How To Stay Real & Succeed In A Fake World - Dylan Gossett (Live Performance)

Dylan Gossett said “Coal” began with the line “They say pressure makes diamonds,” and he wrote it quickly on his phone in an apartment. He also said he then did nothing with it for a year or two until encouragement from his wife and a friend pushed him to post on TikTok.

Dylan described working long, demanding days at Circuit of the Americas and feeling like he was in a “pit,” even while his personal life was happy. He connected the song to everyday struggles and the feeling that effort wasn’t translating into progress.

Dylan said music is “such a business” and that he sometimes feels more like a business manager than an artist. Chris framed the pressure of success as time getting squeezed away from the unstructured thinking that produces good work.

Dylan said deliberately “unpolished” aesthetics can become marketing and that people can end up “performing authenticity.” He described having personal “lines” he wouldn’t cross and resisting a formulaic rollout (delayed releases, repeated posting, pre-save campaigns), noting he only posted “Coal” a small number of times.

In discussing virality, Dylan said he can often tell when a song has “something pushing it,” pointing to patterns like waves of “truck edits” that place songs over stylized videos. He added that promotion can get more ears, but it can’t fully substitute for the song itself catching.