Education Quote by Stephan Jenkins

Stephan Jenkins is taking a swing at a particular kind of social hunger: the reflexive need to be chosen. By calling it "that high school thing of joining the club", he drags adult approval-seeking back to its most humiliating origin story, when identity was a costume you auditioned in. The jab lands because its imagery is so small and specific. "The club" isn’t just community; it’s a gate, a sticker, a cafeteria table you earn by performing the right version of yourself.

The intent is self-positioning. In a music culture that constantly grades artists by relevance, coolness, and belonging - scenes, playlists, critics, algorithms - Jenkins claims a kind of immunity. "I'm not worried" is doing double duty: it reads as confidence, but it also signals refusal, the decision not to let the audience’s mood be the weather inside your head. That’s a survival tactic for a working musician, especially one whose career spans eras where validation shifted from radio programmers to blog tastemakers to social media metrics.

The subtext is thornier: disavowing approval is itself a bid for status. Not caring can be a posture, and Jenkins knows it. The line works because it’s both aspiration and defense mechanism. It’s the fantasy of artistic independence, delivered with the weary clarity of someone who’s watched "cool" become another form of compliance.