Art & Creativity Quote by Rita Coolidge

Possession is a risky metaphor for a pop-era musician to reach for, but Rita Coolidge uses it precisely because it captures what jazz demands: surrender. In a culture that sells singers as brands and songs as products, she draws a hard line between performing and being taken over. Jazz, in her telling, isn’t just a genre; it’s a set of conditions where control loosens. The “force” isn’t supernatural so much as collective: the band’s push-and-pull, the history embedded in the form, the improvisational brinkmanship that keeps you from staying safely inside your own habits.

The subtext is a quiet critique of pop’s machinery. Pop can be exquisitely made, but it often rewards consistency: hit the notes, honor the arrangement, deliver the persona. Coolidge implies that this kind of polish can fence off the most volatile parts of musicianship. Jazz does the opposite. It invites risk, invites failure, invites the moment where the singer stops managing the song and starts negotiating with it in real time. “I’ve become someone else” reads less like escapism than like a temporary unbranding, a rare permission to be porous.

Context matters: Coolidge came up in an industry that prized crossover appeal and marketable identity. By describing jazz as the one place she gets “moved into,” she’s defending a sacred space within a commercial life - the part of her work that can’t be replicated, scheduled, or optimized. That’s why the quote lands: it’s not romantic mysticism; it’s a musician admitting that the highest level of craft sometimes feels like losing your grip.