"If certain songs become popular enough to the point where I'll be playing them the rest of my life, I don't want them all to dwell on the same down moment that I'll have to keep reliving"
About this Quote
Chantal Kreviazuk, a Canadian singer-songwriter known for luminous piano ballads and candid lyrics, reflects on the odd bargain every successful musician makes with time. A hit becomes a passport to longevity, but it can also be a cage. Popular songs follow an artist into every venue, encore, and anniversary tour. If those songs spring from one specific heartbreak or depressive stretch, each performance becomes a ritual of return, a forced pilgrimage back to a room the artist might prefer to leave.
The line draws a boundary between catharsis and compulsion. Writing through pain can be cleansing; reliving it nightly can be corrosive. Kreviazuk is not rejecting vulnerability so much as designing for sustainability, thinking like a future version of herself who will still be asked to sing the same choruses decades later. She wants a repertoire that allows movement across the emotional spectrum, rather than a brand that locks her into perpetual sadness.
There is also a commentary on the industry’s hunger for confessional sorrow, which reliably sells but can flatten a musician’s identity. Audiences often want the song that got them through a breakup; labels want the mood that charts. The artist, however, must carry the psychic cost of repetition. Kreviazuk’s stance asserts agency: the right to curate which memories become public ritual, to shape a legacy not only in terms of sound but of livable emotion.
Embedded here is a craft insight. Songs are not only texts; they are performances that exist in time and in the body. Melodies chosen today must be singable tomorrow; stories chosen today must be bearable tomorrow. By resisting a catalog that dwells on a single down moment, Kreviazuk protects the creative well from becoming an echo chamber. The goal is not to deny darkness, but to place it in conversation with resilience, curiosity, and joy, so that a lifetime of singing remains an act of renewal rather than repetition.
The line draws a boundary between catharsis and compulsion. Writing through pain can be cleansing; reliving it nightly can be corrosive. Kreviazuk is not rejecting vulnerability so much as designing for sustainability, thinking like a future version of herself who will still be asked to sing the same choruses decades later. She wants a repertoire that allows movement across the emotional spectrum, rather than a brand that locks her into perpetual sadness.
There is also a commentary on the industry’s hunger for confessional sorrow, which reliably sells but can flatten a musician’s identity. Audiences often want the song that got them through a breakup; labels want the mood that charts. The artist, however, must carry the psychic cost of repetition. Kreviazuk’s stance asserts agency: the right to curate which memories become public ritual, to shape a legacy not only in terms of sound but of livable emotion.
Embedded here is a craft insight. Songs are not only texts; they are performances that exist in time and in the body. Melodies chosen today must be singable tomorrow; stories chosen today must be bearable tomorrow. By resisting a catalog that dwells on a single down moment, Kreviazuk protects the creative well from becoming an echo chamber. The goal is not to deny darkness, but to place it in conversation with resilience, curiosity, and joy, so that a lifetime of singing remains an act of renewal rather than repetition.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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