Music & Mental Health : Time for Change

To mark World Mental Health Day, I wrote this for Frontline Magazine explores how musicians navigate mental health issues, and what’s being done to support them as they deal with their own experiences while in the public eye.

‘Some days I’m feeling jovi / Some days I’m feeling gloomy / Some days I’m feeling like I no wan chill with anybody / What I’m saying is not funny / Real life shit what a feeling / Sometimes I pick my key and drive around they think I’m cruising’.

On his 2024 track Mood, Asake lyrically articulates the turbulence of mental health. In this case, he’s able to use his music as a tool to communicate feelings that are often difficult to approach in conversation, creating a relatable dialogue between himself and his fans. As a result, his music may have a positive effect on other people’s mental health, helping them process their own experiences. However, it begs the question, in these cases, what’s being done to support the creative behind the music, as they support and validate the feelings of others? And how does being vulnerable in their art while under heavy scrutiny affect them?

Konan, one half of award-winning UK rap duo Krept and Konan, appeared in Channel 4.0’s UNTOLD documentary in 2023, discussing his experience with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), following the murder of his stepfather in 2011. The series of events, which Konan touches on in the documentary, are described on My Story (2013), one of the standout tracks from the duo’s Young Kingz mixtape.

Before beginning therapy, Konan claimed he was ‘feeling numb’ and described how it felt like there was ‘no beginning or end when living with PTSD’. More recently, having kept up with therapy, he’s more able to process and understand his feelings, explaining how it ‘made me open doors that I’ve had closed for a while’.

What about those who haven’t had access to therapy, but have had similar experiences? Rapper Backroad Gee, who also features in the documentary, reveals ‘there are some things I saw as a young person that I shouldn’t have’. He goes on to detail the murder of his friend Stephen, which caused him paranoia and a lack of trust. Like many, to alleviate the pain, Backroad Gee turned to smoking weed, claiming it was his escape from reliving these incidents in his dreams.

Across the 20th and 21st century, many musicians, artists and entertainers in the industry were falling victim to drug abuse or suicide. The term ’27 club’ was coined to reflect the loss of icons including Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix and Jean-Michel Basquiat, who all passed away at the age of 27. Conversations surrounding mental health awareness have since improved, yet entertainers are often seeing the same fate at an even younger age, suggesting more work needs to be done to provide support.

Towards the late 2010s, a generation of rappers including Juice WRLD and Lil Peep began using SoundCloud as a medium to reach their fans. Blending traditional rap with pop and emo sounds, this style of music connected with many through shared vulnerability and honesty around mental health and addiction.

Juice WRLD broke through in 2018 after the release of Lucid Dreams, on which he expresses dark feelings caused by heartbreak. ‘Thinking of you in my bed / You were my everything / Thoughts of a wedding ring / Now I’m just better off dead’. Subsequently, following the death of XXXTentacion and Jimmy Wopo, Juice WRLD released a tribute song entitled Legends, highlighting the plight of young deaths in the music industry. ‘What’s the 27 club?’ he asks on the track. ‘We ain’t making it past 21’.

He also refuses to be considered a ‘legend’ himself. ‘They tell me I’mma be a legend / don’t want that title now / ’Cause all the legends seem to die out’. In 2019, Juice WRLD passed away as a result of ‘oxycodone and codeine toxicity’, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, following a seizure during a police search of his private jet at Chicago airport.

Prioritising the mental health of musicians has long been a topic of discussion in the industry. In April, Grace Meadows from Music Minds Matter spoke to Music Week about the issue, drawing on a census conducted by the Musicians’ Union in 2023. She explains that almost a third of all musicians experience poor mental health, including ‘studio and mastering engineers, live sound engineers, producers and musicians working in dance, rock and alternative rap’. She also discusses exacerbating factors such as ‘working anti-social hours’, which have ‘an effect on fatigue and maintaining relationships’.

In modern music, one of the main ways in which musicians earn money is through live shows and touring. Yet, in recent years, many artists have cancelled tours due to poor mental health, including Arlo Parks and Sam Fender. Meadows suggests that ‘we need to get to that point where we are preventative in our mindset’.

She calls on artist managers to help with prevention, asking ‘when you’re putting a touring plan in place, what does the schedule look like in terms of mental health? What does that schedule look like? Where is the downtime? What’s the diet like? What’s the sleep schedule like? All of that preventative stuff builds up good mental wellbeing’.

Like with any person, teams around musicians should look out for warning signs that could signify poor mental health. ‘It’s really not about taking the first answer as face value’, Meadows stresses. ‘Sometimes non-verbal expression can say the most as opposed to what somebody might be saying. It’s picking up on and noticing those changes that can seem quite subtle’.

David Andreone, a psychotherapist and former A&R with over 20 years’ experience, spoke to Psychology Today in September about how the music industry gains at the expense of young musicians, and how this should be addressed.

‘The music industry should lead the way by offering 24/7 mental health support for each and every new signing’, he claims. ‘This would help artists navigate their new reality of constant adoration, free-flowing money, highly sexualised environments and prevalent drugs and alcohol’. Andreone also proposed that labels and publishers should provide mental health support post-termination of an artist’s contract.

‘Artists are our livelihood. They are our passion. We as an industry need to do better, proactively protecting them at all costs from predatory, dehumanising behaviour that relegates them to the status of a disposable widget and not someone’s child. To be sure: artists will be dropped, singles won’t be worked, and albums will be shelved – that’s business – but how the artist is treated when these events occur can make all the difference in their lives going forward’.

Progression in mental health support for musicians has generally been slow but it is beginning to pick up, especially in recent years. Organisations such as Music Minds Matter and Music Support have helplines that musicians can reach out to. However, with the corporate and commercial world, the view of artists as ‘cash cows’ needs to be substituted with the view they are humans first. Care towards artists mental health should be taken so they can have illustrious careers and not be traumatised by their high-pressure, high-profile environments.