Creativity Quote by Neil Young

Neil Young’s line lands like a door being shut mid-party: abrupt, unglamorous, and pointedly unromantic about an industry that sells romance for a living. “Cutthroat avenues” is doing double duty. It’s not just the obvious jab at record-label politics and chart warfare; it’s also a refusal of the myth that rock is freedom by default. Young frames rock ‘n’ roll as a city grid of deals, factions, and tollbooths, where authenticity becomes a commodity you’re expected to hawk with a grin.

The intent reads less like a tantrum than a boundary. “I am fed up” is the language of someone who’s watched the same cycle repeat: hype, extraction, betrayal, reinvention, repeat. The clincher is “I don’t want anything to do with it,” which is stronger than criticism. It’s an exit strategy. Young isn’t merely judging the scene; he’s repositioning himself outside its approval economy, signaling that his loyalty is to the work, not the apparatus around it.

The subtext is classic Young: antagonistic toward careerism, allergic to being managed into a brand, wary of the way rock’s rebellion can be franchised. Culturally, it hits because it punctures the fan fantasy that musicians live in perpetual liberation. Young reminds you the machine behind the amplifiers is still a machine, and opting out can be its most radical sound.