Art & Creativity Quote by Will Champion

There is a quiet flex buried in Will Champion's offhand phrasing: being "passionate" is easy to claim; being "very critical" is the part that signals craft, standards, and a refusal to be merely fans of their own scene. Coming from a working musician, it reads like a mission statement disguised as casual talk - a way of defending taste without sounding snobbish. The line performs humility and authority at the same time.

The specific intent is to frame listening as labor. Champion isn't describing background music; he's describing an internal quality-control process. "We're also" matters: it implies music isn’t just their job, it’s their obsession, one that continues after rehearsals and tours. And "very critical" doubles as a preemptive rebuttal to the common assumption that successful bands are either insulated by fame or blindly supportive of whatever's trendy. He's telling you they still audition songs the way a drummer auditions a groove: with precision, not sentimentality.

Subtextually, it’s about credibility in a culture that confuses sincerity with discernment. Passion alone can look like branding; criticism suggests discernment, influences, and selective admiration. It also hints at rivalry - not hostility, but the competitive listening every artist does, measuring themselves against the best ideas in the room.

The likely context is band identity-making: interviews where artists are asked what they listen to, what inspires them, why they don’t sound like everyone else. Champion positions the group as students of music, not just producers of it, which is how long careers are built.