. 

What matters now isn’t broad approval.
It’s specific connection. 

Temple tells a small story in the piece—a show in a record shop with maybe 20 people  in the room. No money, no scale, no headline success. But the experience itself? Real.  Shared. Meaningful. The kind of moment that reminds you why music exists in the first  place. 

From the outside, that can look like failure. 
From the inside, that’s the foundation. 

Because careers today aren’t built on one big yes. They’re built on many small, genuine  connections that compound over time. One listener who feels something. Then another.  

Then a few more who come back. And eventually, people who don’t just listen—but  care, follow, support, and share. 

That’s the shift most artists underestimate. 

Rejection doesn’t stop that process.  
It’s happening alongside it the entire time. 

Which means the real skill isn’t avoiding rejection.  
It’s learning not to misinterpret it. 

Temple offers a simple but powerful anchor: come back to why you make music in the  first place.  
Not the outcomes.  
Not the metrics.  
The reason you started.  
The part of you that wanted to create something, explore something, express something. 

He describes it as building a lighthouse on a rocky island—experimenting, learning,  creating something meaningful whether or not anyone sees it right away. And if it does  help someone, guide someone, connect with someone… even better. 

But the building itself matters. 

That’s a very different orientation than “Did this get accepted?” 

So what does this mean in practical terms? 
It means you stop using rejection as your scoreboard. 

You start paying closer attention to the moments of actual connection, however small  they seem. The message from someone who felt something. The person who shows up  again. The handful of listeners who really listen. 

And you keep going. 
Not blindly.  
Not stubbornly.  
But with a clearer understanding of what game you’re actually playing. 

Because if you stay in the work long enough—continuing to create, to share, to connect —you’ll find that rejection doesn’t disappear. 
It just loses its power to define anything important. 
And what starts to replace it is something far more useful: 

A growing group of people who get you. 
Who come back. 
Who bring someone with them. 
That’s the path. 
And it was never going to be rejection-free. 

TrueFans TakeAway 
Rejection isn’t telling you to stop. 

It’s part of what happens while you’re finding  
the people who won’t want you to. 

About Ian Temple 
Ian Temple is the visionary CEO and Founder of Soundfly, a revolutionary platform  dedicated to transforming the way musicians learn and grow. With a deep passion for  music and education, Ian has crafted a career that blends creativity with innovation,  constantly pushing the boundaries of traditional music education. His background as a  musician and educator has fueled his drive to create a more accessible, engaging, and effective learning environment for musicians worldwide. 

Soundfly is a pioneering online music education platform designed to inspire and  empower musicians at all levels. Soundfly offers a unique and engaging approach to  learning music, combining high-quality instructional content with personalized  mentorship and a supportive community. 

Tap the link to learn more about Ian and Soundfly

David Allan Coe (September 6, 1939 – April 29, 2026)  
American Singer and Songwriter. 

And… we lost another one. 
It hits a little different with someone like Coe. 
Because he wasn’t just part of country music… 
He was one of the people who refused to  
let it get comfortable. 

• Greatest Music Artist of All Time— David Allan Coe: The Outlaw Who Lived It,  Wrote It, and Never Backed Down 

Yeah... another one… 
And this one doesn’t slide by quietly. 
Because David Allan Coe wasn’t background music. He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t  something you just “put on.” He was an artist you reacted to—one way or the other. You leaned in… or you turned it off. There wasn’t much middle ground. 

That alone tells you something. 
He mattered. 

Born in Akron, Ohio in 1939, Coe’s life didn’t follow any kind of neat arc toward  music. It bent. It broke. It went places most careers never go near—reform schools,  prison, years that shaped him long before a record ever did. By the time he picked up a  guitar with intent, he wasn’t trying to find a voice. 

He already had one. Rough-edged. Unfiltered. Lived-in. 

And when he brought that into Nashville, it didn’t quite know what to do with him. This was a town built on structure—songs written to fit, artists shaped to sell, a system  that worked because it controlled the variables.  

Coe wasn’t controllable.  
Not in how he looked. Not in what he wrote. Not in how he carried himself. Which, in the early ’70s, turned out to be perfect timing. 

Alongside Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash, he became part of a shift  that wasn’t just musical—it was philosophical. The Outlaw movement didn’t clean  country music up. 

It stripped it down. 
Less polish. 
More truth. 

And Coe didn’t step into that lane—he was already there. 

His early records didn’t feel like career plays. The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy. Longhaired Redneck. They felt like someone planting a flag and saying, this is who I am —if it works, it works. If it doesn’t… it doesn’t. 

People heard that. 
Not everyone. 
But enough. 

Because underneath everything—the stories, the reputation, the edge—there was a  Songwriter who could land something simple and make it stick. 

You Never Even Called Me by My Name is the one everyone points to, and for good  reason. It’s funny. Self-aware. It plays with every country music cliché in the book— and then leans into them just enough to make the whole thing work. That’s not accidental. 

That’s understanding the form so well you can bend it without breaking it. 

“David’s a great writer. Always has been.” 
— Willie Nelson 

Then Coe turns around and gives you The Ride, and the tone shifts completely. Quiet.  Almost still. A conversation with Hank Williams that isn’t really about Hank as much as it is about weight… legacy… and what it costs to carry something forward. No overplaying it. 

No reaching. 
Just letting the idea sit. 

“There’s truth in what Coe does. And truth is hard to come by.” 
— Kris Kristofferson 

And then there’s the part a lot of people miss if they only look at his records. The songs he gave to other artists. 

Take This Job and Shove It, made famous by Johnny Paycheck, doesn’t try to be clever.  It doesn’t hide behind metaphor. It says exactly what it means, exactly how people feel  it. 

That’s a different kind of writing. 
Harder than it looks. 
Because when you strip everything away… 
There’s nowhere to hide. 

Over time, that built something deeper than a fanbase. 
It built belief. 

The people who connected with Coe didn’t just like the songs—they trusted them. The  voice matched the life. The stories didn’t feel written as much as remembered. And that  alignment—between what you hear and what you sense behind it—is where real  connection lives. 

He’s about as country as it gets. 
— Hank Williams Jr. 

Don't walk the line. Cross it. 
Of course, that same lack of filtering came with a cost. 

Coe wasn’t just controversial by reputation. Some of his material crossed lines—lines  that, for many, couldn’t be ignored or excused. That’s part of his story, and it doesn’t  disappear just because the songs connected. If anything, it sits right beside the music and complicates it. 

Which… in a strange way… fits. 
Because nothing about him was simple. 

“David Allan Coe is one of the most real artists to ever live. He didn’t pretend to be  anything he wasn’t.”  
— Kid Rock 

Coe himself said it more plainly:  

“I’m not trying to be different. I just am.” 

And that lands. 
Because there’s very little in his career that feels constructed. It feels lived.  
Sometimes uneven. Sometimes brilliant. Sometimes pushing too far. But always coming from the same place. 

On stage... 
... that carried through. No heavy production to smooth things out. No attempt to round  the edges. What you got was presence—raw at times, unpredictable at times, but  grounded in the same honesty that ran through his records. 

He wasn’t for everyone. 
Never tried to be. 

And that might be the part worth sitting with. 
Because in a world where so many artists are working to get it right… to fit… to land… David Allan Coe was working to get it true. 

Even when that truth made people uncomfortable. 
Even when it cost him. 

Not just a voice, but a reminder of what happens when an artist refuses to separate the  life from the work. The songs are still here, still carrying that mix of humor, weight, and  
something you can’t quite fake. 

They haven’t softened. 
They weren’t meant to. 

And for the people who hear themselves in them… 
They still land. 

Damn right… we lost another one. ❤ 

• in partnerships with Marty Dodson and SongTown 

Some pieces need sharing. 
Marty Dodson has lived this— hit songs, real pressure, real moments where it would’ve been easier not to go. That’s why this matters. Because fear isn’t just for beginners. It shows up at every level. 
Including the top. 

Fear doesn’t go away when you “make it.” 
It gets bigger. 
Bigger stages. Bigger expectations. Even Taylor Swift has spoken about the nerves— feeling it every time she steps out there. 

That’s the deal. 
You care… so you feel it. 

The difference? 
Pros don’t wait for fear to leave. 
They go anyway. 

And somewhere in the doing… it fades. 
Not before. During. 

• TrueFans Guest Feature— Do it afraid by Marty Dobson of SongTown 

One of the greatest gifts songwriting gave me. It taught me that courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is being scared to death and doing the thing anyway. Songwriting changed my life. 

When I first started trying to write songs and get industry pros to listen to them, it felt  like one of the bravest things I had ever done. 

That may sound strange to some people. After all, I wasn’t jumping out of an airplane or climbing a mountain. I was just playing songs for people. But for me, it was huge. All  through my life, I had developed a habit of avoiding failure at all costs. If there was  something I really wanted to do, I could usually come up with a reason not to try. 

I wanted to play football, but I told myself I probably wouldn’t make the team. So, I  never even gave myself the chance. I was interested in basketball too, but I convinced  myself I was too short. That was my standard operating procedure for a long time: find  something I would probably enjoy, then talk myself out of it before I could fail at it. 

I came by that mindset honestly. My parents and my brother weren’t risk takers. The  church I grew up in was very conservative and didn’t exactly encourage pushing  boundaries. Everything around me reinforced the idea that safe was good, small was  smart, and risk was dangerous. So, I learned to live a small life. Safe, maybe.  Predictable, sure. But small. 

When I was 17, I decided I really wanted to be a performer at Opryland Theme Park in  Nashville. That dream felt exciting and terrifying all at once. I gathered up all the  courage I had and scheduled an audition. I was so nervous I could barely play or sing.  And honestly, I didn’t do well. Not long after that, I got a nice letter thanking me for  auditioning and telling me they were “not in need of my particular talents at this time.” 

For a long time, I kept that letter. Not as motivation to get better. Not as proof that I  needed to work harder. I kept it as evidence that I had been right all along. Evidence that I shouldn’t have tried in the first place. That’s what fear does if you let it. It takes one  painful moment and turns it into a life philosophy. 

For years, I kept living carefully. I stayed in the safe zone. But, sometime in my early  30s, I got tired of living that way. Tired of wondering what might have happened if I had been willing to risk looking foolish. Tired of letting fear make my decisions for me. So I did something that scared me. 

My dad sold computers, and one of his customers happened to be a pro songwriter. I  played one of my songs for him. That may not sound like much, but for me it was  enormous. I was putting something deeply personal out there and risking rejection all  over again. To my surprise, he liked it. Better than that, he offered to help me make it  better. He encouraged me to keep writing. He believed there was something there worth  developing. We ended up making a demo of the song to pitch. 

That small bit of validation changed everything for me. It didn’t make me fearless. It  didn’t suddenly erase all my doubts. But it gave me just enough hope to take the next  step. And then the next one after that. I decided I was going to pursue songwriting with  everything I had, even if it scared the crap out of me. That’s when I started repeating a  phrase to myself:  

Do it afraid. 

That little phrase carried me through a lot of moments. Writers nights. Publisher  meetings. Co-writes. Pitch opportunities. There were plenty of times when I was literally shaking. Plenty of moments when I was certain I was about to fail, embarrass myself, or  hear “no” one more time. And sometimes I did fail. Sometimes the room didn’t respond. Sometimes the song wasn’t good enough yet. Sometimes the opportunity didn’t pan out.  But here’s what I discovered: I wasn’t dying from any of it. 

The failures and setbacks I feared so much weren’t destroying me. They were  strengthening me. Every time I survived one, I got a little braver. Every time I kept  going, my world got a little bigger. 

That’s one of the greatest gifts songwriting gave me. It taught me that courage isn’t the  absence of fear. Courage is being scared to death and doing the thing anyway. And once  that lesson got into me, it didn’t stay confined to songwriting. That bravery started  spilling over into the rest of my life. I began trying new things. I went to exotic places. I  tasted crazy foods. I challenged some old beliefs. I took more risks. I opened myself up  to more of life. And you know what? I had way more fun. I became happier. I had more  purpose. I felt more alive. 

So when I say songwriting changed my life, I mean it in more ways than one. Yes, it  gave me a creative path and a voice. Yes, it opened doors. Yes, it led me into a career  and a community I love. But even deeper than that, songwriting taught me how to be  

brave. It taught me that rejection won’t kill me. It taught me that failure is inevitable and survivable. It taught me that a small life might feel safer, but it costs too much. And it  taught me that the things that scare us most are often the very things that lead us into  growth, joy, purpose, and freedom. 

So if you’re scared to share your songs, scared to go to a writer’s night, scared to play  your music for someone who might say no, I get it. I’ve been there. But let me  encourage you with this: do it afraid. 

Your hands may shake. Your voice may tremble. You may not nail it. But every time 
you choose courage over comfort, you grow. And who knows? Songwriting may do for  you what it did for me. It may teach you to be brave. 

Write on! 
Marty 

This issue circles something every Music Artist knows… and most don’t want to talk about. 
Rejection. Fear. That moment right before you put something real on the line. Paul’s been there—from loading gear to spinning hits—and he’s got a take on what this actually means… and what it takes to stay in the game. 

• P.S. from PS— Rejection Is the Job 
Rejection isn’t some unfortunate thing that happens to Music Artists on the way to the  work. 

Rejection is the work. 

Not the whole thing, of course. There’s joy in it. There’s magic in it. There’s the feeling  you get when a song lands right in the room and everybody knows it. There’s the high of writing something you didn’t know you had in you until it came out. But if you’re going to do this for real… 
you’re going to hear no. 
A lot. 

You’re going to send the song and not hear back. Play the gig and wonder if anybody  cared. Post the release and watch the world keep scrolling. Walk into the room with  something you love and walk out with a polite smile, a soft pass, or the long, cold  silence that says all it needs to say. 

Welcome to the BIZ. 

And I don’t mean that cynically. I mean it truthfully. 

Ian Temple’s piece in this issue is important because he doesn’t treat rejection like a  temporary inconvenience. He treats it like the weather. Something you learn to move  through. Something you prepare for. Something that may slow you down, but does not  get to decide who you are or whether you keep going. 

Marty says it concisely: 

Do it afraid. 

That’s not cute advice. That’s career advice. Life advice. Music Artist survival advice. 

I’ve seen artists at every level deal with fear. Beginners, sure. But also the ones with  names on marquees and records on charts. Bigger stage does not mean smaller fear.  Sometimes it means the fear has better lighting, better sound, and a bigger crowd  watching. 

Taylor Swift has been honest about nerves and fear. Bless her for that. Because too  many artists think the pros are fearless. 
They’re not. 
Pros are the ones who go on anyway. 

That may be the cleanest definition I know. A professional is somebody who gets up on  stage, steps in front of the mic, walks into the writer’s room, opens the laptop, picks up  the guitar, faces the blank page… and does what the work requires no matter how they  feel. 

Not because they don’t feel it. 
Because they do. 
And they go anyway. 
That’s the job. 

Rejection hurts because the work matters. If you didn’t care, it wouldn’t sting. If the  song wasn’t personal, the pass would be easy. If you weren’t putting something real on  the line, you could shrug and move on like you were selling office chairs. But you’re not. 

You’re offering your voice. Your taste. Your truth. Your take on love, loss, joy, rage,  hope, memory, madness, mercy and whatever else is running through your bones. 

So yes… 
the no lands. 
Let it land. 
Then don’t let it live there. 

Because rejection is not proof you’re wrong. Most of the time, it’s just proof you’re in  motion. You’re making. Reaching. Asking. Offering. Risking. Getting closer to the  people who will hear what others missed. 

That’s TrueFans territory. 

The goal was never to be accepted by everybody. That’s a sucker’s game. The goal is to  become clear enough, honest enough, brave enough, and consistent enough that the right people find you and feel something real. 

Some won’t. 
Good. 
They’re not yours. 

Some will. 
That’s where the career begins. 

So be a Music Artist. 
And yes, maybe that means being a Rejection Artist, too. 

Take the no. Take the silence. Take the fear. Take the shaky hands and the dry mouth  and the little voice whispering, Who do you think you are? 

Then answer it with the work. 
Write the song. 
Play the room. 
Send the track. 
Make the ask. 
Do it afraid. 

Because rejection isn’t the end of the road. 
For most real artists… 
it IS the road. 

Thanks for reading. Give us your feedback.

And PLEASE, if you've got any Music Artist friends, pass the TrueFans AMP™ on, because... It’s Time... for a Change. Big Time. Past Time...