"I'm much more of a musician than a poet. I just feel much more confident about my musical abilities"

Mary Timony draws a deliberate line between two intertwined arts, placing her center of gravity in sound rather than language. The statement rejects the common assumption that songwriting hinges primarily on lyrical prowess; it locates authorship in melody, rhythm, harmony, and the physical act of playing. Confidence becomes the compass. She isn’t devaluing words, but acknowledging that mastery grows where the artist’s body and ear have spent the most time, on the fretboard, in the studio, in the feedback loop between hands, instrument, and audience.

To call oneself a musician rather than a poet is to make a claim about how meaning is built. Music communicates with timbre, dynamics, phrasing, the micro-inflections that bypass argument and move straight into feeling. Where poetry shapes the architecture of thought through syntax and metaphor, music shapes it through contour and momentum. Timony’s emphasis implies that her songs are born from progression and texture first, with lyrics riding the wave rather than steering it. Words become one color on the palette, sometimes essential, often subordinate to the spell the music casts.

There’s also an ethic of craft embedded here. Confidence is rarely abstract; it comes from repetition, from solving problems that only practice reveals. A musician’s confidence is tactile, the muscle memory that lets risk become play. That sensibility fosters composition that trusts riffs, counterpoint, and space, rather than over-explaining through text. It dignifies listening as much as speaking, inviting the audience to feel their way through a piece instead of being told what to think.

At the same time, the admission carries a quiet humility. It resists the pressure to be a polymath and embraces specialization. By naming where her strengths lie, Timony grants herself permission to let sound lead, to let lyrics be sparse, suggestive, or fragmentary. The declaration becomes a creative north star: build from the sonic core outward, let the music argue for itself, and allow the voice, words included, to function primarily as an instrument among instruments.