"If there was any one achievement, it would be that we've have done it on our own terms"
About this Quote
The flex in Lifeson’s line isn’t ego; it’s authorship. “On our own terms” is the musician’s version of sovereignty, a quiet refusal to let the industry write the script. Rush built a career in a business that rewards compliance: radio-friendly lengths, label-approved images, predictable cycles of reinvention. Lifeson frames the band’s real “achievement” not as platinum numbers or virtuosity, but as the power to decide what the work would be, when it would change, and when it would stop.
The phrasing matters. He doesn’t say “success,” which would drag in charts and trophies. He says “achievement,” a word with craft in it, a sense of earned structure. And “any one” hints at how crowded the trophy case could be, while still downranking all of it beneath autonomy. There’s also a telling slip into “we’ve have done it,” a tiny grammatical collision that reads like lived history pressing through the sentence: decades of touring, writing, and surviving cultural shifts that chewed up peers.
Subtextually, it’s a defense of being difficult. Rush’s long songs, sci-fi narratives, and technical density were easy to mock, then hard to deny. Lifeson’s line reframes that arc as the point: if you’re going to be misunderstood, at least be misunderstood for something you chose. In an era when artists are nudged to become content brands, “our own terms” lands as both a legacy statement and a dare.
The phrasing matters. He doesn’t say “success,” which would drag in charts and trophies. He says “achievement,” a word with craft in it, a sense of earned structure. And “any one” hints at how crowded the trophy case could be, while still downranking all of it beneath autonomy. There’s also a telling slip into “we’ve have done it,” a tiny grammatical collision that reads like lived history pressing through the sentence: decades of touring, writing, and surviving cultural shifts that chewed up peers.
Subtextually, it’s a defense of being difficult. Rush’s long songs, sci-fi narratives, and technical density were easy to mock, then hard to deny. Lifeson’s line reframes that arc as the point: if you’re going to be misunderstood, at least be misunderstood for something you chose. In an era when artists are nudged to become content brands, “our own terms” lands as both a legacy statement and a dare.
Quote Details
| Topic | Success |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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