Wealth & Money Quote by Paul Simon

Paul Simon knows exactly what people suspect about a legacy musician: that the tours are cash grabs, the catalog is an annuity, the art is a brand extension. He meets that suspicion head-on and swats it away with a plainspoken insistence that sounds almost stubborn: this isn’t commerce, it’s compulsion. The repetition does the work. “I like… I love… I can’t imagine…” climbs from preference to need, and then to a kind of psychological inevitability. By the time he gets to “drive me crazy,” the frame has shifted from motivation to survival.

The subtext isn’t saintly purity; it’s a claim of identity. Simon positions music as a bodily function, not a career choice. That matters because he’s spent decades being treated as both a craftsman and a commodity: the meticulous songwriter, the prestige collaborator, the guy whose songs are instantly monetizable. Saying “I’m not in it for the money” isn’t naive; it’s defensive and strategic. He’s protecting the authenticity of his labor in a culture that reflexively prices everything, especially nostalgia.

Context sharpens the intent. Simon’s reputation is built on craft, not spectacle - lyrics that behave like short stories, melodies that travel. For an artist whose work has been endlessly reissued, covered, streamed, and licensed, the simplest way to reassert authorship is to underline the one thing capitalism can’t convincingly fake: the inability to stop making.