By Sydney Shea
In the beginning of a journey, all you have is instinct.
Not training. Not technique. Not a map. Just a pull inside your chest that says: go.
Instinct will take you down wrong turns.
You’ll get lost.
You’ll get humbled.
But if you keep going, you’ll still get where you’re meant to be.
Sometimes the wrong turns are the only way to the right place.
Everyone wants to be chosen.
But no one talks about the price tag it comes with.
Sometimes your innocence.
Sometimes your freedom.
Sometimes… even your name.
I haven’t heard my full name being said since high school.
My real name is Sydney. But someone I met early on in my journey came up with the name Shea for me.
At the time, my potential wasn’t mine to define—I gave it to him.
In the studio, I’d sit and nod while he copy-and-pasted loops together.
Then I’d step into the booth and freestyle melodies over whatever he built.
The engineer would piece together my takes, and then “we” would write to it.
But what really happened was: he’d open a shared Note on our phones and start typing lyrics before I could even form my own thoughts.
I remember once he said,
“You’re not the writer. Just sing the melodies and let me write it.”
At first, I thought it was adrenaline—the rush of finally making music, doing what I always dreamed of, letting everyone know that I wasn’t just doing it—I was it.
Nervous and excited are the same feeling.
But it wasn’t excitement.
It was my intuition screaming at me: You deserve better than all of this.
And suddenly, nothing I wrote felt worth saying anymore.
He told me not to go to college—said I wouldn’t have time, since we were in the studio every day.
And even though investing in that relationship was one of my biggest mistakes, it opened my brain.
It taught me that people in this city often package manipulation as mentorship.
When someone constantly tells you you’re special, you start to believe they’re special too.
When someone finally sees you the way you’ve always dreamed of being seen, it’s easy to mistake it for fate.
He told people he worked with Justin Bieber.
In reality, he was just another guy high in the back, nodding like a metronome.
In LA, you don’t need the truth—you just need a name to drop loud enough for someone desperate enough to believe it.
Always remember: just because someone is in the room doesn’t mean anyone knows you—or values you.
Value is proven. And if you have true value, you’ll never feel the need to say it out loud.
I think about Tina Turner a lot.
When she divorced Ike, she let him keep everything—the house, the money, the furniture.
All she asked for was her name.
And with it, she became one of the greatest artists of all time.
Leaving that man was my Tina Turner moment.
I didn’t want revenge.
I wanted my name.
And I wanted to build it on my terms.
The truth is, in this city, talent is only half the equation.
The other half is money.
Money gets things done.
But be careful whose hands you put it in.
It can buy music videos, songs, and beautiful studios…
But it doesn’t mean anything—it just looks good on camera.
Don’t be fooled by the skinny, tattooed man driving a brand-new BMW M8—he’s just going to park it in his parents’ driveway.
Illusion is everything.
It’s not about what you have.
It’s about what you can make people think you have.
At the time, I wasn’t playing guitar or piano.
I relied on someone else to make something decent enough for me to record.
My stepfather’s guitars sat in the corners collecting dust.
The answer was always waiting for me.
My mom always says,
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
This is why I never went to school.
I knew no teacher could force me to learn anything.
No grade could scare me enough to try at something I didn’t care about.
But when I first started playing guitar, my life changed.
I’d never felt more drawn to something.
It was the first time I wanted to learn.
And I did—because it mattered.
I don’t think an artist can fully find their voice without playing their own instrument.
No one can take your vision and fully make it for you.
You’ll search forever for something close to what you hear in your head, but you’ll never find it.
My instrument was the first step to discovering who I was as an artist.
Writing to a track is very different.
You are in a straitjacket—the melody traps you.
I used to think I was a bad writer.
But in reality,
I was trying to polish something inauthentic—because it was made by someone inauthentic.
When I was nine, my dad placed two pills on the table.
One was fake. One was real.
He looked me in the eye and asked,
“Tell me which one’s the fake.”
They looked identical.
I guessed.
I was wrong.
That was the first time I realized appearances lie.
That sometimes, the most dangerous thing in the room is the one pretending to help.
Ten years later, I’m still staring at pills in different forms:
Fame dressed as promise.
Love dressed as control.
Mentorship dressed as ownership.
One of them was disguised as the father I never had.
The next, as the mother I thought I needed.
(A story for next week.)
Think of it like when Coraline walked through the little door,
believing she had found a better version of her life.
She didn’t know the cost yet.
