"Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me"
About this Quote
There is a kind of shrug in Bob Geldof's line that doubles as a confession: after the causes, the cameras, the chaos of public life, the only reliable ignition source is still a song. "Still" is the loaded word. It implies detours and distractions - fame, acting, activism, the machinery of being a public person - and then a return to the one sensation that doesn't dilute with time. Geldof isn't selling music as salvation. He's admitting it as compulsion.
The phrasing is pointedly unglamorous. "Above all else" sounds grand, but "the thing that does it for me" drags it back down to the body: the private jolt, the chemical click. That's a pop-cultural truth presented without mythmaking. For an artist associated with big, moralized spectacle - Live Aid as a template for celebrity humanitarianism - this is a quiet re-centering. The subtext: the world may applaud your intentions, but your nervous system answers to something older and less negotiable.
Context matters because Geldof has spent decades being read as more than a musician: spokesperson, agitator, emblem of a certain 80s earnestness. This line pushes against that overdetermined persona. It suggests that even the most public-minded artistry begins in selfish pleasure, and that isn't a flaw. It's the engine. Music "does it" because it bypasses ideology and goes straight to urgency - the place where a person stops performing usefulness and starts wanting something.
The phrasing is pointedly unglamorous. "Above all else" sounds grand, but "the thing that does it for me" drags it back down to the body: the private jolt, the chemical click. That's a pop-cultural truth presented without mythmaking. For an artist associated with big, moralized spectacle - Live Aid as a template for celebrity humanitarianism - this is a quiet re-centering. The subtext: the world may applaud your intentions, but your nervous system answers to something older and less negotiable.
Context matters because Geldof has spent decades being read as more than a musician: spokesperson, agitator, emblem of a certain 80s earnestness. This line pushes against that overdetermined persona. It suggests that even the most public-minded artistry begins in selfish pleasure, and that isn't a flaw. It's the engine. Music "does it" because it bypasses ideology and goes straight to urgency - the place where a person stops performing usefulness and starts wanting something.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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