"After touring with David Bowie last year, I was inspired to look at what I wanted to do as an artist, and I realized I wanted to go back to the music I fell in love with when I was eight years old"
About this Quote
The subtext is about permission. In pop culture, “growing up” as an artist often gets coded as complication: tighter concepts, darker palettes, more distance from anything that might read as naive. Gryner flips that script. Eight years old isn’t a marketing demographic; it’s a memory of unfiltered taste, before genre politics, before the industry’s subtle shame around simplicity. By invoking childhood love rather than adulthood strategy, she’s declaring that authenticity isn’t a fixed personality trait, it’s a practice of remembering what your nervous system already knows.
Context does a lot of work: Bowie as catalyst makes the retreat to roots feel paradoxically bold. When your model is a master of futurism, the radical move might be to stop chasing “next” and dig into “first.” It’s also a quiet critique of careerism. The line suggests that the clearest artistic direction sometimes arrives not from trend forecasts or branding meetings, but from a private archive of songs that once made you feel seen. That’s not nostalgia as cosplay; it’s a recommitment to the original spark that made the whole machine worth entering.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Gryner, Emm. (2026, January 15). After touring with David Bowie last year, I was inspired to look at what I wanted to do as an artist, and I realized I wanted to go back to the music I fell in love with when I was eight years old. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/after-touring-with-david-bowie-last-year-i-was-145261/
Chicago Style
Gryner, Emm. "After touring with David Bowie last year, I was inspired to look at what I wanted to do as an artist, and I realized I wanted to go back to the music I fell in love with when I was eight years old." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/after-touring-with-david-bowie-last-year-i-was-145261/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"After touring with David Bowie last year, I was inspired to look at what I wanted to do as an artist, and I realized I wanted to go back to the music I fell in love with when I was eight years old." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/after-touring-with-david-bowie-last-year-i-was-145261/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.





