The Hit Song That Refused to Fit In

A note to young leaders.

If I asked you to write a love ballad, my guess is you wouldn’t start it like this:

“Saying ‘I love you’ is not the words I want to hear from you.”

But that’s exactly what two unknown musicians did on a front porch in Malden, Massachusetts. Within the hour they had “More Than Words”. Two voices, one acoustic guitar and just six chords.

And then … the Suits. Up in the glass tower at A&M Records sat the Category Men, the keepers of the Format – and the Category Men listened and said no. Not bad, you understand. Uncategorisable! “Who’s going to play it?” they asked. Who’s going to PLAY it? It was 1988, the age of the power ballad, and this thing sounded like the Everly Brothers had wandered into the wrong decade.

You too will meet these Category Men.

One of the musicians – Nuno Bettencourt, already one of the fastest guitarists alive – was tempted to build the song up in the studio, to add strings and drums, to make it bigger. Thankfully, he resisted.

So the song waited. Not weeks. Three years.

A&M, worn down by Bettencourt, leaned on a radio station in Phoenix to play the song three times on a Monday. By Tuesday it was among the station’s most requested. By Friday it was near the top of the pile. A&M examined this evidence carefully and said no. The song didn’t fit the image of the funk metal band they were trying to launch.

Bettencourt threatened to walk out if the song wasn’t released.

Finally, in March 1991, the single was released and went straight to number one. The album went double platinum. Decades later it would earn almost a billion streams on Spotify. You get the idea: it worked.

The record executives, of course, discovered that they had believed in the song all along – faith of that kind being the one instrument we all play fluently.

So if a committee refuses to back you because you don’t tick a box – back yourself. Don’t be afraid to be different.

Different may not always succeed, but when it does – it succeeds spectacularly.