Creativity Quote by Diana Krall

“Definite departure” is pop’s most polite grenade: a way to announce reinvention without admitting fear. Diana Krall frames the shift as both artistic growth and a carefully managed risk. She’s not saying she abandoned jazz standards; she’s saying she earned the right to move. The sentence is built like a negotiation with her audience: first, a promise of change; then a quick reassurance that the change is contained, deliberate, and validated by pedigree.

The subtext is about authorship as credibility. Krall acknowledges a long-standing boundary in her career: interpretation over invention. In jazz, that’s not a deficit; it’s a tradition. But in the broader recording economy, “original material” reads as artistic adulthood, the proof that you’re not just a vessel for the canon. She names her exception (“one song on my first album”) to show this isn’t a random swerve. It’s a return to an impulse she’s had all along.

Then she drops the clincher: “Elvis and I did six songs together.” The “Elvis” here isn’t a gimmick; it’s a co-sign from Elvis Costello, a songwriter with rock-literary cachet and a reputation for sharp emotional architecture. By tying the departure to collaboration, she softens any whiff of ego and turns the leap into a partnership. It’s also a strategic bridge between genres and audiences: jazz listeners get craft, Costello fans get narrative bite, and Krall gets to step into the spotlight as a writer without standing there alone.