Creativity Quote by Mike Gordon

Radio is positioned here as both temptation and trap: a pragmatic goal you’d be naive to ignore, and a creative compass you’d be foolish to follow. Mike Gordon’s phrasing is doing a careful dance. “You might as well think about that” grants the industry its due without surrendering to it. It’s a nod to the reality that albums don’t just exist in a vacuum of pure expression; they’re released into an ecosystem where attention is scarce and formats still exert pressure. But the second sentence snaps the leash back: “That’s not really how we picked the songs.” The “not really” matters. It’s not a sermon about purity; it’s a musician admitting the negotiation while insisting the negotiation didn’t win.

The subtext is credibility management, the kind artists with dedicated fanbases have to perform. For a musician associated with a scene that prizes live experience and deep cuts, “radio play” can read like selling out or sanding down eccentric edges. Gordon preempts that accusation by acknowledging the commercial logic, then quietly asserting a different hierarchy of values: song selection driven by internal coherence, band chemistry, and what feels alive, not what fits a playlist.

Contextually, it’s a statement from the long tail era of music careers, when radio remains a legacy gatekeeper but no longer the only one. The quote lands as a defense of album-making as an artistic unit, even while conceding that the business side is always in the room, tapping its foot.