Following growing bodies of scholarship concerned with the social and cultural lives of economic forms, this article tries to recover some of the complexity of contracts in creative work. While contracts might seem to reflect narrowly economic determinations, as mere instruments of commerce, sociological models emphasize their contingency and artifice. Moving toward and forward from such models, this article synthesizes a more sociocultural model, approaching contract as a scene of contestation, communication and constitution. It develops these themes in a series of engagements with predominant legal, economic and sociological models of contract; across these engagements, it draws upon and draws together cases of recording artists and film stars, while also drawing broader comparisons with other creative workers.