Creativity Quote by Mel Torme

The sting is in the word "obviously" - a tiny dagger of sarcasm aimed at an industry that loves to pretend its cash register is a choir. Mel Torme, a musician who lived through the big-band era, the crooner years, and the corporate consolidation of recorded music, is voicing a performer’s familiar exasperation: the pretense that art is the byproduct, not the product.

On the surface, it’s a blunt admission. In subtext, it’s an accusation. Torme isn’t confessing greed so much as mocking the way record-making gets framed in public: labels talk about "discovering voices" and "building catalogs" while treating music like inventory that must move. By saying the quiet part out loud, he exposes the hypocrisy that surrounds commercial art - the industry’s need for moral cover. If everyone admits it’s about money, then nobody has to keep laundering motives through talk of "integrity" or "craft", even when the craft is real.

The line also carries the weary perspective of a working musician, not a romantic outsider. Torme wrote, arranged, performed; he understood budgets, royalties, and how quickly taste becomes a spreadsheet. His sarcasm suggests a defensive posture: if the system insists on commodifying you, you beat it to the punch and reclaim agency by naming the game.

It lands because it’s funny in the way bitterness can be funny: a polished performer letting the mask slip just enough to show the machinery underneath the song.