This idea which I have now christened The Car Sear Headrest Theory is based on a conversation I had last year with my old editor at CNBC, Eric.
In the spring of 2020 (what a glorious time to be alive...), Car Seat Headrest released an album titled "Making a Door Less Open." The premise of the album was, at its core, to not be whatever the band was in the past. Will Toledo, the band's frontman and songwriter, did not want to repeat the sounds he made on his breakthrough album Teens of Denial. Toledo did not want to just blindly rehash the angsty indie rock guitar sounds he had been crafting for a decade. Toledo did not want to write an album the same way he had written his previous albums. He wanted to do something new and fresh. The result was , in my opinion, an inconsistent, genre-hopping, synth-rock mixed bag that, while loved by some fans, left many dissatisfied and scrolling back through Spotify for their earlier material.
Car Seat Headrest was a band Eric and I had talked about a lot, so when the new album came out, I emailed him to get his thoughts. Similar to me, Eric thought the album had some really strong songs on it but did not stand up well as one collective piece. He continued, saying, "(Toledo) set himself up for failure by declaring, 'Whatever I do on this album, I will not repeat Teens of Denial.' When you set out to not do something rather than do something, you are starting with a handicap."
This was one of those ideas that was so simple yet so dense in meaning that it has stuck with me for 18 months. When you set out to not do something rather than do something, you are starting with a handicap. I thought it was such a perfect phrase. It could be applied to a job search. It could be applied to dating. It could be applied to house hunting. Whatever the situation is, I thought it was a great reminder to go into everything with a "to-do" list, not a "to-avoid" list. No reason to start any project handicapped.
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