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Wit & Attitude Quote by Dusty Springfield

"It's marvellous to be popular, but foolish to think it will last"

About this Quote

Popularity is a sugar high, and Dusty Springfield delivers that truth with the calm authority of someone who’s tasted it onstage and then watched it evaporate. “Marvellous” isn’t a throwaway adjective; it’s the sound of a performer refusing to sneer at the crowd’s love. She grants the thrill its full glamour. Then she pivots: “foolish” lands like a slap of realism, not bitterness. The sentence is built like a trapdoor - gratitude on top, gravity underneath.

The intent is defensive and liberating at once. By separating pleasure from expectation, Springfield sketches a survival strategy for fame: accept the joy, don’t build your identity on it. The subtext is that popularity is less a verdict on talent than a weather system of timing, taste, and industry machinery. To “think it will last” isn’t just naive; it’s a category error, confusing market heat for permanence.

Context matters here because Springfield’s career moved through sharp peaks and reinventions, in an era when pop stardom was both newly mass-mediated and brutally disposable. The 1960s and 70s music business loved a narrative until it got bored, and it got bored quickly - especially with women expected to stay eternally fresh, pliable, and grateful. Her line sidesteps the usual celebrity script (either entitlement or false humility) and offers something rarer: mature ambivalence. Enjoy the spotlight. Keep a self outside it. That’s not cynicism; it’s craft.

Quote Details

TopicWisdom
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Popularity Is Temporary - Dusty Springfield Quote
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About the Author

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Dusty Springfield (April 16, 1939 - March 2, 1999) was a Musician from United Kingdom.

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