Creativity Quote by Chantal Kreviazuk

Kreviazuk is pushing back against the quiet tyranny of “relatability” as a career strategy. After you’ve been in the studio long enough, you learn how easily a song can be engineered to land: pick a universally legible topic, sand down the specifics, leave room for other people to project themselves into it. Her line draws a boundary against that impulse. The intent isn’t just authenticity-as-brand; it’s a practical creative ethic: write from the thing that’s actually pressing on your ribs, because that pressure creates shape.

The subtext is a musician describing the moment you stop performing empathy and start practicing honesty. “Growing up” matters here as much as “making records.” The industry teaches young artists to treat songwriting like a service job - provide comfort, provide an anthem, provide content. Kreviazuk reframes expression as self-reporting rather than audience management. It’s a subtle refusal to preemptively curate your own feelings so they’ll be easier for strangers to consume.

Contextually, she’s speaking from the late-90s/early-2000s singer-songwriter lane where emotional sincerity was both prized and commodified. That era could reward confessional writing while simultaneously pressuring artists to package confession into familiar tropes. Her phrasing - “instead of trying to sing about a subject” - hints at the deadness of the assignment mindset. Paradoxically, the more specific and personal the source, the more listeners tend to find themselves in it. She’s naming that paradox without marketing it: stop writing for “other people getting something,” and they’ll often get something real.