"Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors"
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Ken Hill’s line bristles with a very theatre-maker’s impatience for the easy romanticism around “creativity.” The parenthetical jab - “everyone has a brain I hope!” - is doing real work: it punctures the democratic fantasy that access to the instrument equals mastery of the craft. He’s not denying that anyone can try. He’s denying the cultural leap from “can” to “therefore, should be treated as great.”
The comparison between songwriting and authorship is strategic. Both are arts people love to describe as spontaneous and personal, which makes them easy targets for casual condescension. Hill insists on a distinction modern culture often flattens: tools versus technique, raw expression versus shaped work. A brain (or a guitar, or a notebook app) is the baseline. What matters is the accumulated discipline that turns thought into form and form into something others actually want to live inside.
Coming from a playwright, the subtext feels pointedly professional. Theatre is collaborative, revision-heavy, and relentlessly exposed to public failure; you find out fast whether a scene lands. Hill’s remark reads like a defense of expertise in an era that already liked to treat art as a hobby with applause attached. It also anticipates today’s content economy, where everyone can publish instantly and visibility masquerades as merit. His core intent isn’t elitism for its own sake; it’s a plea to respect the gap between having something to say and knowing how to make it sing.
The comparison between songwriting and authorship is strategic. Both are arts people love to describe as spontaneous and personal, which makes them easy targets for casual condescension. Hill insists on a distinction modern culture often flattens: tools versus technique, raw expression versus shaped work. A brain (or a guitar, or a notebook app) is the baseline. What matters is the accumulated discipline that turns thought into form and form into something others actually want to live inside.
Coming from a playwright, the subtext feels pointedly professional. Theatre is collaborative, revision-heavy, and relentlessly exposed to public failure; you find out fast whether a scene lands. Hill’s remark reads like a defense of expertise in an era that already liked to treat art as a hobby with applause attached. It also anticipates today’s content economy, where everyone can publish instantly and visibility masquerades as merit. His core intent isn’t elitism for its own sake; it’s a plea to respect the gap between having something to say and knowing how to make it sing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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