Creativity Quote by Bruce Johnston

There is a quiet defensiveness baked into Bruce Johnston's line, the kind that only shows up when an artist knows the accusation is already in the room. "We try" does a lot of work: it's modest, non-combative, and carefully noncommittal, as if he's negotiating with an invisible jury of critics who hear "pop" and immediately reach for "product". The phrase "really interesting things" is deliberately vague, a soft-focus claim of experimentation that can cover anything from harmonic risk to studio trickery to simply deviating from the expected hit formula. He doesn't specify because specificity invites cross-examination.

The real tell is "besides being outright commercial". Johnston doesn't deny commerciality; he reframes it as a spectrum. "Outright" suggests there's a respectable, indirect version of making money: the kind where art leads and commerce follows, or at least where the machinery isn't too loud. It's the language of a musician from a band era where chart success was both the goal and the stigma, especially for acts who were massively popular and therefore perpetually suspected of being manufactured.

Contextually, it reads like a Beach Boys-adjacent posture: the tug-of-war between lush craft and marketplace demands, between the studio as a playground and the radio as a gatekeeper. The intent isn't to claim purity; it's to claim complexity. Johnston is asking to be judged not just by sales, but by the moments where the work slips its leash.