Creativity Quote by Wayne Coyne

Coyne is offering a musician-to-musician version of legal realism: you are not living in a world where inspiration stays neatly in its lane, so act like it. The line lands because it refuses both extremes that dominate pop authorship fights - the romantic fantasy of pure originality and the scorched-earth posture of "see you in court". Instead, he treats resemblance as an occupational hazard of writing melodies inside a shared musical language, where chord progressions recycle, hooks echo, and our brains crave the familiar.

The intent is practical: pick up the phone early, call the publisher, and negotiate before the internet does it for you. But the subtext is defensive in a savvy way. Coyne is implicitly acknowledging how power works in contemporary music: publishers, catalogs, and lawyers have become co-authors after the fact, especially once a song becomes a hit. "Walk away feeling good" is also a warning label. Feelings are part of the transaction now because public perception can punish you as hard as a judgment. A settlement isn't just about royalties; it's about narrative control - the difference between "homage" and "theft" is often decided by who speaks first and how clean the paper trail looks.

Coyne, coming from an indie-cred band that still brushes up against mainstream mechanisms, is normalizing compromise as craft etiquette. He frames dealing as ethical, not shameful: an adult move that keeps the focus on making work, not litigating it. It's an oddly hopeful vision of a cynical system - cooperation as the least-bad art form available.