The audience can feel when you made it to impress them. They can also feel when you made it because you had to.

People detect motive without being able to name it. Work made to be admired has a particular flatness, a sense of being aimed, and listeners register it as distance even when every technical choice is correct. Work that had to exist carries urgency instead, which is why rough things sometimes land harder than polished ones.

Before your next project, answer honestly whether you want to make it or want to be seen having made it. Both answers are allowed, and knowing which is in play changes your decisions. If it is the second, find a smaller project where the first is true.