Creativity Quote by Gene Ween

There is a particular kind of swagger in picking Christopher Cross as your north star: it is instantly legible as uncool to the tastemakers, which makes it an even better flex. Gene Ween is not chasing credibility in the rock-critic sense; he is staking out freedom from the whole credibility economy. Cross represents a very specific, glossy late-70s/early-80s softness: pristinely engineered, melodically generous, emotionally direct. To say you want to sound like that is to reject the macho mythology of “authentic” rock grit and the indie habit of mistaking abrasiveness for truth.

The “in another ten years” matters. It frames taste as something you grow into rather than perform on command. It also implies a career arc where craft outlives posture: when the novelty, the cult status, the in-jokes fade, what remains is whether you can write and sing with conviction. The punchline is “totally proud of it.” Pride is the anti-irony clause. Ween’s whole project often plays with parody and pastiche, but this line insists that play does not have to be contempt. You can borrow from “corny” music because you love its architecture, not because you’re dunking on it.

Culturally, it’s a jab at genre policing: yacht rock as a guilty pleasure versus as a legitimate language. Ween’s porous, shape-shifting catalog makes this plausible, even logical. The intent is both comic and sincere: to announce that the endgame isn’t being edgy forever; it’s being unabashedly good.