Creativity Quote by Bryan Ferry

Ferry’s feigned bewilderment lands because it performs masculinity as a shrug: the pop-star equivalent of hands in pockets, eyes to the horizon, insisting the most basic human relationship is an unsolved riddle. Coming from a musician whose persona has long traded in sleek control and cultivated distance, the line isn’t really ignorance so much as a pose of ignorance. It’s a way to stay cool while talking about desire.

The intent reads like self-protection. By declaring women “a complete mystery,” he dodges specificity and accountability: no need to name a fear, a failed relationship, a blind spot. Mystery is safer than clarity, and it flatters the speaker by casting him as perpetually surprised, perpetually compelled. It also flatters “women” in the abstract, turning them into an aesthetic problem rather than people with motives that can be understood. That’s the bargain: he gets to keep the romance of confusion, and the audience gets a familiar script where longing and misunderstanding are basically the same emotion.

There’s also a sly cultural wink here, rooted in a longstanding pop tradition: men narrate women as unknowable, then turn that “unknowability” into lyrics, style, and myth. Ferry’s version is especially telling because it’s so absolute: “I don’t know anything,” “at all.” The exaggeration makes it readable as performance, not confession. It’s less about women than about the singer’s chosen role - the elegant outsider who can desire intensely without ever getting pinned down.