Politics & Power Quote by Jerry Only

It’s the kind of backstage truth that sounds naive until you remember how often it’s violated. Jerry Only frames music as play: a “bunch of people” making “great songs” “together” in pursuit of “a good time.” The repetition isn’t accidental. He’s insisting that the core unit of music isn’t the brand or the platform, but the room: bodies, volume, chemistry, sweat, momentum. That’s a musician’s ethic, not a business plan.

The intent is plainly defensive. By naming money and politics as threats, he’s drawing a boundary around a space that’s been steadily colonized. In the modern industry, “music” often means a revenue stream, a content pipeline, or a proxy war of identity and ideology. Only’s line pushes back against that conversion. Not by denying that art has always had economics and messages, but by arguing that those forces shouldn’t be the organizing principle. The subtext: when music is built around anything other than the music, the vibe curdles. Collaboration turns into leverage; songs become products; bands become committees.

Context matters, too. Coming out of punk and hardcore-adjacent culture (where authenticity is currency and “selling out” is a real accusation), this reads like a declaration of values: keep it communal, keep it loud, keep it human. It’s also a little utopian, strategically so. By romanticizing fun and togetherness, he’s reclaiming the simplest metric of success: does it feel alive when we play it? That’s a radical question in an era optimized for everything else.