Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition

by Sally Anne Gross, George Musgrave

It is often assumed that creative people are prone to psychological instability, and that this explains apparent associations between cultural production and mental health problems. In their detailed study of recording and performing artists in the British music industry, Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave turn this view on its head.

By listening to how musicians understand and experience their working lives, this book proposes that whilst making music is therapeutic, making a career from music can be traumatic. The authors show how careers based on an all-consuming passion have become more insecure and devalued. Artistic merit and intimate, often painful, self-disclosures are the subject of unremitting scrutiny and data metrics. Personal relationships and social support networks are increasingly bound up with calculative transactions.

Drawing on original empirical research and a wide-ranging survey of scholarship from across the social sciences, their findings will be provocative for future research on mental health, wellbeing and working conditions in the music industries and across the creative economy. Going beyond self-help strategies, they challenge the industry to make transformative structural change. Until then, the book provides an invaluable guide for anyone currently making their career in music, as well as those tasked with training and educating the next generation.

Genres: Music

200 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Jemma Love · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m excited to be the first to review this essential piece of research. I’m professional musician (commercial/musical theatre and occasionally classical) and the authors were able to articulate thoughts that I’ve had for years but have been unable to put into words. It feels like the truth about the music profession is finally being told. The discussion was producer/singer-songwriter focused, but several of the experiences discussed match my own to a tee. I have seen how privilege, both my own and others’, has played out in the success of myself and my colleagues, and have seen how speaking openly about these structures can make your life difficult from music college onwards. Reading this book was a cathartic experience that has helped me accept the industry for what it is, for better or worse.

[Joshua Line · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and depressing examination of the political economy of music in the 21st century and the many challenges to the mental health of musicians.

"How can you compete when you are inconsequential and the marketplace is completely saturated? ... The sheer volume of artists, and by extension, level of competition, is disorienting in its ferocity. Trying to be a musician is like trying to scream in your dreams - all you want to do is make noise, but no one hears you."

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is basically a PhD thesis that has been published as a book. It's a really dry, boring read, made up of empirical stats and commetaries on those stats.

Basically the PhD students are positing the thesis that playing music as a CAREER, is basically a path to mental illness and despair, unless of course you are Elton John, Radiohead, Roger Water or Ted Nugent.

In a wider context, the ultra-competitve, and 'only the BEST and most GIFTRED and CHOSEN' rise to the top nature of the music industry has now completed permeated modern capitalism via the 'Gig industry' ie: you only get paid per gig, and only then, based on how many punters you can pull to your gig.

Despite the 'democratisation' or the 'music industry', I wouldn't call it that, more like a mafia-style cabal with NO unionisation, steady wages and definitely ZERO health care, being a muso only aides the rich and chosen.

Personally as an 80-90s 'indie kid' we KNEW the music industry was BULLSHIT and a SCAM, and followed a DIY ethic via the american hardcore and C86 groups. Kid's follow that model, don't be a careerist wanker, make your music and fuck the rest, success will find you.

The book took me so long to read as it's basically a thesis and I would read it at bedtime as a sleeping aide.

Anyway the book is an important document, but your typical muso would prefer to read a Lester Bangs book.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re a musician or you care for someone that’s trying to make it in the music industry, I bet you to read this. This book articulates so much of what we can often feel ashamed to admit, particularly when we’re following a career we supposedly love. Thank you Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave for such a huge service to the music industry.

[Shannon. · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very good insight into the way in which the music industry environment/practices can effect the mental health of musicians, would defiantly recommend!

[Connor Mesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and interesting for the most part, gave me a new perspective of my position in the music industry. However it's very much an academic read which made it a bit of a slog.