Art & Creativity Quote by Peter Hook

Hook’s line lands like a shrug that doubles as an accusation. Coming from a musician who helped define post-punk’s cool austerity, it’s an oddly clear-eyed admission: the whole enterprise runs on a promise to take you somewhere else. Not “somewhere better,” necessarily - just elsewhere. That matters because it frames music not as self-expression in a vacuum, but as a service industry built on mood, fantasy, and temporary relief.

The intent is pragmatic. Hook isn’t romanticizing art; he’s explaining why the business behaves the way it does. If music functions as escape, then the market will naturally optimize for whatever escapes sell: nostalgia packaged as reunion tours, pristine “vibes” engineered for streaming playlists, spectacle that turns a concert into a weekend identity. The subtext is that moral outrage about commercialism can be naive. Of course labels, promoters, and platforms trade in escapism - that’s the product.

There’s also a quiet warning aimed at artists and fans alike. Escapism is double-edged: it can be survival (a way out of bleakness, boredom, grief) and it can be sedation (a way to avoid confronting anything). Hook’s own era traded in that tension: danceable basslines carrying lyrics about alienation, the club as both refuge and pressure cooker. The quote works because it punctures the comforting myth that commerce “corrupts” music from the outside. Hook suggests it was always wired in: the escape hatch is profitable by design.