Art & Creativity Quote by Perry Como

Como’s line reads like a polite shrug, but it’s also a small act of cultural self-defense. In an era when older entertainers were often drafted into the role of scolding chaperone, he sidesteps the cheap applause of “kids these days” rhetoric. The first clause admits distance without dramatizing it: he can’t relate. That’s not a moral failing on his part or theirs; it’s time doing what time does.

The subtext is more strategic than it looks. Como is protecting two things at once: his own brand (the unflappable, cardigan-calm crooner) and the idea of taste as something personal rather than prosecutorial. By pairing “music or morals,” he acknowledges that generational change isn’t just sonic; it’s social, sexual, political. Yet he refuses the familiar escalation where new sounds become proof of decline. “Doesn’t make either necessarily bad” is a careful hedge that still grants him dignity: he can be out of step without being out of touch.

Context matters here. Como’s career peaked in a mass-media monoculture where mainstream entertainers were expected to embody reassurance. By the late 1960s and onward, popular music splintered and provoked; performers were no longer just singers but symbols in cultural battles. Como’s choice to “leave the judgements to others” isn’t passivity so much as a statement of ethics: he declines to convert his discomfort into condemnation. It’s an older artist modeling a rare skill - letting your era end without insisting the next one is a mistake.