Dying for music
“I did 3 sessions a day, I never slept, I lived off coffee until my heart couldn’t take it ... would have panic attacks if I even thought of telling my first publisher I wouldn’t do something. ”
Living in the USA, and in LA in particular, I was exposed to the completely unabridged and unadulterated version of the myth of the ‘self-made man’, which honestly felt like an entire society grabbed Sartre’s quote “man is nothing else but what he makes of himself’ & jacked it up on steroids. It feels like you’re only able to claim a success, or finally acknowledge whatever mountain you’ve climbed, only by extolling the immense pain you’ve put yourself through to get there. Almost like holding up a giant sign that says “hey look I’m literally dying for this”, and believing that the only way to get the thing you want is by becoming a martyr for it. What people don’t realise, though, is that this damage is severe - and not only lasts for your lifetime, but gravely impacts everyone around you.
The quotes I’m sharing are from Julia Michaels’ Instagram story from when Sabrina Carpenter’s latest record dropped, and Julia (rightly) celebrated her success of having written on almost half of the album, talking about she’s living her dream of writing & singing songs, that this is all she’s wanted her whole life. I was right there with her as I read the first page, cheering her on. And then we got to the next part, and my heart sank.
“I was writing for some of my favorite artists while developing fears of food.”
I’ve done this - the thankless, multi-songwriting-session days; playing the games that publishers like to put you through; the constant fear of feeling like maybe the last good song you wrote was truly your last - and honestly, I’m not proud of it. It impacted my mental health, and that of my family, and created in me a version of myself who questioned everything, whose worth hinged on what others thought of me. And yet even now I hear that insidious, cruel voice in the back of my head that whispers “but you didn’t do what she did, you didn’t suffer like she did, of course you aren’t as successful as her”. And I want to punch that voice in the face.
The voice that says all of these things didn’t exist in me until I moved to the US, first as a student at Berklee College of Music, and then eventually as a professional in Los Angeles. It formed in the hallways of my college experience, through conversations with students & professors, in clinics with established voices in the industry. It took even greater shape when managers & publishers starting courting me: I wouldn’t be successful unless I literally did nothing else except do session after session. The more the better. Who cares that none of it is paid? Who cares about the guilt that you develop from worrying about money & realising that by taking on an actual paid job to survive will mean you can’t do those sessions? Heaven forbid I’m spending time with my family when I get an offer for a huge session, and then never hear from those people again because I was ‘unavailable’ or ‘unwilling to sacrifice’.
“I’d be listening to someone cut a vocal while hiding on the floor rocking back and forth because I was afraid if I stopped I was going to die.”
The problem here - and honestly, there are so many problems - is that I realised that my worth as a person was being directly tied to my work. And that creates a terrifying version of reality, where if a song “fails” or my song doesn’t make the cut, I am seen as less than by others in the industry - and if you have any lack of self-esteem, which is my everyday reality, then this just chips away at your heart.
This industry, and this mindset, need to change so badly, and the only way I can think of doing it is by acting counter to it every single day. Why should I die for an industry that’s not even willing to pay session fees for writers? Why should I sacrifice so much for people who act like giving a small percentage back is gonna leave you owing them for life?