"We worked so hard we almost stopped enjoying it"
About this Quote
It lands like a confession you only admit once you have some distance from the grind: the kind of overachievement that’s supposed to look glamorous from the outside, but feels quietly joyless from the inside. Coming from Susanna Hoffs, it carries extra bite because pop success is built on the illusion of ease. The Bangles sound sunlit; the machinery behind them wasn’t.
The line’s power is its almost. “We almost stopped enjoying it” isn’t a full tragedy, it’s a near-miss, which makes it more relatable and more indicting. It sketches the tipping point where ambition starts impersonating obligation, where the thing you loved becomes a job you’re scared to lose. That word “worked” is doing double duty: not just labor, but effortful performance of enthusiasm. When your living depends on being “fun,” fun becomes another deliverable.
Contextually, Hoffs is speaking from inside an era when music careers were increasingly industrial: relentless touring, label expectations, MTV schedules, image management, press cycles. Success demanded constant output and constant visibility, long before social media made that demand feel like the default setting for anyone with an audience. The subtext isn’t “hard work is bad.” It’s that creative joy is fragile, and the industry is perfectly designed to treat it like an unlimited resource.
The quote also smuggles in a warning that isn’t moralizing: if you have to “work so hard” at the thing that once gave you energy, you might still be winning, but you’re starting to lose the reason you wanted to win at all.
The line’s power is its almost. “We almost stopped enjoying it” isn’t a full tragedy, it’s a near-miss, which makes it more relatable and more indicting. It sketches the tipping point where ambition starts impersonating obligation, where the thing you loved becomes a job you’re scared to lose. That word “worked” is doing double duty: not just labor, but effortful performance of enthusiasm. When your living depends on being “fun,” fun becomes another deliverable.
Contextually, Hoffs is speaking from inside an era when music careers were increasingly industrial: relentless touring, label expectations, MTV schedules, image management, press cycles. Success demanded constant output and constant visibility, long before social media made that demand feel like the default setting for anyone with an audience. The subtext isn’t “hard work is bad.” It’s that creative joy is fragile, and the industry is perfectly designed to treat it like an unlimited resource.
The quote also smuggles in a warning that isn’t moralizing: if you have to “work so hard” at the thing that once gave you energy, you might still be winning, but you’re starting to lose the reason you wanted to win at all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work-Life Balance |
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