Does Overnight Success Exist in Singing? If So, How Can You Achieve It?

Do you believe in overnight success?

I don’t.

The overnight success that you see are people who slugged it out day in, day out, making small progress that eventually became one big success.

You don’t see the hard work behind the scenes.

The same goes for singing.

Yes, there are naturally talented people who can sing well without training.
They are the exception rather than the rule.
I have a few theories as to why they are naturally talented but that’s for another time.

You see singers like Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake who seemed to just appear out of nowhere and became superstars at a young age.

Did you know they started training their voice at a very young age? If they started consistent vocal training at age 10, they would've had 10 years of training by the age of 20.

I want you to think of singing as a journey rather than a destination.

Say you’re going on a 20-hour road trip on your own.

It’s physically impossible for you to drive for 20 hours straight without stopping for the night.

When you make a pit stop, you feel tired but satisfied that you’re getting closer to your destination. Instead of cursing yourself for being tired, you rest and start driving again the next day.

And you’ll get to your destination eventually.

As for singing, the destination is always changing. There will always be something more that you’re striving for.

They’re all milestones. There is no end to your journey.

If you don’t celebrate your milestones, then singing is going to be very frustrating for you.

If you congratulate yourself for every milestone that you achieve, you’re going to be so much more motivated to keep up the vocal training.

Eventually, you’ll become a confident singer (while enjoying the whole learning process).

You see, I’ve always wanted to sing (and scream) like Chester Bennington from Linkin Park. At the beginning of my singing journey, I’d ignore my teacher’s advice and sang Linkin Park’s songs. They were way out of my range and I ended up having to rest my sore voice quite often.

To this day, many of Linkin Park’s songs are still out of my range. I’m definitely getting better at singing the songs. However, I’ve come to accept that Chester Bennington had a massive range that I shouldn’t try to compete with.

I feel happy for all my achievements in singing so far. I still strive to sing higher but I’m grateful for what I’ve accomplished.

I challenge you to do this for the next 30 days:

Write down everything that you like about your voice. If you can’t think of any, keep practicing and when you get better at something, write that thing down.

For example, you struggle to sing in tune. You’re learning Supermarket Flowers by Ed Sheeran. After practicing the same song for a month, you can now sing the chorus in tune regularly. Write that accomplishment down and celebrate it. That’s a milestone.

Here’s to our never-ending singing journey!