"I've got to find something and if I find something that I like, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't"
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It lands like a shrug, but it’s really a flex: a creative credo stripped down to appetite and veto power. Andrew Lloyd Webber isn’t talking about “following your passion” in the inspirational-poster sense. He’s describing a practical, almost transactional relationship to work: the next project has to earn his enthusiasm. If it does, he’ll commit. If it doesn’t, he’ll walk. That binary construction - do it / won’t - is the point. No tortured artist mythology, no duty to an audience, no pretense of being seized by the Muse. Just taste as a gatekeeper.
The repetition (“something… something”) matters. It’s vague on purpose, suggesting that the raw material could be anything: a story, a sound, a commission, a commercial opportunity. In a career built on big, adaptable machines of entertainment - rock opera, megamusical, pop-classical hybrids - that vagueness is strategy. It keeps the brand nimble. Lloyd Webber has always been less confessional songwriter than architect of spectacle; this line quietly asserts that he doesn’t need to justify the blueprint beyond “I like it.”
There’s subtext in the conditional, too: “if I find” shifts agency away from intention and toward discovery, as if the market, the moment, or the right collaborator will present itself. It frames success not as grinding perseverance but as selective responsiveness. Coming from a composer whose work lives at the intersection of art and commerce, it’s an honest admission: the engine runs on desire, and the strongest creative privilege is the right to say no.
The repetition (“something… something”) matters. It’s vague on purpose, suggesting that the raw material could be anything: a story, a sound, a commission, a commercial opportunity. In a career built on big, adaptable machines of entertainment - rock opera, megamusical, pop-classical hybrids - that vagueness is strategy. It keeps the brand nimble. Lloyd Webber has always been less confessional songwriter than architect of spectacle; this line quietly asserts that he doesn’t need to justify the blueprint beyond “I like it.”
There’s subtext in the conditional, too: “if I find” shifts agency away from intention and toward discovery, as if the market, the moment, or the right collaborator will present itself. It frames success not as grinding perseverance but as selective responsiveness. Coming from a composer whose work lives at the intersection of art and commerce, it’s an honest admission: the engine runs on desire, and the strongest creative privilege is the right to say no.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
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