The next MBW Views op/ed comes from Matt Thomas (pictured inset beneath), a 30-year music business veteran.
Thomas can be co-founder of the business charity Music Assist and a Director of Attune, simply two of the organisations which assist and help artists, people and firms within the music and related leisure industries.
Attune has just lately launched ‘The Pressing Response Information’, a free, interactive useful resource for artist-facing professionals experiencing something from a priority to a disaster. Thomas additionally co-presents ‘Empathy for the Satan’, a podcast that investigates historic case research of troubled artists and explores their lives by a bio-psycho-social lens inside their cultural contexts.
The opinions acknowledged on this piece are these of the author and don’t essentially symbolize the positions of MBW or Music Assist.
At the moment, someplace on this planet, an artist is quietly, or loudly, falling aside in entrance of different individuals. And while we as an business have the instruments and providers to stop the disaster that can inevitably comply with, these typically stay unknown or underused.
Absolutely, subsequently, in an business the place the idea of ‘obligation of care’ is murky at finest, all of us have a collective accountability to create consciousness of the very actual options that exist already.
With that in thoughts, the more and more frequent items within the media that spotlight the issue however ignore the options have gotten an actual concern.
Now we have seen a latest uptick of stunning documentaries and films concerning the darkish facet of fame and its related pressures, equivalent to Boybands Endlessly, I’m Tim, No Matter What, and Soiled Pop, that includes heartbreaking first-hand testimonies from individuals who had been youngsters after they had been ‘found’, in addition to the retrospective reportage documentaries about Liam Payne, Lil Peep and Amy Winehouse.
But whereas we seize the popcorn and watch these sensationalist tales, younger persons are nonetheless dying, regardless of us having extra assets and understanding than ever earlier than.
Folks’s private ache shouldn’t merely turn out to be watercooler moments to be dissected on social media; we shouldn’t be treating them as a Netflix and chill accompaniment to real-life tragedies.
And so they aren’t simply remoted incidents – they’re proof of an more and more urgent want for systematic help and preventative motion throughout our business.
The proof is true there on our screens, uncooked and simple – Robbie Williams laying naked the psychological devastation of high-profile superstar, younger males in boy bands struggling to manage within the world highlight with out ample help methods, Avicii desperately looking for relaxation and recalibration whereas attempting to steadiness the calls for of his profession with tragic penalties, Lil Peep’s struggles with habit.
We watch these documentaries, share our ideas and prayers, after which – nothing adjustments. The cycle continues.
Decade after decade, we’ve watched younger performers face overwhelming stress with out ample safety. But these tales aren’t simply an archive; they’re a mirrored image of what’s nonetheless occurring proper now; in recording studios, tour buses, resort rooms and backstage areas all over the world.
It’s this ongoing sample that led us to create the “Empathy For The Satan” podcast, the place we retell the tales behind a few of these preventable tragedies from a contemporary psychological well being perspective – to not sensationalise, however to establish intervention factors that would save lives at this time.
And right here’s what’s essential: We do have options. Now we have charities equivalent to Music Assist, MusiCares and Assist Musicians UK offering very important providers, report labels with in-house provision for artists and staff, and firms like Attune serving to music corporations fulfil their obligation of care tasks.
Now we have the information, the assets, and the aptitude to stop these tragedies. But by some means, we’re nonetheless studying the identical headlines, nonetheless watching the identical tales unfold, and nonetheless pretending to be shocked when one other younger star reaches their breaking level.
Let’s be trustworthy about this: for a lot of, fame comes with profound psychological challenges that should be acknowledged and addressed. We now have greater than sufficient proof of the struggles that happen beneath the tough highlight, and the immense stress positioned on younger performers with out ample safety – too typically with no recognition or response to clear indicators of misery.
I write this piece from each private {and professional} expertise. As a main report label government affected by a mixture of psychological well being points and habit, I used to be spiralling towards a degree of no return – till an artist supervisor took some compassionate motion that basically spoke to me.
The irony isn’t misplaced on me. In an business the place we so typically speak about defending artists, it was an artist’s consultant whose sort phrases in my storm of unacceptable behaviour led me to hunt assist. We’d like extra of this type of human intervention, extra individuals keen to succeed in out after they see somebody struggling.
We don’t want one other spherical of “ideas and prayers” or rigorously worded statements. We have to put the prevailing set of instruments into the palms of those that could make a distinction.
The options exist – now we’d like motion from everybody in our business.
To our leaders: please embrace and implement the assets already out there. Make first-class psychological well being help as normal as a recording contract.
To the media who cowl our business: please shift your focus from infinite tragedy protection to highlighting profitable interventions and supporting current options. Your platforms may stop deaths by guiding individuals to assist, relatively than simply documenting when that assist arrived too late.
And to the followers who maintain our business: your understanding of the human price behind fixed content material calls for creates a extra sustainable setting for the artists you admire.
Now that these highly effective documentaries provide us additional intimate glimpses into these artists’ emotional journeys, sharing their painful experiences first-hand or trying on the tales of those that didn’t make it, we must always concentrate. Although we could not be capable of assist those that’ve already suffered, we will use these insights to guard those that want it now, and people to come back.
As a result of proper now, we’re all simply ready for the subsequent headline, the subsequent “gone too quickly”, the subsequent spherical of soul-searching that can final precisely so long as we end our morning espresso – the subsequent very well-intentioned promise to “do higher” that quickly fades because the realities of breaking artists create a major cognitive dissonance.
In the meantime, someplace in a dressing room, a studio, or a tour bus, one other artist is falling to items in plain sight.
This isn’t simply an opinion piece. It’s a plea to make use of the assets we have already got, to implement the options we’ve already developed, to make actual change.
The instruments are there. The help methods exist. Now it’s time to make sure everybody is aware of easy methods to entry them, easy methods to use them, and easy methods to save lives.
Each life misplaced from this level ahead isn’t only a tragedy; it’s an indictment of the truth that we had the options however did not implement them successfully.
It’s time to vary that narrative.Music Enterprise Worldwide
