Art & Creativity Quote by Neil Young

Neil Young’s bluntness lands like a guitar chord played a little too hard on purpose. “Commitments” here isn’t romance or moral duty; it’s contracts, label obligations, promotional cycles, brand-friendly consistency-the machinery that turns a musician into a predictable product. Calling them “one of the worst things” is funny because it’s so casually absolute, like he can’t even be bothered to dress up the complaint. The understatement in “They’re very annoying” is the tell: he’s describing an industry that can swallow years of your life as if it were a minor inconvenience.

The subtext is classic Young: creative freedom isn’t an abstract value, it’s a survival instinct. His career is basically a long argument with expectations, swerving from folk to grunge, from arena rock to noise, often at moments when a safer move would have paid better. So “commitments” becomes code for the kind of deal that asks you to repeat yourself, to tour when you’re empty, to sand down the weird edges that make the work worth doing.

Context matters because Young came up in an era when labels could bankroll risk but also demand ownership: multi-album contracts, radio-friendly singles, tidy narratives. He’s spent decades fighting those structures, whether that’s battling sound quality standards, controlling distribution, or walking away from commercial momentum. The line’s real intent isn’t to sound flaky; it’s a warning from someone who’s watched “professionalism” become a polite word for permission.