"Stick to your instincts"
About this Quote
"Stick to your instincts" lands less like a motivational poster and more like stage advice from someone who built a career by trusting the weird idea before it sounded sensible. Tina Weymouth isn’t selling rugged individualism; she’s pointing to a survival skill in music culture, where taste gets outsourced to producers, algorithms, and the loudest person in the room.
The intent is practical: when you’re making something under pressure, your first, bodily sense of what works is often the only compass you have. Instinct here isn’t a mystical gift, it’s accumulated listening - thousands of micro-decisions about groove, space, and restraint that your brain can’t always justify fast enough. Coming from Weymouth, a bassist whose parts are famously economical and insistent, the line carries an implied aesthetic: don’t overplay, don’t overthink, don’t decorate your insecurity.
The subtext is also gendered and political in a quiet way. Women in rock have long been trained to second-guess themselves, to seek permission, to “prove” their choices with credentials. “Stick” is the operative verb: hold your ground. It’s counsel against the soft coercion of being edited into palatability.
Context matters, too. Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club thrived on tension - art-school concept meets dance-floor pulse. That balance requires a musician to trust the gut even when the result feels uncategorizable. Weymouth’s line argues that originality isn’t a lightning bolt; it’s what happens when you refuse to abandon your first honest signal just because someone else can’t hear it yet.
The intent is practical: when you’re making something under pressure, your first, bodily sense of what works is often the only compass you have. Instinct here isn’t a mystical gift, it’s accumulated listening - thousands of micro-decisions about groove, space, and restraint that your brain can’t always justify fast enough. Coming from Weymouth, a bassist whose parts are famously economical and insistent, the line carries an implied aesthetic: don’t overplay, don’t overthink, don’t decorate your insecurity.
The subtext is also gendered and political in a quiet way. Women in rock have long been trained to second-guess themselves, to seek permission, to “prove” their choices with credentials. “Stick” is the operative verb: hold your ground. It’s counsel against the soft coercion of being edited into palatability.
Context matters, too. Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club thrived on tension - art-school concept meets dance-floor pulse. That balance requires a musician to trust the gut even when the result feels uncategorizable. Weymouth’s line argues that originality isn’t a lightning bolt; it’s what happens when you refuse to abandon your first honest signal just because someone else can’t hear it yet.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Weymouth, Tina. (2026, January 17). Stick to your instincts. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/stick-to-your-instincts-65959/
Chicago Style
Weymouth, Tina. "Stick to your instincts." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/stick-to-your-instincts-65959/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Stick to your instincts." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/stick-to-your-instincts-65959/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2026.
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