Sally Anne Gross
In this episode we speak to leading Music Industry Practitioner, Author and Academic, Sally Anne Gross.
Produced by Chelsea Wilson
Transcript by Natalie Burne
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, musicians, music, artists, book, happening, life, feel, friends, mental health, real, women, important, music industry, big, digital, talk, understand, hear, shift
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi Chelsea Wilson here, welcome to Control, the podcast where we speak to wildly inspiring change makers and game changers in the creative industries. In this episode I’m speaking to leading music industry practitioner, author and academic Sally-Anne Gross.
An artist manager, record label director and international business affairs consultant Sally Anne has over three decades experience working in music. An industry pioneer she became the first woman to be an A&R Manager at Mercury Records UK in the early 90s, and chaired the first ever panel on gender in the music industries at ‘In The City’ music conference in Manchester. In 2016, she founded ‘Let’s Change the Record’ a project that focuses on bridging the gender divide in music production.
In her current role at the University of Westminster, she is the program director of the Master of Music Business Management degree.
In 2020 she released “Can Music Make You Sick” a ground breaking book investigating mental health issues in the music industry.
This is Sally Anne Gross, in control.
TRANSCRIPT:
Chelsea
Sally, welcome to the control podcast. So excited to chat with you.
Sally
Thank you. I'm excited to be here. It's really nice for you to invite me.
Chelsea
I firstly wanted to say a huge congratulations on your book ‘Music Make You Sick’, which you co-authored with George Musgrave. It's an incredible piece of work. The subtitle on the cover says the book is measuring the price of musical ambition. But I feel like it's so much more than that, because the book talks about the industry through the lens of the artists, but it also comments on how society values music, and creatives, it discusses the abundance of music, democratization of the music industry, you touch on the education sector, gender imbalance, power structures, mental health. I mean, it's huge. And there's so much in there. Something early on in the book that I'd love to touch on. Firstly, can you talk to us about the common perception that creativity and madness are related? And how that affects attitudes towards musicians?
Sally
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's a big one, because it stays with us. There is a kind of permanent connection, I think, within the imagination, some certainly in North, the northern hemisphere imagination, particularly in the West, where we have a tradition of separating the mind and body, that any experiences that are in some ways, evoking both things, you know, they're sensational, and they're effective. They're about our inner experiences when any people go there in, in the West, or certainly in a Judeo Christian position that evokes this that's been this connection to madness. I mean, if we look at that, historically, and anthropologically, we can see that actually, even you know, I was saying this to someone just the other day, if you think about shaman, or the roles of religious skeptics or prophets in the days, you know, these were people going around. But nowadays, we might be saying, Oh, they're hearing voices they’re schizophrenic. You know, we might have been saying that. But in those days, people that were saying things like that, were assumed to be quite often channeling either evil spirits or good spirits. And so it's actually once you start to think about it that way, it's much easier to understand how people that deal with inner worlds and emotional communications or touch on things in song and melody, can become associated with those things. You know, I think that there's a real crossover between that, that kind of emoting or communicating from inner worlds inside you. And how that meshes with ideas of insanity. You know what I mean? Nobody uses that word, you know, sanity or insanity is not they're not used anymore. They're not helpful. They never were helpful context. Because you always have to, if someone says someone's insane, you have to ask who's saying that? Right? I think today, or, you know, this week, it's very poignant, isn't it, you see the behavior of someone like Putin, and you're like, oh, okay, let's, let's have a look at what, you know, what's triggering him how, how mentally stable is that person. So I think that with music stuck, as an idea, you know, it's an idea that has created a kind of pathway or it's stuck and it's in, it's difficult to shift. So when you meet musicians, or musicians, when you hear them saying, whatever, you people talk about their emotion, you know, how emotional it is, but the degrees and the way in which we manage or mobilize our emotions are very, very connected to a diagnosis of mental health. Because in a scientific world, we should all be rational. And the idea of rationality is in itself a rejection of the idea of emotion, right. And again, that is simply philosophically a mind body split, you can just take it back historically, if you contextualize these things, I think they become very clear and all the reading that I've been doing pretty much all my life because in a sense, from an early teenager, I was always, I was very interested in feminism, I was very interested in how many women got how mental illness would seem to be in women, you know, like, so many more women are mentally ill, and I was like, really, like, such a weird idea. You know. Why would women be mentally ill? And then you, you know, you put the race lens to that or you add in the race lens in an intersectional way and you just see those numbers go up, you know, and really, that's only got worse, not better, you know, so we might not use sanity as a marker, and we might talk about people being on spectrums of mental health. But if we look at it from an Infrastructural sense, we can see how race, gender sexuality really impact people's mental health diagnosis. And you put that in a music sphere, where the spotlight is on individual characteristics. And you get this very kind of stereotypical, the artist is, you know, overly emotional or a bit unstable, or, you know and like even one of my favorite sort of lyric, you know, it's the poetic phrase that it's, it's those that are cracked, that the light shines through.
Chelsea
It's just a really romantic idea, isn't it?
Sally
Yeah. So
Chelsea
it’s this sort of romantic idea that there's this, you know, crazed person with fluffy hair, and they're sort of eating cat food out of a tin. And they're the genius that wrote these amazing pieces.
Sally
Yes, I think there's that, you know, that that romantic trope, but I think there's also another, another space in which there is a potential to understand that as having some resonance for lived experiences that when people are in crisis and mental crises, or you know, even when people like, if you've ever had that experience, you know, I have several, very, you know, good friends that had been diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia. They don't use that term anymore. But you know, 10 years ago, they'd say that someone was paranoid, schizophrenic. But all of those people have as I’ve spoken to them, the thing that's niggling them, the thing that's bringing those voices out is actually a real thing in real life. It's just like, it's got very difficult for them to deal with. And it's got out of control. And you know, I think the idea that when you speak to people who are having mental health crisis, that nothing about what they say, bears nothing to reality is also not, you know, so I think that there's a thing that we, you know, we have to be on the one hand, absolutely, the romantic trope of the artist as mad. And also that's very containable, oh, they're mad. But actually, when you start to experience different mental health crises with people that are working in artistic settings, and you talk to people about their diagnosis, what they were told they had, I think, then you hear things and you can observe things, whereby what those people are finding really, really difficult is often the reality of their lives, when faced with, you know, that that kind of idea, you just can't take it anymore. And I think that resonates with people. I think people in, you know, in different communities in different positions go Yeah, I know, how that feels, you know, so I think I think that romantic artist idea or the, you know, emotions out of control, or things that people can't deal with, I think most people recognize that as having some truth. Those people, you know, most people know what it's like to lose your temper, or to feel really out of control. So I think that some of these things stick because they have, they have a resonance to them. I think when you work in an industry that's so hyper competitive, like the music industry, and, you know, there are those moments when real chance just intersects with planning and strategy. And things just go very well for someone or something just takes off or doesn't. And then everyone around you are like, Whoa.
And it does seem like magic. You know, like, sometimes I was like, that's the only explanation. There's other explanations, so that I think that this idea that we live somehow in a totally rational world all the time. And, you know, we get up every morning, and it's all. It's just so unpredictable. You know, when I wrote the book, when I started writing the book, the ideas of book started in 2015, when I wrote an unpublished essay called “state of emergency”, the production of music is out of control. And a lot of ideas for the book are in there. So you went I was just like, there's so much music. I can’t help my artists, I can’t help my students. I can’t help my friends, like, stop making art everyone just stop let’s just have a moment where we just stop for a minute, just work out what are we doing here. A lot of the background conceptualization that's in ‘Music Make You Sick’, started in “state of emergency”. And I think the ideas around sanity and ideas about our relationship to our mental health are very, very tied to our ability to express ourselves and communicate, right so and I think that when I started to look at what were the underlying and real disruptions caused by digital technology on top of all of this other stuff, I began to understand a kind of relationship and began, you know, come to see this kind of how these relationships get distorted.
Chelsea
I had so many ‘a-ha’ moments. And while reading the book, there were so many times where I almost couldn't believe what I was reading, you know, like, for the first time, my inner dialogue or thoughts or fears, or things that I've never actually articulated before to anyone was, I was reading it. And it was like, wow, other people feel this too, because there's just so much so many things, we don't say to each other as musicians, because as you sort of mentioned in the book, there's this whole, how I present myself is one reality versus what's actually going on. Which is why I think this is such a central reading for anyone who works in the music industry. Some of the statistics were incredibly sad and heartbreaking. This one in particular, that 71.1% of respondents believed they had experienced incidences of anxiety and panic attacks, and 68.5% of respondents experienced incidences of depression, which suggests that musicians could be up to three times more likely to suffer from depression, compared to the general public. I mean, did that surprise you getting that information back?
Sally
Yeah, totally. It totally surprised me in that. Number one, I have to say that I am a statistical skeptic, right. I'm somebody that has always been very cautious that we should understand numbers and data in context. Right. So I think in the first place, I was taken aback. I mean, on one level, I wasn't, neither George nor myself was surprised that people were suffering from panic attacks or anxiety or depression, because my experience in the industry, and my experience in my life, you know, I literally come from a family of artists, I live all my, my partners are artists, my kids are musicians. But all my friends, you know, that that's the world that I live in, although my best friend is a bus driver. And she was in a punk band twice. And she is an artist, but she does drive a bus and I have to always give her props for that. Because she was like, I just want a job where I get paid and I get people somewhere, I think is like the best philosophy or like, okay, genius. She was still in a punk band, and we met at art school. So that's difficult to say. But I think that the same thing of understanding, you know, I was really feeling that in 2015, I was already feeling it, I think in 2006, because I've got notes, you know, I keep notes and I write things. And even in 2006, I'm concerned about what's happening, particularly that we lost two young people in very quick succession that I knew to young musicians who had taken their own lives. And yeah, I started to notice these kinds of digital rituals of death, you know, people putting their albums are having these Memorial pages, and I was like, Oh, what, what is happening here. And not to say, that hasn't been in, you know, experience that I've experienced. Loss, you know, that, that is something Unfortunately, I've experienced quite a bit in my life in this sphere, for various reasons, you know, from drug addiction, to alcoholism to accidents that have happened. So, I've always been very attuned to the damage that the industry in itself can do. I've always, like been aware of that, you know, but I think that once we got to the 2000s, and so much music was being made so much music. And you know, that's the thing is, then I was like, what is happening to the musicians that are making this music that became really my central concern, because there's so much great music, like, someone sent me some music the other day, and I was like, God, this is incredible. And you know that none of this has anything to do with the quality of the music, because some for some people go to me. Oh, yeah. But you know, they will make loads of bad music now. And I'm like, No, not necessarily, actually, you can't know what kind of music they make. But if you think about the people that are doing this, and also, you know, by the time we started the research, we both George and myself, were really, really, you know, spend a lot of our time working in digital promotion and what you have to do and all the work you have to do, so I was very aware, deeply aware of the changing role, the changing roles and jobs that musicians had to do. They weren't just making music, they'll make the you know, and so in a sense, I was not surprised to find that people were reporting distress and illness in that way, but I was taken aback by the number, you know, I'm really aware that people are just working and working and working like in a way that my experience of making things, the kind of crushing impact of digital demands, you know, like the internet is such a greedy place. It's like, it's like a monster that you just like, open the door, and it's, like ahhh!! Feed me feed me you know, you, you must feel like that when you open your inbox, you know, you open your computer and just turn it on go, Do I dare to look at what I'm being asked to do today. In my history, as a music manager, I have worked with artists that do not like to do press, they don't want to do press, you know, they're artists I was working with back in the 90s, that kind of idea then in the middle of the 2000s, or when I started working, it was like, oh, can you imagine? So all kinds of things that I know about people working in this, how you work, literally how you physically work in a space, like in your studio, or you're in a rehearsal room, or you're meeting up with your friends? Or how does your band get together? Where do you practice? The digital world, it impacts every single aspect of that those things in a way that people only saying to us was good. That was my objection was that everyone was going, this is great. And I was like, really? That's why it's called “Can music make you sick?” And so many people said to me, why have you called your book that? I said, because that's the question I want to ask.
Chelsea
It's a brilliant question. It's such a good question. And I think one of the things that kind of really stuck out to me was the concept of the achievement expectation gap. And one of your interviewers talked about feeling completely despondent with producing work, and I quote, not getting anything back. And that is part of it. It's just feeding this abundance of music, putting content out into this seemingly endless pool of content, that it's so hard to get people to ever hear of it, unless you have some sort of powerful backing of some kind, which is why I think it's so interesting that UK Music use that ‘music is a meritocracy’ quote, because I just completely disagree with that.
Sally
They'd never use it now. I mean, they wouldn't. I mean, that's also the thing is very, it’s very, very interesting how the Black Lives Matter, Me too, the pandemic, have impacted what the music industry infrastructures now say, really in a big way. And no one would say that now, like, so people will appeal to that. But certainly here in the UK, people will not say that anymore, because now they're very, very well aware. You can't get away with saying that anymore because it clearly isn't the case. Yeah, I mean, the myth of the meritocracy that circulates in the creative industry is anyways massive. It’s massive.
Chelsea
It’s huge. It’s absolutely huge. It's really frustrating for artists, you know, with this whole YouTube culture and the TV shows, you know, to have family members or audience members say, Oh, well, why aren't you famous? You know, Justin Bieber did YouTube and now he's famous or Ed Sheeran was a busker, or this kind of rags to riches stories humans love, but they're completely unrealistic. So I feel like it's gaslighting artists and blaming them for not being more successful without having this full understanding of the ecosphere, which it's like, I've described it to my family as playing the pokies you know, slot machines, I can feed Facebook money every single day, but still, I'm not going to get my content out there. I don't have enough money to fight through, you know, to fight algorithms. So even if I put out an amazing album, the chances of anyone hearing it is so low.
Sally
Yeah, well, algorithms don't pick up female voices either. So I mean, the thing is, there's so much research now and my students have really been great in this area doing research, you know, just to prove how how gender specific search algorithms are, right? So if you look up the Fugees as a band on Spotify, they don't recommend Lauryn Hill
Chelsea
Really?
Sally
No really. One of my favorite games is to go to a band that has a female member and then see who they recommend. It's the stuff that drives you mad once you start to be aware of it that does drive you mad, it distresses me and I was like texting friends go and look up look up the Fugees on Spotify and find Fugees and see if you get Lauryn Hill. How long it takes you to get Lauryn Hill. Spotify streaming stations are are now all aware of this as well. Right? So when we wrote the book, that conversation was not there. Because the difference between the time you write the book and it gets into print and get comes out there and the other things that take place, but it's definitely there in the tech. I mean, it's in the tech world now anyway, and it's in the streaming world. But of course, yeah, the difference between what is the reality for a professional musician or someone attempting to have a professional music career and being compared to a SoundCloud artist or to Billie Eilish, you know, like, everybody gets everybody gets Billie Eilish. I don't know how that goes down in Australia, but in in the UK is like, when Billie Eilish was coming up, it's like Billie Eilish, Billie Eilish, and I'm like, that's one person. Can we drop one person? Because that's why you get 99%. I'm like, stop looking at the one percent. Move the lens. Let's start, you know, because it says a lot, you know, does it says a lot about how we value, Which communities are valuing music, how music is produced, how musicians are repaid what role music plays for us, you know, so, I mean, these things provoke more questions, but they are very urgent, quite in my opinion. They're very urgent questions.
Chelsea
Yeah, they're really urgent questions. What's your advice for musicians? You know, for artists? How can we allow ourselves the capacity to dream big and have aspirations while also being realistic about the state of play?
Sally
My recommendation for musicians particularly, is to be, nobody should stop dreaming, right? That's number one, no one should stop dreaming I'm the worst dreamer, you should see my list of dreams and aspirations. My bucket list changes all the time I’m like oh Just add that, you know, I need to kind of, You know, we shouldn't stop dreaming. It's how we dream. What does our dream look like? Right, our dream of our own singular success. So like, my thing is always to look for community to look for people who can help sustain, you just I don't mean sustain solely in economic terms. And I think that, you know, the real thing that needs to be really understood now. And I think I'm not I'm not saying that it isn’t. And I think nowadays, people are really beginning to understand it. That the shift of if there ever was such a thing, even if it was for a very short amount of time, this idea that there was a kind of singular economic value to music that came from the exchange of CDs, right? That's just gone, and it's never coming back. Right. And those are the kinds of things people go, Yeah, that's great, because you can sell some tote bags and have some T shirts. And I'm like, No, you know, like, how many tote bags can can we have, like, I have, you know, I have a real tote bag, I would take back Ata right now. But that kind of thing is like, building community in which you which you can perform, you can. I think that's very important. Because even within your dream, within the dream, so you know, we've seen like, very successful examples of this in London recently, to the extent that we haven't, we have a new jazz explosion in London, that was all for around a group of people coming together in a particular space. And it's been, you know, people are supporting each other, that really, and out of that there are some successful musicians because they won't all be successful, because the nature of any kind of marketplace is that we can't have 100 winners, right? So so that has to be, but how that how music enriches our lives and enriches the lives of people who have invested their lives in doing this all the time. You know, you can't measure the investment people make in making these careers. Right. It's, it's really hard to measure. But you can say, well, you know, when it gets people talking about a sacrifice, you know, they say oh the sacrifices I've made to be a musician. You know, because it's a calling, it's a calling.
Chelsea
Yes. I wanted to ask you about that. Because there was a line in the book, from one of the musicians you spoke to who said music is me. And to quote the book, it says musicians define themselves through the prism of their musical work and defines who they are as human beings.
Sally
Musicians say that, you know, that's we're just reporting back what they say, for the people that we spoke to. That was what they all said, you know, I mean, there's somebody that we speak to that is in the book, who's an amazing musician, incredible musician. He's played all over the world. And he talks about his marriage. I mean, he just talks about, like, what's happened in his life. And when I, when I was interviewing him, which was it was a really long interview was, like, really long time with him. We were crying with laughter. I mean, he was so funny, but what he was telling me was the most tragic, heartbreaking, you know, he practically couldn't walk because his back injury, I mean, all this stuff, but it was just like, but at the same time, he's playing at the most elite music venues around the world. And then he's going from there to like, you know, practically Skid Row in 24 hours. It was it was like a roller coaster of a conversation. But at the same time, he, he was just like, well, yeah, I wouldn't give this up. And it was incredible like, What are you saying, you have you looked behind you there’s an absolutely. Cut off. You know, there's so many things that he goes, I know, it's terrible. Like, yeah, it was very poignant conversation. Because really, as a musician, this person is recognized internationally in his field, absolutely. As one of the top people, but also, working in an area of music that isn't going to be you know, it's not Adele, it's not going to be, you know, the biggest selling, but it's significant area of music for culture for, for communities for understanding, you know, like, and it's like, okay, so we have to find ways, which includes putting pressure on our political system, it is changing the way money is distributed in our society, in order to recognize and attribute value to the thing that gives humans value what, what does it mean to for humans to flourish? Well, one of these things is to have flourishing cultural life, you know, that and culture is made by people. And those people can't be starving, and they can't be on their knees and they can't be sacrificing. You know, it's so it's so heroic. Is this, like, the Roman sacrifice we’re throwing them to the light. I’m like What are you talking about? These are just people making music. We don't have to throw them to lions. We don't have to. Yeah so, the extremity of it. There is a lot of, you know, I've got I mean, I've got friends who completely disagree with me. And they're like, oh, that's what it's about. That's where it all comes from. And, I don't know.
Chelsea
Do you feel like you got any closer to understanding why musicians have that insatiable drive to make music even through these precarious conditions? And where this sense or feeling of a calling comes from? Do you feel like you've got a bit closer to capturing that?
Sally
Yes, actually, I do. In some senses, I think and I think there's a long way to go with that question. Can music make you sick? Because entangling, You know, part of what we did was by listening to musicians heard what they were saying about what made them sick, right. So they continually, 100% said, making music feels good. Making music is what sustains them, right? Because they're very, very, you know, you can say we were talking in a kind of thought in a kind of addict way that like that's, that's a thing, but it isn't, you know, it is a drug in one sense. But it's not a drug in the negative sense. Like it's not, you know, it's not opium it's not. But, I think it's uncomfortable where that is, but they, they were very rooted and making music gives them meaning it gives meaning to their lives. And I think that in one way, we have to really, you know, humans as conscious beings make meaning. That's what they do. They're meaning making machines. Music is an incredible, I would say it's the most useful, expressive art. It doesn't necessarily rely on language. It doesn't necessarily rely on years of study. It doesn't you know, you can sing and clap and you can stomp your feet and you can, it connects with very primal things. And we can understand and hear and see in this. Where our religious, just as I was saying about magic, you know, yesterday evening, I was trying to describe to my friend. My father was a photographer who died many years ago, but try to tell him I was like, can you imagine if I phoned him up now from an iPhone and tried to describe to him what I was doing, you know, or send him a film that my son had made on an iPhone, which would be really, really hard to do that, right? It really, it would blow it like when people say it would blow your mind. So this kind of thing about how you know.
Like, even 100 years ago, people were so religious, they’re so much more religious than they are now they've got secularism, secualization of humanity is also very, very, very new thing, right. And so, you know, I'm a secular person, I'm not, but I am very, I very much enjoy rituals, I very much enjoy rituals of family gatherings of get friends together, I enjoy understanding ritual, my history and my roots and those things, but I have a profound problem. Yeah, I'm less convinced about the presence of Gods of any kind, right? But I totally, totally get our that kind of human thing about magic.
You know, just the thing where something happens, and you're like, oh, my gosh, like magic, because it's not explainable. For me, and if through talking to musicians, and the things that they say, I think there's a big thing that connects them, like this belief thing, and the magic of it, and the things that the unknown-ness, you know, like, things we cannot know. And things we cannot find a way of saying we can't find words for. Music as a, as a utility, provides access to that. Does that make sense?
Chelsea
Yeah, it does.
Sally
I was getting that from people all the time. Whether they're rappers, whether they're musicians that, you know, that thing like channeling emotion, like, you know, that's about emotional labor, like doing work in societies that have become increasingly cerebral, we can see that we can see that anyway, in, in all the kinds of things that you can't cut the mind off the body, you've got to have a relationship to it, you can't deny it. And, you know, in terms of sexuality, that when there's so many things that this intersects, and I think music is so central to those, you know, music is central to rituals of sexuality, you know, dancing, getting close to people, touching people, you know, that, you know, you wouldn't take, you know, painting out of a gallery and go, I'd like to hook up with you, because I've seen this painting. I mean, but you'll hear a piece of music, and you're like, Oh, I might.
Chelsea
Yeah, and you know, music marks all these major moments in our life, our birthday, there's a song we walk down the aisle, we marry someone, the music curation for those events is so important, the graduation song, or the footy anthem, you know, we don't kind of hold up paintings or sculptures, yay, here's the birthday, Everyone raised the sculpture, it just has such an incredibly human thing that is really hard to describe. And I do love that in the book that talking about music, almost like an addiction and a sort of gambling thing, especially when it comes to the financial contribution that artists make, because I know myself the financial investment that I've made in making records that, you know, don't recoup or, you know, maybe almost recoup, and you kind of justify, well, I do the gigs, and I wouldn't have got the gigs without the album and but really, it feels like some sort of gambling and it makes no rational sense to spend this kind of money. But oh, it's an investment. And it's like, but is it? Or is it just addicted to making records. The book has such an intersectional view of the industry and talks about how status class divides gender, race, and power plays in the music ecosystem. And you also touch on the sexualization of women in the music industry, which I know is an area that you've looked at before. Can you talk a little bit about your findings around body image for women in terms of the pressure of sexualizing their look as an artist and how that might impact their mental health and feelings of self worth as an artist?
Sally
Yeah, okay. Well, firstly, I think one of the important things about our research is that we didn't ask that question. Women brought that up, we, our, our interviews, where we asked women to bring things up, because that was, you know, what, what I would say to everybody is that every woman I met, we interviewed mentioned age, really quickly, very quickly, first few, few minutes, or minute, first 60 seconds. The age question came in, and it was like, it was almost like, you know, each woman had a barcode, and they were just showing me that barcode like, you know, that is always very telling, because that's not to say that men didn't also mention age and time women talked about time. And time was connected to their body and their bodies and how their body shape developed over time. They were so embedded in each other. And then, you know, one of the women talked about being measured by her management company every week. I mean, that was horrific when that. I mean, I was just like, so upset, but women that I know that do modeling also tell me that's really common. And they, you know, being weighed and you know, my mom was really into sports she goes well boxers have to be weighed. And I was like, Yeah, okay. So that kind of element, but the way in which women spoke about it was always as a pressure was all, you know, no one said, I really liked being weighed or, do you know what I mean it wasn't like, you know, when you think about the idea of consent, or you know, people say to me, oh, yeah, you know, women commodify themselves, or the kind of stuff they all are, which another kind of binary I think, just think is just not helpful way,
Chelsea
Oh no they feel empowered, when they're semi naked.
Sally
Yes, yes, you know, what is happening in this field is very, very complex. And it you know, it's like, you can't imagine, what would the world be like, if this wasn't what the world is, like, you know, we because we don't know, because this is what it's like, and you're in a very image based industry. So there wasn't Yeah, literally wasn't a single person that identified as female, but didn't talk about image and what they had to do for their image and how they had to look and how, how, you know, so many reported eating disorders or having, you know, just so many, you know, from the classical music, people to the rock, there wasn’t anyone who, they said, I'm really happy about my body, and it doesn't bother me, it just wasn't the case. Right. So it's such a, a huge, such a huge area that you have to negotiate whilst also wanting to make music. What was really evident was that, although you know, the male musicians, or were also concerned about image or they’re so concerned about aging, none of them talked about that as being a problem. But all the women did. And that makes that makes a huge difference, like saying, you know, we're all going to work in an office tomorrow. And we're all going to come to the office. But for half of you, you're going to spend two hours, being anxious about what you're going to look like in the office and the other half, you can just turn up.
Chelsea
And the half that are going to come into work, feeling anxious, also have to spend an additional two hours in hair and makeup first.
Sally
Yes, yes. At least Yeah,
Chelsea
Yeah, at least. A lot of my singer girlfriends in particular, you know, it's not just the regular hair and nail appointments, because it's also the fillers or Botox or, you know, procedures that they've done. Through kind of additional pressure. And I think, and something you talk about in the book also is the additional pressure on artists in terms of being content makers in social media, and constant digital world. I remember when I first started singing, you know, 20 years ago, I'd have a couple of gig outfits that I'd wear on repeat, I would just wear the same dress again and again and again. And now there's this pressure of you need a new outfit every time because it's going to be on Instagram. You know, and these additional things that kind of have nothing to do with music. But now
Sally
Yeah, and then that gets used within the industry to buy in, you know, in our community. And when managers are like, Oh, it's so difficult to manage women artists, it's so expensive, we have to do so much more work. Right. That's another thing that then becomes a thing. It is a thing. And it gets said it's not it's not even it is a thing, you know, you have to do the styling, you have to have the stylist you have to do
Chelsea
Wow. That's incredible, because you know that USC Annenberg report that came out, was it last year now where they looked at, you know, the 500 songs, and were talking about how less than 2% of producers identify as female, that report. You know, there was something in there as well about something like 1200 artists signed to labels only about 300 of them identify as female. I mean, is that part of that A&R decision?
Sally
Oh yeah. A&R people have said in the press that you know, signing female artists and breaking females is more expensive. Actually. They're right in saying that because the way in which they do it is more expensive. Because that's the system they've decided that's the only system that's you know, you've you I mean if you work close up, I've never managed pop artists that's not that wasn't the area of music that I work in but I have close friends that have done that like really like work with the Spice Girls and when they come back and tell me like what their days were and you know, we just discuss what goes into that, you know, friends of mine that are senior digital marketing managers at major labels working with the top artists, female artists, just the schedule of what you need to make the content for their day. I mean, put, if you were to put that in practice it like scale that down. That's an army of people making content to look like they're just having a normal day. There's a team doing that, that content creation. Or there’s teams planning the content they want the artists to make, so that they will then post it for them. So it will look like them posting.
Chelsea
It's exhausting. And then when you put out a record, the media and I understand media is a whole other story. And that, you know, paying journalists or music press, you know, and that's a whole other story of people not being paid all that sort of stuff. And I understand that. But there used to be a culture of music reviews. And now as an artist, when you put out a record, there's not as many reviews, it's you're being asked to write something, can you write a list of your top 10 favorite books of all time with a paragraph? And which one? Can you write? And I'm thinking I'm not writing articles for all these publications. I don't have time for this. But I've got to do it because the only way I'll get my face and name mentioned.
Sally
Yeah. And that's what I mean that absolutely the Internet is a crazy, crazy greedy monster, and social media and Instagram and all of those things. So when you're now very successful, you can come off that, yes, Ed Sheeran can come off it, Billie Eilish can come off it.
Chelsea
Beyonce no, never puts a comment on Instagram, it's just pictures, pictures
Sally
Yeah yeah, I'm coming off, it is too stressful, I'm coming. So big artists can come off it. And also by coming off it they they create a scarcity of their content. So when they come back, there's a big media storm. And that, you know, that's why you have to look at the patterns that these formats create in terms of, you know, we use a concept by a political media theorists Jody Dean communicative capitalism, which shows how these media storms accumulate data, which makes money for, you know, that's the thing that's happening is that in the music production field, where we talk about musical subjects, they are all the people that are involved in making music in one way or another, concentrate on this idea that, you know, that everyone knows now that you can make money from other places. But what's underlying that is where the real money is really being made is from the other places. So from data from tech, from the buying of equipment, you know, not from the actual music, the economics has shifted to this other place. And lots of musicians don't understand that they really don't understand it, or they can't, yeah, they can't quite grasp that actually. So for someone like Beyonce, or Adele or someone else not to be on the internet, for a year, and then come back on and have that massive storm that creates all kinds of data that can be sold all kinds of advertising opportunity, because that's that is managing the supply and demand deficit that we have lost in the digital formats and different digital social media, got rid of supply and demand supply demand just disappeared, right. So you've got to then recreate as you always have done, in a sense, that's always been the case in markets, but you have to manage and recreate scarcity. And you recreate scarcity in big artists, by them withdrawing from social media.
Chelsea
It's just wild. The whole thing.
Sally
This is what’s happening, I know, it is just what's happening. But it's so mega, because before it would have happened in a territorial place, like you would have, you could have had a hit in Australia. It is a place it's a contained Island is hugely big. So it has its own problems. But you can have a hit there, right. But once you're on international globalized formats, you're out there, it doesn't matter where you are. So when people go to you it’s brilliant, it doesn't matter where you are. It's like no, you've really missed the point. You've just dropped me in the biggest ocean ever. And now it really matters because I can't accumulate, you know, you know there used to be this kind of
Chelsea
That's right. You can't build an audience here and tour and build an audience there and stagger it out. You know, have a sort of plan, test the waters here, you know, they used to have different formats with records, you do singles in your own territory. And then you put out a second album, and then maybe you'd release a record in Japan that had tracks from album One and two, the things that you thought would best work over there. And that's all sort of gone.
Sally
Yeah, exactly. And now it's about you know, we had someone in class last week. I wasn't actually there to hear him but after class several people call me and say, oh my god, he said this. And he's a great guy, he's lovely guy came in, but he was saying you need a million pieces of content up before you can expect to make any money on out of the new formats. You need to create a million pieces of content.
Chelsea
So that’s one a day for how many days?
Sally
Yeah. So and so it was like, you know, my students were like, You, I know you weren't in the lecture today. But he came in, and this is what he said, and he's working, you know, he's a, he's a, obviously, he works in digital distribution. So he does want to produce a lot of digital stuff. But at the same time, he's very knowledgeable. He's a veryknowledgeable person. So he's coming in, you know, saying this kind of thing. And of course, all of that creation, enables profit in other areas, but not profit in music. It uses your time you will buy equipment, you will use it, I mean, you will use electricity or do all those things, you will make data, but you won't make money out of music. And this is this kind of shift that's happening. And when you're living in that shift, it's very awkward, because you know, you and I can imagine, you know, what would happen in 50 year’s time is that this may be spoken about, as you know, there's nothing there's no doubt that the past 20 years, and particularly in the past three to four years, there's been massive shifts in global thinking, localized global thinking, there's been just huge shift, there's lot lot, a lot going on now. And that's not, that's not merely Putin behaving like a mon- But you know, behind that is also an energy crisis, right. And also behind that is a restructuring of Europe. And everything is embedded in the real world, you know, in the material world. But there is also this real drive that has been fueled by certain ideological practices that we should all be spending more time being creative. And you know, and of course we should, because as there's a really great guy in America, Jonathan Stein, who says that creativity is the new passivity. So making all this stuff is like, like when people used to complain that kids watch TV, they just sat there and watch TV isn't sitting watching TV, now you're on your phone making stuff. You're making it making it right. And so that keeps you occupied. And actually, while you're occupied other shit’s going on, and you're not seeing what's going on. So when you were asking me earlier, what is what advice do I have and I don't want to be like a soothsayer and advice giver because I think my job is to ask the questions and hear what people are saying, that's a real real thing for me is like, I feel like a reporter in a way, like I'm reporting back. I'm in the field I was in the field, I observed that people were falling, shit was going on and I needed to report back. You know, when I felt like I was in a state of emergency, I really needed somebody needs to listen, you know, it's like that kind of, there's something going on here.
Chelsea
Yes. absolutely. And I feel incredibly grateful.
Sally
Well, I feel incredibly grateful for the musicians that have continued to work with this unbelievably unsustainable. Do you know what I mean? It's like, there’s a kind of thing that we feed each other. And I'm, I'm grateful for the people. I'm so grateful for the people, you know, because when I, I really have had some people, you know, like, go, Yeah, but music doesn't make you sick. And you're just like, and I'm like, Really, but I actually don't know that. I actually, you know, I actually have seen people not leave their studio, like, even when they tell me they're feeling good about making it. I'm like, maybe you've stopped understanding what feeling good is, you know, because you're so focused, do you know what I mean your drive is so then and as you said, right, in the beginning, musicians are made to feel they are responsible for their success or failure, thinking, it's that simple. Like, I didn't do it, you know, how am I going to tell my parents I don't tell my partner, you know? And that is something that you that would be my advice is like, look around, start to understand what is going on. And don't singularly take, no, I know we need to be responsible. I totally know we all need to be responsible. It'd be great. If we, everyone woke up tomorrow as highly responsible individual, That would be amazing. Highly unlikely to happen. And in some senses, as you said, were dreaming, dreaming and the space for dreaming, which is hugely important for us, right in a psychological sense. Now, you know, there's a lot of evidence that dreaming is part of the way that we make meaning and we make memories and understanding, so dreaming in our actual lives of having dreams, it has to be important to people. Like it's just fundamentally very, very important act of dreaming is part of humans. Humans are curious, aren't they? Like, I want to go there, I want to find out what's up the road? And why do they play those beats like that? Or why do they sing like that, or pleasure is so denied to us, you know, like, we're so we're so denied pleasure. But really, music is a place of pleasure. A lot of those places are forbidden places to us aren't they. So the people that have chosen to be musicians actually know the secret of pleasure, like, that's one thing that I think they know, is like, Oh, this is nice. I'm gonna do the nice thing. Like, and they know it, you know, they kind of know it in a way that is, is the unspoken? Yeah, it's kind of the unspoken, but I always think it will take time, even though it's incredibly hard. Try not to think of the competition, try to be in that the zone that where you do get pleasure, give yourself to time. Time has become the thing of which we are most scarce, you know, which we are most afraid of losing and away and all these things. And so kind of taking back those things, and also creating, you know, rhythms back in our life. You know, music’s a lot about rhythm. And I think it's important to have rhythms but you know, one of my students said, Yeah, who's also musician, really great musician, and a very wise young person. He just said to me one day, he said, but you know, life comes in seasons, Sally. And I just love that. And I was like, oh, yeah, I think it's so nice. Isn't it? Like, do you think about this? Like, oh, yeah. So maybe when you're young, teenage years, that's your hot summer. Doing all those things, you know, but as, as we start, as you know, as we go through life, things change, and we change and we experience it in that kind of seasonal way. It's a good way to think about it, you know, you can't always have summer, you can't always you know, you shouldn't always be in the winter that I really like, you gotta have those changing seasons.
Chelsea
So I know everybody loves to ask you, what are the next steps? And I love that, ‘Can music make you sick? It's thought provoking. It's asking questions. It's not a handbook of solving the mental health crisis in the creative sectors. However, I think it's really important that we do kind of, you know, look at well, what are the responsibilities of all of those organizations and people in the broader ecosphere? And what are those responsibilities? And what do you think musicians can do for each other, to also take responsibility? And take some of that I don't know. I I'm loath to use the word power, but it's almost like well, if all the musicians went on strike, which they're not going to do, but you know, how do we ensure that we can take care of ourselves?
Sally
Number one, I would say to that question, musicians aren't going to go on strike, they're not going to go on strike. But they have just been in a very bad situation in which we have seen certainly in the UK, I'm not sure exactly what happened in Australia. But in the UK, we really have seen musicians speak up, take action, join and the union musicians union, we've seen a lot of activity here. That was impressive. And hope making we have seen that. So that's something that I you know, for a long time, I never thought we'd I would witness again, certainly not in the creative sphere. But we have done so I'm very, I feel very positive about that. Because that really has made an impact and I it won't go away. It's really changed a change in mindset, you know, so that I think it's been really good. Certainly here in the UK, all the music companies are taking mental health seriously, and they all have Mental Health First Aiders and mental health workshops. I mean, mental health in the music agenda has moved right up there to, you know, one of the top topics and people are there are a whole a whole array of initiatives. That's really good. What music musicians themselves can do is, you know, continue to support each other because actually, I think musicians do support each other. I think now the conversation I've seen is a really interesting, we have an initiative here called calm which is directed at men living better, you know, and so this just opening up these conversations, making sure that you check in on each other and I don't in any way think that the taboo around mental health is over. Right? Please? I don't think that at all. But I think that the level of discussion now is much better than it was right? I think that's important. My university did not want me to do this research. They didn't want me to ask that question. I work in a completely male environment at the university in the music department pretty much. And I was the only woman manager of course. And right from the beginning, when I said I was doing this, they were like, what? And I really got a lot of resistance, not a little bit of resistance. I got told not that I couldn't do it. I'm not a researcher. I mean, I've been told by the university that I'm not a researcher, so many times I've got it. You know, I've got it in writing. I've got it, I would say. Yeah, it's so distressing. And then I knew the more people say that, you know, that you're not going to stop do you know what I man? you're like, not stopping now you said that. Because so I think that that's really shifted, because now everyone's like, Oh, it's great. You're doing that work. It’s fantastic. Well done. It’s like you know when you’ve made a record that’s really difficult, like people are like, you know, why? Why have you done that record it’s really not, Not commercial? And you're like, okay, but Well, let's go have a go, you know, so you can't always you know, that, obviously, we need we need an investment. A real investment in mental health in therapies, in, in support, we need a real shift in, one of the things that I'm really delighted about is that in Ireland, they are now piloting universal basic income for musicians.
Right, so I'm like, so pleased, just about I was just like, great, and all of these things. It's really interesting how, when the pandemic hit, I honestly thought, Oh, our book’s going to the bottom of the fifer. It was just like, no one's gonna read this book. Now. It was so funny. But weirdly, it was like it amplified what we were saying in the book, you know, it's like what we're saying in the book is like times ten, because the pandemic, it was just like, could it get any worse? Right?
Chelsea
I'm so glad it came out when it did. Because you can't, you know, if it came out now, it'd be like, Oh well that’s just because of the pandemic. Whereas the fact that you did that research, when you did it shows that it's not, you can't just blame the pandemic for all the flaws in the music industry, it was a majorly flawed ecosystem before this.
Sally
It's yeah, exactly, exactly. So yeah, so I think, you know, we just, you know, we have to recognize that, you know, in some ways, although this isn't like a pro religious thing, but I do think that I do think that the lack of rituals in our lives, the lack of space, time, the 24/7, working conditions, all of these zero hour contracts, all of these things that really, you know, hyper capitalism, or people neoliberal capitalism has really brought to the fore, were always there existing in the life of musicians, musicians, lives have a lot to tell us about what the good life could be. And I have always thought that, you know, because music provides one of the most, that's what I say, the most useful ingredient to making our lives viable. Right? And good, right. So if these people are doing that work, which is extremely important, because we need it, how can we treat them so badly? Like, where’s the payoff there? Like, what's that about? Right? And I think this new thing is certainly here. So, you know, I would say that, France, I would say that there are countries that have had a much more progressive attitude to the importance of culture and music. And we've been really bad. You know, America, UK, you know, we've been really bad and it's also very classist. You know, so, I mean, there's so many things wrong with it, but in so many levels, right. But, you know, we were like, another thing that we were doing the other day, with our students, we were like, trying to imagine what post Brexit music was. We were like, What is that music? What will be the sound of this? You know, this kind of Little Britain? closed gates, and, you know, it just no one had a clue. Like the kids were just and you rely, you know, like, I rely on them to feed me the future because, you know, they are much more in touch with it. You know, I never I see my students as a massive resource for my learning capacity.
Chelsea
Oh, absolutely. That's why you know, I love doing mentoring because I feel like well, I'm getting just as much back from my mentee and everybody should mentor and you know, some some girlfriends of mine who have been in the industry for decades have said, Oh, no, I couldn't be a mentor. I don't, I don't know enough. And I'm just like, you need to spend some time with some 18,19 year olds, because you will soon realize how much you've done that you can pass on. It’s the whole idea of I'm not worthy, you know, I've haven’t got enough, you know, information to pass on. It's like, no, your real life, touring expertise is so valuable to someone who's never to it.
Sally
Yes, that gender thing of, you know, imposter syndrome of not thinking you're good enough. You know, I mean, it's a lot, it's a lot to deal with, but mentoring, supporting, you know, creating community, recognize the importance of community rejecting this idea, just rejecting this idea that we are singularly against the world, you know, just actually recognizing the importance of our social lives and our social beings and that our welfare is invested in the welfare of others. If you know, if other people are suffering, we will eventually be suffering and being more open, being more giving, you will get back and you do get that you always get back and just remember, everything changes. And I'm always saying that to my students, when they're really anxious, and they really which they are now, justifiably, I'll just say that, you know, actually, some amazing things have happened in my lifetime that I could not believe would happen. So, you know, that's the thing that's always worth kind of reminding them, you know.
Chelsea
I loved what you were saying about the ritual part of music. And I, it made me think of the book ‘Religion for atheists’, by Alain de Botton, I don't know if you've read that book. But it's all about that. And I think that that is, you know, has a similar kind of concept. It's the communal experience. And when I think about stadium shows and sitting in a stadium with 10,000 other people to watch a band, and I can hardly hear the music because of the screaming, you're really not there to listen to the music. Because if you were a purist there for the music, you'd listen to the CD at home, you're there for the experience of enjoying that music with 10,000 others that feel the same way about that music as you do. Absolutely. And that experience that we missed out on during the pandemic was so hugely felt. So I do hope that some of the positive things, you know, if any, but if there's some positives that can be taken away from this time, it's for people to remember that feeling to miss that feeling, maybe value music a little bit more and at least more awareness around mental health. As I was saying before, I am so incredibly grateful that you've done this work against all odds, because I feel like it is so important that musicians voices are heard. And I feel like there's so much literature and work that's done about looking at the economics of music, that's breaking down how our brain responds to music. There's heaps of work on neuroscience and music. But there there hasn't been anything like this. And it's so important. And so I want to say a huge thank you. Thank you. And thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. I could honestly talk to you all day.
Sally
Thank you. It was super lovely. Thank you for inviting me. This is the wonderful thing about the internet that we can have these conversations though. On the plus side there is something you know, we do want to communicate with each other music is such a central part of our important conversations.
