Creativity Quote by Van Morrison

There is a stubborn pragmatism in Van Morrison's line: change isn't a branding exercise, it's the job description. Coming from a musician who has spent decades swerving away from easy categorization, it reads less like motivational advice and more like a warning. The subtext is almost anti-nostalgia: if you try to freeze your sound at the moment the audience first loved you, you stop being an artist and start being a tribute act to yourself.

The phrasing matters. "You can't stay the same" lands like a rule, not a preference. Morrison isn't romanticizing growth; he's describing an ecosystem where repetition becomes its own kind of decay. "That's the way it works" shrugs off the myth that artistry is pure inspiration. It suggests craft, discipline, and the unglamorous fact that a voice changes, a body changes, a culture changes. Pretending otherwise turns performance into upkeep: maintaining the museum exhibit.

Contextually, Morrison's career makes the point sharper. He's moved through R&B, Celtic folk, jazz-inflected mysticism, gospel, and late-period blues orthodoxy, often frustrating listeners who wanted the version of him that lived on one canonical album. The line doubles as self-defense against that demand. In a music industry that monetizes familiarity and sells "eras" like products, Morrison frames evolution as survival - not just commercially, but spiritually. Change becomes the only way to keep the work from becoming a costume.