Creativity Quote by Debbie Harry

A simple sentence that still sounds like a dare: "I feel like I have to have a voice". Debbie Harry isn’t talking about vocal cords. She’s talking about permission, power, and the refusal to be decorative.

Coming out of the CBGB-era churn that produced Blondie, Harry’s "voice" is both literal and strategic. Punk and new wave sold themselves as anti-authority, but the scene still ran on old rules: who gets to speak, who gets to be taken seriously, who gets reduced to a look. Harry’s phrasing matters because it’s not triumphant. It’s pressured. "I feel like I have to" suggests compulsion, almost obligation, as if silence would be a kind of betrayal - of herself, of other women watching, of the version of pop culture that wanted her image without her agency.

The line also hints at the double bind of being a frontwoman in a visual medium. If you’re charismatic, you’re "manufactured"; if you’re assertive, you’re "difficult". Saying she has to have a voice is a preemptive rebuttal to the industry’s favorite trick: turning a woman’s presence into a product while siphoning off her authorship. Harry’s career - switching between punk credibility, radio pop, and downtown art-world edge - becomes the proof. A "voice" is what lets you move between scenes without being owned by any of them.

It’s a declaration delivered in the language of necessity, not ego. That’s why it sticks: it frames self-expression as survival, not self-promotion.