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 Help 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 way of a bio-psycho-social lens inside their cultural contexts.
The opinions acknowledged on this piece are these of the author and don’t essentially characterize the positions of MBW or Music Help.
At this time, someplace on the planet, an artist is quietly, or loudly, falling aside in entrance of different individuals. And while we as an business have the instruments and companies to stop the disaster that may inevitably observe, these typically stay unknown or underused.
Certainly, subsequently, in an business the place the idea of ‘responsibility of care’ is murky at greatest, 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 widespread items within the media that spotlight the issue however ignore the options have gotten an actual concern.
We now have seen a current uptick of surprising documentaries and films in regards to the darkish aspect of fame and its related pressures, resembling Boybands Eternally, I’m Tim, No Matter What, and Soiled Pop, that includes heartbreaking first-hand testimonies from individuals who had been kids 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 individuals are nonetheless dying, regardless of us having extra sources and understanding than ever earlier than.
Folks’s private ache shouldn’t merely grow 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 plain – Robbie Williams laying naked the psychological devastation of high-profile celeb, younger males in boy bands struggling to manage within the world highlight with out sufficient help techniques, 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 sufficient 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 might save lives in the present day.
And right here’s what’s necessary: We do have options. We now have charities resembling Music Help, MusiCares and Assist Musicians UK offering important companies, report labels with in-house provision for artists and workers, and firms like Attune serving to music firms fulfil their responsibility of care duties.
We now have the data, the sources, and the potential to stop these tragedies. But someway, 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 sincere about this: for a lot of, fame comes with profound psychological challenges that have to be acknowledged and addressed. We now have greater than sufficient proof of the struggles that happen below the cruel highlight, and the immense stress positioned on younger performers with out sufficient 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 govt 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 actually 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 form phrases in my storm of unacceptable behaviour led me to hunt assist. We’d like extra of this sort of human intervention, extra individuals keen to achieve out after they see somebody struggling.
We don’t want one other spherical of “ideas and prayers” or fastidiously worded statements. We have to put the prevailing set of instruments into the fingers 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 sources already out there. Make top quality psychological well being help as commonplace as a recording contract.
To the media who cowl our business: please shift your focus from countless tragedy protection to highlighting profitable interventions and supporting present options. Your platforms may forestall deaths by guiding individuals to assist, moderately than simply documenting when that assist arrived too late.
And to the followers who maintain our business: your understanding of the human value behind fixed content material calls for creates a extra sustainable surroundings 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 wanting on the tales of those that didn’t make it, we should always concentrate. Although we could not have the ability to assist those that’ve already suffered, we are able to 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 may 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 big 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 sources we have already got, to implement the options we’ve already developed, to make actual change.
The instruments are there. The help techniques exist. Now it’s time to make sure everybody is aware of the right way to entry them, the right way to use them, and the right way 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 alter that narrative.Music Enterprise Worldwide
