Music Quote by Andy Taylor

A weary kind of candor runs through Andy Taylor's complaint: not outrage, not romantic mythmaking, just the exhausted realism of someone who knows the machinery up close and doesn’t expect it to be kind. Calling the industry "very screwed-up" is blunt on purpose; it refuses the usual PR gloss that treats music as pure passion while the business side quietly decides who gets oxygen.

The key move is how the quote shifts from diagnosis to a modest, almost old-fashioned request: "find a home and stay there". That language is revealing. Labels are framed less as glamorous kingmakers than as shelter and infrastructure, the thing that lets a band do the unsexy work of making records repeatedly, building an audience slowly, getting better. Taylor is mourning a model of career-building that depended on patience and continuity, where a band could be a long-term bet instead of a short-term content play.

"Not have to look over our shoulder" is the subtextual punchline. It suggests constant precarity: being dropped, being deprioritized, being told to chase trends, metrics, or virality. The industry isn’t just shrinking opportunities; it’s reshaping musicians into anxious entrepreneurs, always anticipating the next algorithmic gust or executive whim.

Even without naming the era, the context reads like late-stage consolidation: fewer signings, higher stakes, thinner margins, more risk-aversion. The intent isn’t nostalgia for excess; it’s a demand for stability as a creative condition, a reminder that art flourishes when survival isn’t the daily project.