Creativity Quote by Leo Kottke

Kottke turns the music industry’s favorite insult - “hard to market” - into a kind of artistic armor. The line reads like a shrug with teeth: yes, he’s a headache for record-label spreadsheets, radio formats, and the tidy consumer boxes that let executives pretend taste is predictable. Then comes that pivoting “but!”: the supposed weakness becomes his leverage.

The intent isn’t just to complain about gatekeepers; it’s to name the bargain artists are asked to make. “Hard to demography” is an especially revealing, faintly comic verbing of a corporate obsession. It exposes how audiences get flattened into age brackets and lifestyle clusters, and how music is pressured to behave like a product with a target user rather than an experience with its own logic. Kottke’s phrasing implies he’s seen the machinery up close and refuses to be translated into it.

The subtext is identity-by-refusal. By not “fitting anywhere,” he avoids being drafted into the cycle of scene, hype, and inevitable obsolescence. That’s the quiet confidence: if you can’t be easily slotted, you also can’t be easily replaced. In a culture where radio adds are political and genre boundaries double as brand guidelines, his unruly category - acoustic virtuoso, folk adjacency, instrumental music that doesn’t beg for hooks - becomes a long game.

Context matters: Kottke emerged in an era when labels and radio still had real chokehold power, and instrumental guitar music was routinely treated as niche. He’s describing marginality, but also the freedom that comes with it: fewer trends to chase, fewer expectations to betray, and a career built on durability instead of fashion.