"Instead of thinking that's a nice tune, you start thinking is it the right pace, is it the right tempo? That is the death nell for artists"
About this Quote
Moyet is describing the moment music stops being a bodily instinct and becomes a spreadsheet. "Nice tune" is shorthand for the first, most fragile stage of creation: the private thrill that tells you you have something worth chasing. The pivot she sketches - "right pace, right tempo" - isn’t really about BPM. It’s about internalizing an external judge: radio format, playlist skip rates, A&R notes, the invisible algorithm that rewards familiarity and punishes risk. Once you’re optimizing, you’re no longer listening.
The phrase "death nell" (a slight, revealing mis-spelling of "death knell") lands like a superstition you still half-believe in. It frames overthinking as a tolling bell, not a practical adjustment. Artists can revise, of course, but Moyet’s warning is about a specific kind of revision: the anxious one that second-guesses the original impulse until it evaporates. Tempo becomes a proxy for permission.
Coming from a musician whose career spans synth-pop’s hit machine and decades of genre-hopping survival, the line reads as both memoir and critique. She’s watched taste-making shift from human gatekeepers to data-driven pipelines, where "right" often means "already proven". Her subtext is defiant: artistry isn’t the absence of craft, it’s craft in service of feeling. When metrics start composing the song, the artist becomes a technician polishing someone else’s idea of success.
The phrase "death nell" (a slight, revealing mis-spelling of "death knell") lands like a superstition you still half-believe in. It frames overthinking as a tolling bell, not a practical adjustment. Artists can revise, of course, but Moyet’s warning is about a specific kind of revision: the anxious one that second-guesses the original impulse until it evaporates. Tempo becomes a proxy for permission.
Coming from a musician whose career spans synth-pop’s hit machine and decades of genre-hopping survival, the line reads as both memoir and critique. She’s watched taste-making shift from human gatekeepers to data-driven pipelines, where "right" often means "already proven". Her subtext is defiant: artistry isn’t the absence of craft, it’s craft in service of feeling. When metrics start composing the song, the artist becomes a technician polishing someone else’s idea of success.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Alison
Add to List
