Henry Morris Thinks You Have to Be a Little Delusional to Make It

Camille Roe S.

10 hours ago

5 min read

On creative obsession, the pressure to succeed, and why believing in yourself might be the only way to get anywhere.

The first time I meet Henry Morris, he's sitting in a Whole Foods somewhere in Oklahoma City. Not a recording studio, not a backstage dressing room, not even a particularly atmospheric café. A Whole Foods. His tour bus, he explains, is somehow louder than the supermarket itself, which I find rather amusing. I'm in Barcelona, he's somewhere between shows, and neither of us seems particularly concerned with pretending this is a conventional interview.

Within minutes, we're discussing whether being a little stupid might actually be an advantage in life.It begins when I tell him something I've come to believe about ambitious people: sometimes the smartest person in the room is the one who never starts. They're too busy calculating everything that could go wrong. Meanwhile, someone who hasn't considered half the consequences has already begun.

Henry immediately understands. In fact, he and his friend Artemis have developed an entire theory around it. They divide musicians into two categories: those with "idiot swag" and those with "intellectual swag." The former simply make things without agonising over every decision. The latter think, revise, perfect, and then revise some more.

There's something almost enviable about being the person who creates without questioning whether it's good enough. For Henry, that kind of freedom doesn't necessarily come naturally.

When he began working on his first album, Jawbreaker, he had very little external validation. His manager, Rob, and his friend Marwan believed in the project, sometimes more than he did. There weren't many opportunities, interviews or shows. He spent his days working alone, trying to make something worth listening to.

Three years later, the circumstances look considerably different. He's touring with Artemis, receiving recognition from artists he admires, and preparing to release his new album, Kiss Me Extra Hard, on October 23. Its latest single, High All the Time, arrives today. And yet, success has introduced an entirely new set of anxieties.

Henry tells me that one of his first thoughts every morning is whether he's posted enough on TikTok. Not whether he's made something meaningful. Not whether he's enjoying the experience of touring. TikTok.

He recalls receiving a shout-out from Cigarettes After Sex, the kind of recognition an emerging musician might once have spent years dreaming about. But by the following morning, the excitement had already been replaced by the familiar fear that he wasn't doing enough.

I recognise the feeling immediately. Building something you care about can make celebrating it surprisingly difficult. Something extraordinary happens on Monday, and by Tuesday you're already worrying about Wednesday. Every achievement becomes another expectation. Every milestone moves the finish line a little further away.

The strange thing is that Henry knows much of this pressure comes from himself.

He's remarkably confident about his music. Almost outrageously so. He genuinely believes his songs deserve to be heard, and that failing to do everything possible to reach an audience would mean letting the work down.

It's the kind of conviction that can easily be mistaken for arrogance. But listening to him, I get the impression that his confidence and anxiety are not opposites. They're products of the same obsession. He believes in what he's making so completely that the possibility of it going unheard feels unacceptable.

We talk about Kanye West, unapologetic self-belief, and the strange expectation that artists should be simultaneously extraordinary and modest about it. We're encouraged to pursue our dreams, provided we don't appear too convinced that we deserve them.

But why shouldn't someone believe they're capable of something exceptional?

Henry makes an interesting argument about the romantic image of the musician who refuses to promote their work. The artist who believes the music should speak for itself, who considers marketing beneath them, who waits patiently to be discovered. He doesn't buy it.

To him, creating something worthwhile and making sure people experience it are inseparable responsibilities. Nobody is going to arrive at your door and insist the world hears what you've made. You have to do that part yourself.

And this brings us to something we both seem to believe rather strongly: nobody is coming to save you.

Henry remembers realising this for the first time. As a child, he'd imagined that one day something extraordinary would happen and his life would suddenly become different. But time passed, and eventually he understood that waiting was itself a decision.

At first, the realisation frightened him. Then it became liberating. I think there's something particularly uncomfortable about that kind of freedom. Once you accept that your life is largely your responsibility, you lose the luxury of waiting for permission. You also lose some of your excuses.

Henry has taken that philosophy seriously. Since beginning this project around 2023, he says he's written a song every day. Not because every song will be brilliant, but because repetition is how you become better at something.

It's a refreshingly unromantic explanation for artistic development. No mysterious divine inspiration. No waiting for the perfect moment. Just showing up, repeatedly, until the person you are becomes capable of making the things you've always imagined.

His new album is perhaps the clearest expression of that progression.

He describes Kiss Me Extra Hard as a collection of experiences revolving around sex, money, drugs, love and power. Some of it comes from past relationships, some from mistakes, and some from observing the remarkably similar ways people behave across different places.

But what interests me most is his suggestion that he's been carrying the material for this album for years. Only now does he feel artistically capable of expressing it. There's a distinction there that I love. Sometimes the story isn't new. You've simply become a better storyteller.

Still, creating art doesn't necessarily mean understanding how to live with everything that inspired it.

When I ask whether songwriting helps him let go of difficult emotions, Henry surprises me by saying no. Writing about painful experiences doesn't make them disappear. It helps him understand them, but understanding and moving on are two different things.

He admits that his life moves so quickly that he often finds himself documenting what he's feeling rather than properly processing it.

Perhaps that's another contradiction of ambition. You can become incredibly skilled at building a future while barely giving yourself time to understand the present.

There's also a much softer side to Henry than his confidence initially suggests. He speaks about Artemis with the affection of someone describing a brother, not merely a fellow musician.

Touring together feels like summer camp, he tells me, and he already dreads the idea of eventually doing it without his best friend.

For all his determination to succeed, the people around him clearly matter.

Before we finish, I suggest he try keeping a gratitude journal. His mother has apparently been encouraging something similar. I tell him I'll bring him one when he comes to Barcelona, and he promises to use it.

It's a slightly ridiculous conclusion to a conversation about artistic greatness. A musician convinced his work deserves the world's attention, being assigned two minutes of morning gratitude by someone he's just met. And maybe that's precisely the point.

Henry Morris doesn't seem to suffer from a lack of belief in his future. If anything, he believes in it so fiercely that he occasionally forgets to appreciate his present.

And maybe being a little delusional is necessary to make something of yourself. Maybe you do need to believe in possibilities that other people can't yet see, work harder than seems reasonable, and refuse to wait for someone to give you permission.

But I wonder whether the next challenge for Henry is learning that ambition doesn't always have to feel like urgency. Because sometimes, while you're busy trying to become the person you've always wanted to be, you forget that you've already become someone your younger self would have been pretty impressed by.

And surely, that's worth celebrating too.