Creativity Quote by Christopher Cross

Cross is mourning a kind of musical literacy that used to be demanded by the marketplace: songs that could survive with nothing but chord changes, a vocal, and a story. When he says MTV “put a huge dent” in songwriting craft, he’s not just blaming a TV channel; he’s naming a shift in what counted as a hit. The center of gravity moved from the ear to the eye, from structure and lyrical payoff to image, performance, and immediate brand recognition.

The line works because it’s half critique, half self-defense. Cross is a symbol of late-70s soft rock’s meticulous melodicism, the kind of adult-pop songwriting that prizes bridges, key changes, and emotional shading over spectacle. MTV’s arrival in the early 1980s didn’t merely introduce music videos; it rewired industry incentives. A camera-friendly persona became a competitive advantage, and “craft” started meaning visual concept as much as harmonic or narrative craft. That doesn’t imply songs got worse; it implies different skills got rewarded, and different artists got amplified.

There’s also a quiet generational sting: MTV is shorthand for a gatekeeping mechanism that didn’t favor everyone equally. If you weren’t legible to the new visual grammar - youth, fashion, kinetic charisma - your songs could be sidelined no matter how well-built they were. Cross’s phrasing, “dent,” is telling: not a death blow, but a deforming impact. It acknowledges MTV’s power while insisting something valuable was bent out of shape along the way.