What does had so much to prove means in this case?

Question

Hunched over a steak at a classy French brasserie that’s all high ceilings, glass, and creamy shades of beige, Healy maps out his thought process around Being Funny. “Every record I’ve made, I convinced myself that I had so much to prove, so it had to be about everything that ever happened, everything that’s happening now, and everything that could ever happen,” he says between mouthfuls of meat, which he eats with the zeal of a man who’s been starved for days. “But on this record, I said, ‘Instead of a magnum opus, what about more like a polaroid?’” At 11 songs and 44 minutes, Being Funny is their shortest album yet, about half as long as 2020’s rangy free-for-all, Notes on a Conditional Form.

Hi everyone. I’d like to know what I had so much to prove means in this case. Does it mean that he used to think he had to prove himself because the public didn’t realize how good he was?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Yes, in every instance he felt a great desire to demonstrate how good he was. There is no indication of how the public regarded him. The sentence merely informs us of his own insistent need to prove himself in some universal sense.