Get Booked – Sally Ann Gross, Can Music Makes You Sick?

Are you feeling anxious? Online Therapy 24/7 is here to help. We offer confidential support from the comfort of your own sofa. Our highly qualified therapists are experienced in a full range of daily challenges. You'll be in safe and trusted hands. Don't suffer alone. Change your life by calling us on 0207 553 5080 and check out our website: onlinetherapy247.com. Welcome to today's Get Booked radio show supporting women's and men's emotional well-being. I'm Hazel, and as ever, we are opening discussions and offering support via the incredible writers and listeners out there. Today we are going to be talking about Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition, written by Sally Angrose and George Musgrove. It was released on the 29th of September this year, and I'll put up some nice links and bits and bobs for you to easily get hold of it at the end of the show. Now, Can Music Make You Sick? It takes an even deeper dive into the lived experiences of musicians using empirical research and interviews to challenge myths and demonstrate how the industries Often unstable working conditions provide the perfect storm to foster mental health struggles in music creators. And today I'm going to welcome into the studio co-author Sally Angrose to chat to us about the book. Hello, how are you? I'm good, thank you for having me. It's a nice sunny morning. You're very welcome. It is, isn't it? It's interesting. It's a bit chilly, but it's lovely to see blue sky after, yes, been quite dark, hasn't it? Long may it last, keep us happy. Yeah, absolutely. So you have had the incredible experience of writing this book, which was a study of over 2,000 music makers. This must have been quite a project to undertake. Tell us a little bit about the process. Yeah, okay, well, it was a— yeah, it is, you know, I mean, I, I almost am still in, in, in a kind of space where I kind of think, wow, I can't believe we actually did this. It, you know, it was like it started— I had, I had an idea. Well, I actually wrote the words 'Can Music Make You Sick' on, on an— on as a title on a Word document on my computer. Back in 2015 after I'd written quite a long essay that I called State of Emergency. So the one came out of the other, as it were. So in the State of Emergency, I was sort of tracing the things that had been happening in the music space from the, you know, the moment of digitization plus the economic collapse and the growth of student fees. So they were all kind of connected because I was a music manager, you know, I was a music manager, I worked at a record label, and I was also a teacher in a music department. So all of these things kind of coalesced together, and, you know, I felt very seismic changes happening within the place that I had worked already for 20 years, you know. So I, I think that's where it kind of started. It started to come together. And then, um, you know, I had this idea that I was concerned, very concerned about the mental health of the people that I worked with, and also my students, to be honest. It wasn't just— it wasn't merely, uh, professionals in the music industry or music professional musicians. I was also concerned that there were high— what appeared to me to be high levels of anxiety around students and around ideas of their future, you know, what they were going to do and how they were going to achieve it. And that really got me thinking and trying to work out a way of approaching this topic. And it was just, you know, it was just this funny idea that, you know, when you're kind of thinking about an idea or you're thinking about a topic, and then it's like you're never going to think that it's music that's making people sick, you know. It's like, oh, it's the drugs, it's the late nights, it's the touring, it's the— and then I was like, hang on a minute, but what's the one thing, you know? And if you've ever been in kind of therapeutic situations, or, you know, I'm very into, um, therapies and, and psychoanalysis, and, and, you know, it's like It's the, you know, it's a classic avoidant, isn't it, to say, what is the one thing that brings you here? And you're like, ah, music. It can't be that, can't be that. So I had kind of got into that space and I'd written that down and, and, you know, I just started to— you read a lot about, you know, and I was— I think I, I've always been very interested in the in the working conditions of creative people, because I come from a family of creative people. Everybody that I know, really, I'm immersed in the world of people that make stuff one way or another. And all of those people are self-employed, and all of those people have done various jobs in order to keep doing the thing that is the thing that defines them, you know. So I'm very, very aware of that idea. Of this, what you do because you love it. You know, that was another thing that I was very interested in, this idea that this is something we love. And I was also interested in the idea of loving things that aren't always good for you, you know. And I was like, it was a paradoxical thing that really I was interested in. It was almost like, you know, you can't say that. This is the unsaid thing. And very interestingly, before, before we— before I even met George, I had started to talk to different people about wanting to do this research, and even within the university, they were very— they very dismissed it straight away. It was like, oh, that's not— that's not a question, that's not research, that's not— um, and it was really easy. And they're like— so the more people said no, the more I thought I was on to something, because it just seems like— it's like you were trying to be censored. Yes, when people want to shut you down, you know, there's something they don't want you— don't you know, you don't want to ask, and I think that, you know, you— we understand— you can come to understand that explicitly when you begin to look at things from that perspective, that you want to ask questions, you know, you want to ask the questions that in the end are difficult, you know, and I think— Well, I think one of the most important elements of this book is it's about human nature, and here at women's and men's radio station. What we are trying to do is help people understand each other more, so we're less judgmental, less flippant about certain issues. And, you know, can music make you sick? It is not just one singular element. There's so many different— excuse me— areas, such as, you know, from the beginning, where you're skint and you don't actually get any money when you're starting off in the industry, which is extremely worrying, or the fact that you need to move to London to be part of the epicentre of music, which means you're away from your family, to, you know, the fact that you're in competition with some of your closest friends, or, you know, the misogyny, the money implications, the constant, you know, being in the public eye and being constantly watched. There are so many different elements to this, and the fact that, you know, a lot of musicians are very creative and think very deeply, which means that they probably already have certain mental health issues anyway. That there's just, there's so many layers to this that it must have been hard to just even wonder where to even start. Well, yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, it's really, you know, it is a complex, it's a complicated, it's a complex thing, but for The place that we started from, and when I met George, um, just going back to your first question, like, when I met George, George has been doing his PhD on what competition felt like. So he was looking at how, you know, what it felt like to be in a very— so he, he's a rapper, but he went to Cambridge, you know. So he's a funny— he, there's all kinds of things that are kind of interesting about George's approach to not only his art form, like, as being a rapper, but also his position of being, you know, privileged white male and how he approaches what he has to say. You know, that's what you might see from the outside. You know, that would be a position that you might see him in, but how he wanted to explore what it felt like and what it felt like for him. So his his PhD was also autoethnography, you know, it was him and his friends and what competition. So it really— when I got introduced to him, which I did through one of my sons who's a music producer who kept saying to me, oh, you must meet George, you know, you must meet my friend George, you know, you're really going to like him, you've got lots in common. Um, and when I did meet him, we did have loads in common. It was like, you know, uh, we immediately kind of hit it off. And I think that The thing that we had in common from a, from a kind of academic research perspective was this interest in what these working conditions felt like. So I was very interested in hearing how the musicians of all, of all kinds, you know, like I wasn't, I, I wasn't interested in how it played out in a specific genre, whereas for George, who previously had been looking at a particular genre which we might, you know, rap, which we might say is stereotypically coded masculine, you know. So you might say the rap world, you— it's, it's, it appears to be very male, you know, from, uh, from one perspective. So he was looking at something, whereas for For me, I've always been interested in women's experience, in the being a woman, being a mother. I was a mother, teenage mother. I was pregnant when I was doing my A-levels. You know, I've had, you know, a very, very different approach to start in life and where I've done, you know, how I entered education, how I entered work. So we came from very, very different positions, but we had oddly similar interests, you know, definitely very similar interests. And George had a sociological background, whereas my background's in fine art and art history and, and music. And, you know, so I'm much more coming from an arts position. And then also I studied law, so we had very kind of strange multidisciplinary approach to the topic. But what we really wanted to do was just hear what people had to say. We were in sort of, you know, I would say to him, you know, just reporting from the coal mines, you know, that's what good social historical research does. It goes to ask the people doing the work, what's your experience of doing this work? How does it feel? So that was our shared position, and just through the way, you know, with the way things just work in, in odd ways. I, I met George. I then set up to have a meeting, um, with another charity, and then I was just having a coffee with someone else in the university, and I said, oh, tomorrow I'm going to meet this charity because I'm trying to get this funding for my research. And they went, oh, hang on a minute, 'Why don't you speak to Help Musicians?' And they said that, you know, I was just talking— anyway, they had a contact there and had been talking to them, and they hooked us up with Help Musicians. And I went in to see them literally the next day, and within a week the whole research project was launched, really. And George and I devised a questionnaire to send out, and the responses were incredible. We had no idea we were going to end up doing the largest survey ever of musicians in the UK. We didn't set out to do that, but the response from the musicians themselves was so enormous that it felt urgent. That's what I felt like. Well, they wanted to have their voices heard, didn't they? Yes, absolutely. I mean, And also the interesting thing is that, you know, if we'd included everyone that responded, we would be near on 3,000 because we had so many responses from outside of the UK, and we were only surveying the UK, but we had people write to us from America, Australia, France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, you know, so many people got in contact. Well, the thing is, you can imagine though that you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, there wasn't social media. You weren't allowed to whistle-blow as much. If you did, you could just kiss your career goodbye. Whereas there's more accountability now, and people are trying to push for change to make sure that, you know, the situation is better for the people that are in it now and for those to come. It's pretty much what— It's very strong at the moment, isn't it, that people are trying to make the world better rather than just keep it all a little bit cloak and dagger and hidden behind closed doors, especially in terms of, you know, women in the music business and trying to make sure that it is better for women, it is safer for women, and it's more acceptable. I think, yeah, again, I think that in all of these assertions, there are truths, you know. I think social media has allowed a kind of calling out, but calling out isn't the same as holding to account. That, and that would be one of my concerns, is that we can call out. We also have to think about how in social media call-out culture doesn't necessarily automatically facilitate fact-finding, you know. Yeah, we have to be very, very aware of, you know, I mean, I would say that, I, I would say that at the moment we're living in an era where bullies and, um, microaggressions and, and actual aggressions are just be— are just in our faces all the time. So I think that what happens on social media, the fact that we can call people out, and there's been a lot of calling out this week, a lot this month. There's been a lot of various calling outs in various segments of the industry. Yeah. Um, and I also, again, I'm, I am cautious to not condemn people in a non, you know, in, in a media environment. I think these things are very complex, and if we are to address the issues that we are wanting to talk about, you know, like equality of access to the music market for women. That's what, you know, that's one thing that, one of the things that we can say that social media and data collection has enabled us to do. Like, it's an— I don't know if you've spoken to Vic Bain at all, but she produced a report which is really data-based where she's just gone and got the data on women in music and collected it from PRS and, and at various different institutions across the music field. And it's so devastating. And there's a group called Women in Control, and what they've produced, the data they've just produced through, through looking, you know, just doing the research on the data, it's so devastating in terms of where women are in the music industry that you can't, you can't argue with it. Same with the radio data and the radio— recent radio research to women on Irish radio, and then they did the same thing here. So I think one of the great things about access to data is that data really does reveal patterns, and whereby you've been having women saying for a good, you know, 30 years since I've been in the industry, there's been plenty of, you know, great women musicians Engineers, live sound engineers, you know, there's been— in to my mind, there's never been a shortage of women. The women have been there, they simply haven't been recognized, and they don't get the opportunities. And that's, you know, to me it's always really frustrating when people say to me, oh, but there's just not enough women doing this. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Where are you looking? Because I've got a lot— I know lots of women doing this stuff. And, and, um You know, I find that very frustrating when we hear arguments about, oh, you know, we can't have women headline festivals because there aren't enough that are good enough to headline festivals. And that's— I mean, that's said a lot, you know. That's not— that's said by all kinds of people. And we can't— and, you know, people say things like, we can't rush into this. This is another thing that I, I think is very interesting about equality of access arguments. Is people like, oh, you can't rush. And I'm like, well, how long do we have to wait? I don't feel like we've been rushing. I think, you know, I think the history of, um, discrimination against women and people of color is so pronounced that, you know, it's— it is very, very difficult to have patience at this point. I think that's one of the things that I, I personally would say But I'm— I am very, very aware that we need to— we, we need to understand and be open to conversations around the complexities of these issues and how they play out, you know, um, particularly when we're talking about sexual abuse and harassment of women, you know, which again online is terrible. The digital world is actually terrible for abusing women and what I call the shift from everyday sexism to everyday misogyny that happens online in, you know, 0 to 60 seconds. One day you're just ignoring women, the next day you're utterly insulting them all. Well, what I find quite interesting that as we've been saying about the positive and the negative side of social media and the way that people can actually whistleblow or talk about what goes on in the industry, you know, all it takes is for someone to, with any sway, to say that a woman is difficult within the music industry, and that's pretty much the kiss of death. Whereas if you said it about a man, it'd be like, oh, isn't he cool and trendy? And yeah, but even if you didn't think he was cool or trendy, you would just think he was being a man. Yeah, he'd get away with it. Yeah, well, it's just a trait that would be acceptable. I mean, I, when I started doing A&R at Mercury Records in the '90s. I was the first woman to do A&R in a record company at Mercury. And I don't really— we're always trying to think of who the other women in major labels— there were women doing A&R in indie labels, but at a major label. But when I first went to work there, um, you know, I, I always say to people, every year at the Christmas party, someone would come up to me when they were quite drunk and say, 'Oh God, you're actually really nice.' Thank you. Oh, thank you so much. And I would be like, 'Why would you think I wasn't nice?' And there was a kind of thing, you know, that thing, you know, one of the things that I'm— I really love in my life is that I'm surrounded by the women that I have worked with all my life. You know, my— the woman that was my children's nanny, um, who I stole from, from the nursery school because I couldn't afford to— it— I couldn't afford to pay for childcare at the nursery school. And so I said, well, if you come and work with me in the house where I was running a record label, when the kids go to school, you can work on the record label with me. And when, you know, when they're home, you have to help me with the kids. And that's what we did. And we're still friends and we still work together now, 30 years later. I love the creativity. Yeah, and I, I've always said that, um, there is no reason, you know, well, I mean, I just think you— we need to support each other. We need to— you— we need to, to, to listen to each other. We need to support each other. We need to encourage, um, the people that we work with to do better and to be able to see that what they can do themselves, you know. So I think that's a very That's a very important, you know, and it's, it's important to see, you know, I, I get, I see that on social media. I saw it yesterday on social media where someone was like, oh well, you know, the worst bullies I've ever worked with were two women. Um, and I'm like, well yeah, that's absolutely true. There's plenty of, uh, or just that it's just that you notice it a little bit more with a woman because maybe there's less in the industry or, you know, I mean, we just seem to be a little bit blasé about the fact that men do it. Maybe we just accept it more, so we realise. You totally, you totally, I mean, my favourite story, my favourite '90s story of mine is that, I've got two that are particularly, I think, speak volumes about trying to pursue a career as a mother as a young mother and the main breadwinner in my family. Um, I had a meeting, early morning meeting, with some music publishers who will remain nameless, but big directors of a major publishing house. And all the guys were going to play golf in the morning, and the meeting was in Putney. And I had to get— I lived in North London. I had to get the kids to school and get over to Putney before the meeting. And I got to the, to the meeting, and it was a breakfast meeting, and it, you know, and it was very nice. And everyone's sitting at the table, and for some reason, this guy who was the president of a major label was saying, oh, you know, what's the one thing that would improve your life? And then was going around the table and asking the guys, and I was the only woman. And when he got to me, he said, 'So Sally, what's the one thing that would improve your life?' And I just said, 'A wife.' Okay, okay. How did they respond? They went very silent, um, and laughed. A good response, I love it. Yes, but I mean, the thing is that it, you know, that was one of the things that I think that the silent work that women do, the supporting work that women do in, you know, particularly when we look at, you know, I think COVID is going to really, you know, I, I've been hearing from women musicians during this COVID period who are also mothers and women that work in the, in music that are mothers, and we know that COVID has really interrupted homeschooling, has really impacted on women in a disproportionate way for that it appears to have impacted on men. Well, I'm a single parent, so I've been doing my only homeschooling myself. I mean, I do have quite a few different jobs, but I just had to make sure— I mean, I'm very strict with my children anyway, so we had a very strict regime and we stuck to it. And at the end of the day, you know, it was just me, but there are so— If you think about it, at least there's only one set of rules. Well, yes, I don't want to contradict you. Yeah, totally. But I think when we talk, when we think about, you know, for us what we were looking at in with 'Can Music Make You Sick?' and measuring the price of musical ambition, when, you know, what was very clear from the interviews and the things that particularly women said to us were was that they— for them, for women, time loomed large in their lives. How old they were, how much time they had, time running out. These were phrases that they used, and although men used them too, they didn't use them as quickly as women used them, and they didn't— they weren't at the forefront. It was very interesting how the conception of time seemed to play on women in a different way as a pressure. And partly, you know, partly you— they named it as their, you know, their biological clock. And if they had children, could they have another one? If, you know, what could they do this, could they do that? And they were balancing in that kind of classic stereotypical way, appeared to be trying to balance all of these things against this musical ambition which they had, which they had worked hard for, in which they had invested. So it was that, you know, it was very— it is very multi-layered, but it was very also possible to see how the patterning of women's lives were impacted by these— were musicians' lives were impacted by other pressures that surround— surrounded them, you know, not only pressures. You know, I, I was saying to people, I really feel like in those interviews women talked about their musical experience as something that was happening to their bodies, literally. You know, were you fat enough? Were you thin enough? Were you good-looking enough? Yeah. Were you this? Were you that? In a different way, when men talk about, you know, what album they made or what, you know, they— so they had so much more space to talk about the music they were creating and detach it from whether their hair looked good or they were, you know, whereas women were literally trying to wrestle their desire to make music out of this focus on what they looked like, the vessel that they were, you know. And this thing has enormous repercussions for levels of anxiety and stress and, and fulfillment, you know, the idea of being a musician and doing work that you love, which was one of the things that, you know, I'm really interested in, how people talk about, you know, all the people that we spoke to talked about loving music, of being in a relationship with music and how music defined them. And, you know, serious stuff, you know, music was held this primary place in their lives, and yet it was also the source of these other tensions that really literally manifested in, in illness. You know, one guy talked about having a bad back, and one musician that was touring a lot, and he felt that his bad back had was a— was actually a result of his touring schedule, you know, that, that the stress that he felt had become manifest in his back somehow. Do you know what I mean? It's like, like that kind of things happen. And if we, if we, you know, we talk about music as a place of solace and a place of, of repose for people, you know, somewhere you can go to reconnect with yourself, we have to think about what are the barriers to that happening, you know, like, and I think, you know, with women it would be really, you know, and honestly so many women say this and, and you can see it in so many interviews where women say they just like to be able to talk about their music, you know, they don't want to be asked all those other questions, they just like, you know, but that we're— how's your boyfriend? How did you get your hair done like this? Where did you get your dress from. You— we don't ask any of the men where they got their shirts from, apart from Harry Styles maybe. Yeah, we also don't ask men who's looking after their children, and women get asked that question. How are they looking after— how are they managing parenting? You know, that, that question gets asked of women that have children that are musicians all the time, but it never gets asked of men. Wow. And if you think about it as well, that it's more likely for a woman to feel vulnerable in a particular situation, and the music industry is still male-orientated. And I'm sure back in the day when you were quite unique being a woman so high up in the music industry, I'm sure there were many men going, "Oh, I mean, if we employ Sally, that means that we can't hold our meetings at the local, you know, have our nights out at the local strip club," or, "We can't do this," or, "We can't talk about this in case she gets offended." offended. And, you know, it's that kind of culture that we've had to fight against for years. I don't think for any moment that they ever thought twice about whether I would be offended. You know, they never stopped doing any of those things. And I've been to plenty of strip clubs with men at work, you know. I have done that many times because that's the work. And I know other women that were working in the '90s that, you know, were there, and that, you know, it's something that we often talked about, but was very, very interesting that it never crossed their minds. And it never— I don't think— I honestly Um, I'm yet to really experience anywhere in the world that wasn't set up for men. I don't really know where a place that wasn't set up for men would be. I don't know where that land is, and I've never been there. So I feel— no, me neither. Yeah, I feel like, um, it's interesting because I'm living, um, one of the people that lives with me is like my goddaughter, and she's studying educational policy and is 24. And we were just talking about that yesterday, how, um, how young men appear in statistics or in research around education. Um, yeah, I mean, it's just a thing, isn't it? It's not a— that's what the patriarchy is. That's, you know, you have to call this out. For what it is. We can't beat around the bush. And that, and that in this space, there are— in this music space, which is the world in which I mainly live, although I am part of, of course, wider, wider society, we can't expect, um, it not to reflect all of those things. But I think, you know, one of the things that we look at in the book, for example, is we look at the idea that musical work should be held up as a great kind of work. This should be a great career. This should be a place where you can work, express yourself, have a measure of autonomy. You know, this is, you know, this should be a great job, you know, and we recognize that. And also one of the things that— But this is why there's no sympathy though for people because they just turn around and say, look at the money, look at the fame, you must 'You know, it's just the price you've got to pay.' Really? Is it? Well, exactly. I mean, that's what— so it's a very double-edged sword in that, you know, that idea that this is special work, you know, it's something— literally, we have a whole chapter on this in the book, is that— and I would argue it is special work, and of course it is different work from other kinds of work, but I also would argue that we need to look at what these workers are doing for us. You know, and I think that thing is like the idea that music— because this is another thing that we talk a lot about in the book, it's the setting in which we find, um, the, the, this, you know, this what appears to be crisis of mental health in a place where people should be, you know, this should be a place where people are doing well, and this is a place where people are doing badly. What does that say about the rest of society? You know, that's one of the things we were looking at. This is— if this is a career that is held up as, as, you know, the pinnacle of things that you might wish to achieve, or the place you might want to go, or where you might want to express yourself, how can it be that when we start to look closely at it, it seems to be, um, you know, a, a a bed of snakes. It seems to be like— but, but, you know, rather, you know, this is what we say, you know, what people— we say this is like, you know, we're making music is an opportunity to find solace and fulfillment. Actually, having musical ambition can be very traumatic. The end result of pursuing, you know, musicians have been— we, you know, we've always had an oversupplied market of musicians. Yeah, we've not— we've never had the data, you know. This is a kind of— there's always been so many musicians, there's always been lots of people with music, musical ambition, blah blah blah. Well, actually, I think we— I think we'd need to look at those kind of ideas again historically and understand, you know, when people played music in church They enjoyed playing music in church because it was part of a religious ritual. They weren't intending to be famous musicians. That wasn't the idea, necessarily the idea. Although, of course, many famous composers came out of church, as did pop music come out of church. You know, we would be nowhere without black gospel music, you know, or popular music, or the black musicians that came from— you know, these things are crucial. But we have to look at where musical work was constituted and thought of at that moment. So this idea of having musical ambition, and for so many people to have musical ambition, which is what I would argue is hap— you know, the digital age and the access to digital technology and the democratization of production has produced huge amounts of people, vast amounts of people, with what appears to be some kind of musical ambition beyond just enjoying making music, right? I mean, there's so many different levels to it. And something else though that I think we need to take into consideration, especially in terms of, you know, people having been sympathetic or, you know, the misogynistic elements or there's a lot of jealousy within the music industry, not just beyond among the peers, but, you know, for Joe and Jane Bloggs in the street going, well, wow, I'm so jealous of the life that they have. And a lot of misogyny is based on, you know, jealousy and fear of women succeeding. Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, with women being powerful in any way and, you know, or, you know, of course that, that's going to upset anyone, lots of people. But, you know, well, it's going to upset men, you know. I mean, basically, you know, we have just— I think, you know, not all men. This doesn't mean we— it is not about hating all men. It's not about— it's looking at the systemic structures that is created by patriarchal societies where— and that isn't— that doesn't exclude us, you know, it doesn't. It includes us. And it's, it's here how, um, you know, I, I always like to remind people that women got the vote in Switzerland in 1973. Really? Yes, really. Actually, do you know what, what I found quite interesting? I read a book the other day. I'm actually I'm actually interviewing her for Get Booked next week, and it's called The Servant by Maggie Ritchell Davis, and it's based in the 1700s when, you know, there were either the aristocrats or the servants, and, you know, women were the lowest of the low, and quite frankly, if a woman got pregnant, she either had to marry the person that got her pregnant, or she was seen— she was completely cast out as an outsider. And I was thinking, well, back in the 1700s, women were just treated horrifically. No, if you're a single mum now, you're looked on, you're looked down on and looked down and looked at separately. This is, this is 2020. I mean, fair enough, the years are relevant and, you know, it could still be 19— 2019, because 2020 is the most ridiculous year for quite some time. But the fact is women are still looked down upon for being a single mother, or for being in charge, or for being independent. Or, you know, I take my kids away all the time, which is fine, but I go backpacking around Thailand and people go, "What? You do that as a single mum?" I'm like, would you question a man doing that? Yeah, sure. It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, but I mean, it's just every day, you know, I think that you know, single mothers and have been demonized as, you know, the enemy of, you know, that. Yeah, I mean, it's also religious, isn't it? It's also kind of Christian and more. It is a certain kind of morality that is so, you know, that's so— I mean, I think, you know, there are so many things going on right now, you know. Look at what's happening in Poland, you know. I think I, you know, I've done a lot of work in Poland with young Polish musicians and in Hungary, and all of those women, all the musicians that I know and women that work in music in Poland on my Instagram are part of a women's strike. And I mean, it's quite— it's a bit horrendous actually, you know. It's not a bit horrendous, it is horrendous. It's absolutely horrendous what's going on. But I, I think in terms of You know, if we bring it back to the book and what we were doing in the book, and is that we were, you know, looking at this, at this place, this, you know, and it's difficult, you can't describe the music industry as one singular place, you know, it's a lot of different competing businesses which now include streaming, and, you know, the live music industry has completely experienced, you know, a halt and disaster in the— in, in 2020. And really, for lots of the musicians that we spoke to, over at least 95% of the musicians we spoke to, the live music industry was where they made their bread and butter. Yeah. So as soon as gigs started to be cancelled and as soon as the pandemic start, you know, hit worldwide, I really felt— and I could see from the messages that I was receiving from friends working in music internationally— the actual horror of what was befalling them, you know. And that, as you say, it's very difficult— it's difficult in some levels for musicians to get sympathy. Because people kind of think, oh, you're lucky, you're a musician, you know, and people are losing their jobs and losing their livelihoods and not being able to work all over the place. Um, and I— that's absolutely true, uh, but also it doesn't mean that they shouldn't have our sympathy. And they, they also, you know, again, I, I'm always coming back to this, is that, you know, one of the things that's really important to us in music as it is in our research, as it is to the people that we spoke to and the musicians that we spoke to, is that we see and feel that music is of great value to us. You know, it's of a value greater than merely our economic value. You know, we don't want to see— or, you know, we come out of a post-COVID world in the UK, just to do, you know, let's not even think about anywhere else in the world, but just in England or London, Manchester, and Birmingham, and Glasgow, we would hope that some venues have survived. You know, we've seen the— this government investing in venues because they absolutely know that these things are significant if we are to have any kind of quality of life at all. Could you imagine? I mean, if we had no venues, I, I mean, number one, I think we would make them. I think, you know, people, as we can see, illegal, illegal raves or parties or whatever. I mean, you know, people have always found ways of making space to come together, enjoy music and dance, and they've done that throughout time, you know. Um, but it's usually always related to some kind of rituals, whether they're religious ones or rituals of mating rituals of marriage, you know, social reproduction. Well, I don't remember the last time I went for a walk or a run without music. I don't remember the last time I had friends over and just kept silence on in the background. I mean, again, going back to COVID, I mean, if you think about what's happened and how the self-employed and arts world has been treated, and you think, what are the couple of things that have actually got us through? It's you know, it's radio, music, and Netflix, which is all art space, and we've just kind of gone, oh yes, sorry, you're not relevant. Yes, I mean, it's— yes, of course, it's super interesting how the actual social, you know, sociality of these things, the things that connect us, the things that, you know, the relief we get from musical experience, you know, they're being able to you know, get away from our troubles by watching something on TV or— I mean, it's a distraction. We need a distraction. Well, it's so much more at the moment. Yeah, yeah. Some of it is a distraction, but some of it is also actually an acknowledgement of the— you know, I was thinking last night, I was watching the Steve McQueen film On Lover's Rock. And there's a moment in the film where they're just dancing like crazy in the, in the, uh, the house party, which is a release, which is an unbelievable release. Yeah, I mean, it was absolutely joyful and it was ecstatic, and I was thinking, God, you know, how much we love to do that, how I love to go on Friday nights to the disco. You know, you lived for your Friday nights, you lived for clubbing, you lived for those experiences because they were a massive relief. They were a release, a relief. They were a kind of freedom that you would find on a dance floor. Um, a total, a total experience, isn't it? It's like, that's what you— that's what, that's what you love about those things. That's why they, they connect with you so much. They, you know, and, um, and it's so important now. It's so important when we're Actually, you know, in lots of ways, I think one of the things about the pandemic is that people are genuinely feeling afraid everywhere. You know, I, I mean, even my colleagues, when I'm talking to colleagues, not just musicians, but I'm talking to people at the university, I'm talking to students, the level of anxiety is so high and I almost like wonder about myself. I'm thinking like, am I totally in denial here because I'm spending so much time trying to keep people's anxieties at bay? You know, I'm trying to be positive. I'm being, you know, I'm trying, I'm being positive. But that's the problem though, isn't it? Because if you're busy, it's those that aren't busy because they're not working that they're thinking too much, and that's where the anxiety comes in. Sometimes the busier we are, Again, using music to distract us. I mean, that is what's helpful. But I know I've got different playlists depending on my mood, or if I'm going to the gym, you know, I know that I need something to keep me going, or if I'm a little bit upset about something, I've got some really funny kind of, you know, your Lily Allens and things like that. And it can work absolute wonders. But what I do find quite interesting In your role as Programme Director of Music and Business Management at the University of Westminster, can music make you sick? Do you have your students coming up to you and going, "Uh, should we be doing this?" Well, actually, I think the most exciting thing about, you know, like, people always come back to the title, "Can Music Make You Sick?" What are you saying? I'm saying it's a question. I'm asking a question, you know, George and I and I have become more confident that our question is worth answering at this point, right? So we're just like, yeah, you know. But I also— number one, yes, my students do challenge us on that, and it's really good because it allows us to talk about areas of working in music that we could never talk about before, or never— you know, we would talk about them, but how did we frame them in a way there's a kind of framing of that conversation now that happens within the idea of not only of working conditions, like these are the working conditions, how can we make them better? These are— this is— this could be the impact of what— of these kind of working conditions, how can we make that better? So I think that they— what's really interesting in terms of our students is how it has you know, it took the lid off something. They do want to talk about it. It's incredible. The students really, um, the students have— we learn so much from our students. That's what, you know, I always say. Like, students pull me over on a regular basis and they teach me things and they tell me things that I just, you know, obviously we're generations apart, um, and they are very enthusiastic actually about the idea that we need to do some work to make these things better. And I think we want, you know— so you're basically making a change at grassroots level, you know, teaching them now and sending them out into the industry. And yeah, actually, thankfully, I would say, yeah, I mean, I've always done a lot of work on equality of access, as I said, and just, you know, what we call diversity. Or— so, you know, I started a thing in 2015 called Let's Change the Record, which is about women and technology in music. So as soon as I did that and I had something to— I had something to show and talk about in a— and articulate these problems, My students on the master's program, particularly the female women students, took it up. You know, they immediately started to look at how, you know, how does, how does the Spotify algorithm sort music so that, you know, songs with male lead vocals are more higher up playlists than ones with women. You know, if you look at the Spotify algorithms, they discriminate against women. They literally do. And you can see the data because the more songs that are played by— that have a male vocal, the algorithm will introduce more male vocals. So they literally discriminate against women. Algorithms discriminate against women. Um, and once you take that, and people have done that data, you know, so So I think that when you introduce these things into the classroom, what you get is— and also students introduce them. And, and, you know, I, I've had two, um, gay students, um, look at LGBTQ issues in the music industry. And yeah, it just— students will bring things in and they will be difficult and they might be uncomfortable, and I'm like, bring it on, let's have you know, let's ask why these things— we are asking comfortable questions because, you know, especially British people, we, you know, we don't like to feel uncomfortable, so we just tend to gloss over the uncomfortable questions. But that's not going to help anybody, is it? No, I mean, you know, if you're interested in mental health issues or you're interested in making, you know, making society more equal equal, then everything you say may well be uncomfortable. Yeah. I'm sorry, these are uncomfortable conversations, and they are complicated, and they are not necessarily helped by call-out culture, or, you know, or trial by social media, or any of those things. They are too complex, and they need work, and— Oh, that makes my gut go all funny thinking about trial by social media. But this is what we do, we like to open discussions on all the different shows that we have here at Women's and Men's Radio Station. Now, one particular question that I do always like to ask my guests here on Get Booked is, is there anybody in the public eye that you think is completely championing the cause, or just a really good person to watch out for, that, you know, they really are doing good things and paving the way? In terms of mental health and music, I think there's lots— now there's lots of people. I think, you know, the charity Help Musicians has produced a helpline, the Music Managers Forum, PRS for Music. I mean, you know, the music industry as a whole, even though it's a difficult thing to talk about as a whole because it's competing competing companies, but within the music ecosphere, people have taken the mental health issue very seriously. And I was very, you know, it was heartwarming and amazing to see. But we've been invited, George and I have spoken at major labels. I mean, you know, I've spoken all around the world at music conferences, and I just think that this issue is being taken very seriously. Alongside, I think, you know, we've seen with Black Lives Matter, we've seen a huge escalation in conversations and action, more importantly. So I would actually say that I am very— I wouldn't say I wouldn't be able to point at an individual because I think this is all about collective work. And I think people coming together and working collectively around that— women, people of color, Black Music Coalition, the mental— all the different avenues of mental health research and work. And George and I are continuing to do research in this area with a colleague of ours at the University of Westminster, Professor Catherine Loveday, who's a neuroscientist. And we're doing, you know, we're going to do a whole, um, third wave of, um, research with Catherine, with Catherine on board, looking, um, you know, in more scientific— although we'll continue to look in the way that we do the research, in the way that we do. But I would say, yeah, I would say hard to pinpoint an individual. I think, right, well, this is much more about collective action, and I am absolutely, um, encouraged and feel positive that the collective action that I'm seeing and the raising of voices and the implementation of action is, is really going in the right direction. But of course we have so much to do. Yeah, we have so much to do, and we have a very, very hostile government, and you know, Brexit is looming. And yes, we are very, very far from being out of any water. You know, but I don't know if I can see the shoreline, but I can certainly say that— Well, doing anything is better than nothing. And, you know, I think writing this book and people reading it and understanding, and also, you know, yes, this book is about the music industry, but it opens up the questions as to, you know, think a little bit deeper about other industries and don't be so quick to be judgmental or jealous, or, you know, there's so many different layers to this. And we literally have a couple of minutes left, because do you know what, I've like, I've put loads of markers in the book of all the things that I wanted to talk about, and I haven't even touched the book yet. Brilliant. So I'm just like, right, well, all that research I did, I should have just known that, I should have just had a Bloody Mary and carried on chatting. But I do like to ask, again, as well as the public eye figure, I do like to ask, I guess, for 3 top tips on mental health and mental well-being, or good mental health and well-being. Top tip: don't blame yourself, right? That's a top tip. It's like, think about time. Make, you know, turn off machines. I, I really— brilliant. I think, I really think, um, people, you know, I— people trying to establish routines in their lives and remembering that we have, you know, a body clock that reacts to light and dark, and connecting with those things, um, is very, is very important. So I would say My top tip is don't blame yourself, turn the machines off and go for a walk. Ah, yes! I mean, that's the thing, I get to go for walks a lot, but I'm noticing in this second lockdown that I'm really struggling to switch off the social media, even when I'm watching, I don't know, I'm addicted to Fresh Prince of Bel-Air at the moment with my youngest son, and I find that, you know, I'm picking up the phone, I'm picking up the iPad, I'm checking Instagram, I'm doing this and I'm doing that, because we've tried to be connected in so many different ways at a time when we've had to be shut off from everybody. And it's just, yeah, it's a little bit, it's scary. We need to learn new practices, but I think they're fantastic tips. You have to unlearn those practices, because I think the machines have taught you to be on all the time. I mean, they've taught all of us. Yes, they have. Check them, and we need to, we need to really pull back from that. And just remember, you know, smoking used to be cool. It's not cool anymore. What a great line to end on. We've come to the end of today's show, but thank you so much, Sam, for chatting to us. Thank you so much, Hazel. Are you feeling anxious? Online Therapy 24/7 is here to help. We offer confidential support from the comfort of your own sofa. Our highly qualified therapists are experienced in a full range of daily challenges. You'll be in safe and trusted hands. Don't suffer alone. Change your life by calling us on 0207 553 5080 and check out our website onlinetherapy247.com.