Love Quote by Jerry Harrison

Harrison’s advice lands with the calm authority of someone who’s watched “good taste” get flattened by trend cycles. Coming from a musician whose career arcs through the art-school rigor of Talking Heads and the later realities of production work, the line reads less like inspiration-poster wisdom and more like a survival tactic. “When you’re beginning” isn’t sentimental; it’s strategic. Early on, you’re the most vulnerable to external noise: gatekeepers, algorithms, scenes, peer pressure, the intoxicating promise that sounding like someone else is a shortcut to being heard.

The phrase “something you love” is doing quiet heavy lifting. Love here isn’t naive passion; it’s the fuel that outlasts rejection and the boredom of repetition. It implies the work will get tedious, that you’ll need more than ambition to keep showing up. Harrison’s real pivot, though, is “your own way of doing things.” That’s a sideways critique of copycat culture and an endorsement of process over product. He’s pointing beginners away from the false security of genre compliance and toward the harder task: building a personal method, a set of constraints and instincts that can’t be replicated.

Subtext: originality isn’t a lightning strike, it’s accumulated behavior. In music especially, “your own way” can mean embracing limitations, odd influences, or unglamorous craftsmanship. Harrison’s intent is to inoculate newcomers against the most common creative failure: confusing visibility with voice.