Art & Creativity Quote by Bryan Ferry

Ferry is doing what he’s always done: mapping pop culture as a style war, then quietly declaring allegiance. The jab-and-admire rhythm is the tell. “All those rappers” sounds dismissive, like a man peering over his sunglasses; “the only glamorous people working in music now” flips it into a concession that lands harder because he’s not supposed to say it. Glamour, in Ferry’s universe, isn’t “authenticity” or “realness.” It’s theater: a deliberately manufactured surface that announces power.

The inventory list is the engine of the quote. “Chains of gold, cars, girls” reads like tabloid shorthand for rap excess, but it’s also a defense of spectacle in an era when rock culture has tried to rebrand itself as meritocratic and unadorned. Ferry’s subtext: guitar music has gotten dowdy, sermon-y, self-serious. Rap, whatever its contradictions, still understands that pop is a visual economy and that status symbols are a language, not just loot.

Then he slips in “high-heeled shoes,” a sly Ferry-ism that blurs gender codes and reminds you he came up making androgyny and artifice feel expensive. He’s not praising rap’s politics; he’s praising its commitment to costume. There’s an older artist’s anxiety here, too: the center of gravity has moved, and the people owning the spotlight are the ones who can turn wealth into iconography. Ferry isn’t mourning the shift so much as tipping his hat to whoever still knows how to look like a star.