Creativity Quote by Michael Giles

Fame is supposed to arrive like a coronation; Michael Giles describes it like mold in a dark room: unseen, slow, then suddenly everywhere. The phrase "underground cult following" does a lot of work. It signals devotion rather than mere popularity, the kind of fandom built on scarcity, bootlegs, late-night radio, and friends pressing an album into your hands like contraband. "Which came from nowhere" isn’t ignorance so much as a musician’s disbelief at the internet-era afterlife of recordings that once seemed finished, filed away, maybe even forgotten.

The key subtext is temporal whiplash. Giles frames the previous "five to ten years without it" as a stretch of cultural silence: no cheering feedback loop, no metrics, no constant proof of relevance. That gap sharpens the shock when the audience reappears. It’s also a quiet rebuke to the myth that artists can control their legacy. They can’t. A record can fail loudly in its moment and still become a touchstone later, when the world finally catches up to its mood or technique.

His doubled "grew, and grew" mimics the experience he’s describing: momentum you don’t steer, only witness. Then comes the emotional pivot: "overwhelming and humbling". Overwhelming admits the disorientation of delayed recognition; humbling performs gratitude without self-mythologizing. For a musician associated with exacting, often cerebral work, the line lands because it’s plainspoken. It treats belated acclaim not as vindication, but as something stranger: a communal decision made in the artist’s absence.