Creativity Quote by Kristin Hersh

“Good taste” sounds like a polite, old-world compliment, but in Kristin Hersh’s mouth it’s closer to a dare. She’s not talking about manners or refinement; she’s naming the invisible skill that separates mere execution from music that actually lands. Taste is the edit button. It’s knowing when not to play, when to hold a note until it bruises, when a cheap chord is exactly the right kind of ugly. In a rock ecosystem that often fetishizes virtuosity (faster, louder, cleaner), Hersh elevates judgment over gymnastics.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to gear worship and conservatory credentialing: you can buy pedals and practice scales; you can’t outsource sensibility. “All you really need” is also a provocation aimed at insecurity. Plenty of players hide behind complexity to prove they belong. Hersh implies belonging isn’t earned through difficulty, but through choices that reveal you’re listening-to the song, the room, the band, your own limitations.

Context matters: coming out of the alt-rock lineage of the Throwing Muses and her solo work, Hersh built a reputation on emotional precision rather than technical spectacle. Her songs often feel like they’re balancing on a wire: jagged dynamics, off-kilter phrasing, melodies that refuse the obvious resolution. That’s taste as an ethical stance, not a style preference. It’s fidelity to what the song needs, even if it’s unflattering, even if it’s simple, even if it breaks the rules that impress strangers.

In her formulation, “good taste” is a musician’s real instrument. Everything else is just fingers.