Time & Perspective Quote by Susannah McCorkle

“Complete artistic control” is the kind of phrase that usually smells like a record-label press release, but McCorkle turns it into something more human: a defense mechanism and a vow. As a musician working in a business that loves to negotiate every rough edge out of art, she frames autonomy as non-negotiable. Not “a voice in the room,” not “final say,” but complete. The bluntness is the point: it draws a hard line around the work before anyone else can redraw it.

Then she undercuts that certainty with “trust it to fate,” a move that reveals the emotional cost of making art without guarantees. Control governs the making; fate governs the reception. McCorkle is admitting what artists learn the hard way: you can dictate the arrangement, the phrasing, the repertoire, the personnel, the mix. You can’t dictate the culture. You can’t force critics to listen on the right day, or audiences to show up, or an industry to reward craft over trend.

“I just do my best album every time” lands like discipline, but also like refusal. No strategic “comeback” album, no calculated pivot for relevance. It’s a credo built for longevity, not virality. Coming from a jazz singer with a reputation for intelligence and exacting taste, it reads as both self-protection and quiet defiance: if the world is going to be unpredictable, the work can’t be. The subtext is almost stoic: I’ll own the process; you can keep the outcome.