Creativity Quote by Kathy Valentine

There’s a little shrug built into “Obviously” - a musician’s way of acknowledging the unglamorous math of live performance. Kathy Valentine isn’t romanticizing the stage as some pure, sacred exchange. She’s naming the deal everyone in the room has implicitly signed: the biggest emotional spikes come from the songs that already won in the marketplace. In one word, she punctures any fantasy that deep cuts reliably move crowds the way radio hits do.

The line works because it’s both appreciative and faintly skeptical. “Hit singles” aren’t framed as sellout compromises; they’re treated as communal language. When she says that’s when you can “see” people getting excited, she’s talking about visibility as validation - the moment the audience stops being a dark mass and becomes a responsive organism. That choice of verb matters: excitement isn’t just felt, it’s performed back to the band, and the band feeds on that proof of connection.

In context, coming from a Go-Go’s bassist who lived through pop’s peak mechanics (MTV-era saturation, singles-driven success, nostalgia touring), it also hints at how legacy acts survive. A setlist becomes a negotiation between artistic identity and the crowd’s desire to relive a shared timestamp. Valentine’s pragmatism lands as a kind of tenderness: she’s not chasing purity; she’s chasing the spark you can measure in bodies moving at the same time.