Creativity Quote by Lee Hazlewood

There is a whole worldview packed into that drawled shrug: careerism as an optional hobby, not a religion. Hazlewood’s “I tell ya” is doing heavy lifting, setting the scene in plainspoken, slightly conspiratorial Americana. Then he drops the anticlimax that’s also the punchline: he could’ve hustled for “some more jobs,” the safe, respectable metric of success, but he chose Sweden. Not “moved abroad for better opportunities” - just “instead,” like picking a different bar on a Friday night.

The subtext is part brag, part refusal. Hazlewood knew how the entertainment machine works - he was a songwriter, producer, and the voice behind a very specific kind of swagger. He also knew the trap: once you prove you can deliver, the world offers you endless versions of the same gig, and calls it a career. Sweden becomes the elegant dodge, a place-name that stands in for opting out, for trading the grind for distance, anonymity, maybe reinvention.

Context matters: Hazlewood’s best-known work was tangled up with European audiences and sensibilities; Scandinavia embraced the noir-pop romance of his Nancy Sinatra duets, and he later spent significant time in Sweden. The line reads like a self-mythologizing footnote to that arc: the American original who finds his truest echo overseas.

What makes it work is its casual heresy. It doesn’t beg for admiration or pretend it’s a grand statement. It just normalizes the idea that leaving can be the most productive move a restless artist makes.