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It's the performer's job to make a composition sound good.
Back in high school, I was part of the choir. Each semester, we would practice four or five songs that would later be performed to the school or at a national competition. Some songs were fun, and others were a bit more technical and dull or more difficult to appreciate.
It was perhaps during the first third of our time with one of these songs that I became very frustrated with it. The exact name of the song and the song style escapes me now, but I remember it had me wondering why the teacher chose that one for us to work on and perform.
Because one of my outlets for vents about school at the time was my dad, it was to him that I expressed these thoughts about how the song sucks and how everyone in class agreed that it is terrible and flat and "why is she (the vocals teacher) making us do this".
After having a short back-and-forth on the validity of my statement that the song sucked, my dad ended up saying something that has remained very meaningful to me ever since. "It doesn't matter if the song is written poorly. It's your task as the performer to make it sound good."
It made a lot of sense. It's the performers' efforts that the audience finally hears, so these singers and instrument players have a lot of say over whether or not a work would be fully appreciated. Even the best masterpiece would be lame with a choir full of cruddy singers. When looking for Youtube covers of the same song, there are ones I'd be willing to listen on loop, and then there are others I'd X out of 15 seconds in.
This statement made me realize that a big part of anything is not only the original plan or schematic, but the execution as well, of which people on the front lines play a large part. I'm a roleplayer, so one situation that is familiar to me is being in a plot line that is difficult or boring to work with. In these cases, it really comes down to the roleplayers to take the scenario and make something great. This is the case whether what is given is bad or good. I've seen roleplay set ups with great potential fall flat because people did not have the proper spirit of mindset to make it work.
It's brought it home to me that it is a certain skill to take what you have, no matter how deplorable, being creative with it and making something worthwhile out of it. It is making lemonade out of lemons, not just to make yourself happier but also to create something worthwhile in the end. Loosely speaking, it is being resourceful, and I think that is really important.
tl;dr: it's important to be clever, resourceful and think outside of the box
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