mental health in the music industry, part 1

2/03/25

Blue Bucket Of Gold is a free weekly newsletter from me, the musician Catrin Vincent. If you pay, I also offer long-form content, like interviews with your favourite artists, new music and songwriting prompts. This newsletter is a passion project; a deep-dive into the human psyche from someone whose life was transformed by discovering how art can heal. It started as a way to digest my favourite music, then turned into a vehicle for change, a beautiful way to understand myself and the world through writing. Please feel free to share and support in any way you can. Thank you for reading.

Okay, firstly, I’m supporting yet another incredible artist, Ella Ion, 4th March, The George Tavern (dice ticket link):

And the film I scored, ‘Here’, got into BFI Flare:

And on the front page of id:

Congrats all the crew and cast, what an absolute achievement, and a stunning piece of work 👏

Plugging aside - has the sun improved everyone’s mood tenfold? Last week, it hit my face, and I thought, ‘I am just a big leaf’. I think living in this new era of late-stage-capitalism means focussing on the little joys, on what we can control, and accepting negative emotions as and when they arise as an inevitable part of living, and quite a natural response, I think, to the global events of the past ten years. I’ve been thinking this week about how being able to hold space for all emotions, and the full spectrum of the human condition, is the mark of growing older, and becoming wiser.

Today, I’ve held space for both watching Donald Trump bully Zelensky, adopting principles of ‘DARVO’ (“you haven’t worn a suit”), to then watch Starmer reassure Zelensky the world, or the UK and Europe, at least, support him. Night and sun. Not that a world where white men in their sixties and beyond have publicised conferences as people die in wars, and other demographics are largely marginalised and kept out of power altogether…is the sign of a functioning, fair world.

Well, ranting aside, I’m gonna segway into how this principle of focussing on the little victories, the ‘small joys’, applies to music. The wise/older/music veterans of us know that trying to have stable mental health in the music industry can sometimes feel like trying to survive as a frog in a boiling pan. As ‘multiple apocalypses coalesce’, I get the real sense that people don’t feel good right now. This makes sense to me. It’s something worth voicing, but also focussing on what I say to music students is our ‘locus of control’, a.k.a, where we place our energy.

I’ve been reading a great book about performance, ‘The Second Circle’. In The Second Circle, Rodenburg describes the second circle as a state of positive presence that can help people connect with others and deal with negative energy patterns.

“Many of us are metaphorically standing in a ring of fire. The assaults of life have pushed us through a wall of fire and here we are, standing in the middle of a circle of flames. The conundrum we face in the circle is: would we rather spend the rest of our lives very uncomfortable, hot and singed, or do we have the courage to walk through the wall of flames again, experiencing a short burning sensation, to freedom from fire?” - The Second Circle

So…how do we run through the ring of fire? Can we place our energy in what could be different, instead, envisaging a new way forward? Can the Chappell Roans of us push for change?

She made a great, viral speech at the 2025 Grammys;

“I told myself if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a liveable wage”

And since got verbally attacked by some music industry person, demanding ‘put your money where your mouth is’, and then she actually did by supporting some up and coming artists financially (wonder what the music industry person did…?). Anyway, someone once described being a signed artist to me as ‘being a product’, and ever since, that has made perfect sense to me.

So without further adieu, here are my tips for surviving the ring of fire that is ‘being a product’:

1. Trust ‘the silence’

Back in the day, loads of artists were given ‘development deals’ from major labels, which looked like giving artists time and space to develop. This was incredibly smart, and led to artists like Lady Gaga (who signed early on to Def Jam), and Billie Eilish. These development deals still exist, but in our streaming/tik-tok/democratised industry, they exist less.

So, can we create these spaces for ourselves? With distribution deals becoming the norm for artists, more control is placed in our hands. Are there clever ways we can approach our working lives - taking six months to explore sound-worlds, as opposed to endlessly releasing single after single, for example? I once got told that taking three years to study music at university was ‘buying myself time’, and I think that rang absolutely true (this is still not accessible for everyone, especially not now). As spoken about in my interview with Sophie Jamieson, Michaela Coel gave a whole speech about ‘going into the silence’ to create our best work, and there is real merit behind this.

I’d also argue that to fully experience being an artist, you have to be able to accept you are constantly developing, and you never reach your ‘peak’. Because what is an artist? A quote has always stuck with me from Julia Cameron’s ‘The Artists’ Way’; “the reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain—the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, “unutterably alone.” More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.” I’d argue an artist is someone who is deeply connected to being human.

To truly be an artist, you have to let go of ideas of successes, and peaks, and ‘good’ years. Surface successes do not mirror inner successes (really trust me on that one). All your art forms part of a journey, the journey of your life. All songs lead to more songs, all music is worth releasing to get to the next part. Artists’ best, most successful songs routinely become their least favourite to perform, and their less commercial, but more internally fulfilling and autonomous years of being an artist become their favourite.

Talk Talk tried to move on from their early stuff and evolve and grow their sound, especially as Mark Hollis progressed as a musician (he only started making music when he started in the band). Their latter two jazz-inspired albums ‘Spirit of Eden’, and the appropriately named ‘Laughing Stock’, were a total traverse from their original sound, and were subsequently trashed in the press, to then become legendary and cult-like years later. Their record label even sued them for releasing music deemed ‘not commercially appropriate’ (the record label thankfully failed at that).

Mary Anne Hobbs once said, “if you do anything progressive you are going to divide opinion. You cannot please everyone”.

Which leads me to…

2. What do you actually enjoy?

We started doing music as kids with no monetary incentive, and no other reason than because it connected us to a core part of our humanity. And the best artists find ways to stay as connected as possible, while understanding the realities of making money and having income streams.

My advice is this: don’t do tiktok videos because management told you to. If you feel you have to do them, find what you actually enjoy about them - make it enjoyable for yourself. Because the thing you’re doing all day, every day has to be enjoyable, or you just won’t do it. We are big kids in a big playground, and that is life. Find the ‘why’, your ‘purpose’ with art, otherwise you get nihilistic and burned out real quick.

3. Longevity over hype

Find a way to lose your ego so you can hear your internal voice, and find what you are really trying to say as an artist. Alec Boateng says “whatever you want people to know you for in 10 years time should be your focus. Just focus on being good at what you do, growing your art or nurturing your own talent. People who pour themselves into their music and careers protect themselves from the noise.”

Another thing to remember is that we view our music as an extension of ourself, thus take criticism personally. When in actuality, it’s not always an objective reflection on the quality of our work. It’s more to do with the critics taste, and who is allowed in the ‘critic’s chair’. Mary Anne Hobbs once said, “if you do anything progressive, you are going to divide opinion. You cannot please everyone”. So why even try to please everyone? You became an artist for yourself, didn’t you? Or to connect? Didn’t we learn instruments to jam around a fire together…

4. Build community - ignore jealousy

I have a theory, and I’ve had it for a while. Musicians are easily exploited because we actively exploit each other, first. We are so cruel to each other, fighting over scraps, ‘competing’, when really, we should be united.

It’s my belief that jealousy drives this. What might feel like personal failures when we compare ourselves; “my friend went on this tv show”, “this artist has this many streams”, “my friend did this”, looks like ‘waves’ to everyone else. People’s careers happen in waves. Someone I know initially did well at sixteen, then took about fifteen years to reach that peak again, and surpass it. Others simply decided they wanted to take their lives in a different direction, and prioritise different things. Some artists experience random success years after they deemed their career a failure - see Linda Perhacs and Sixto Rodriguez.

It’s hard to understand this without living it; music is an industry that rewards the young, before we learn these life lessons, and it’s one of the industries I see the most drama in. But we are far more powerful as musicians when we have a community, bounce ideas off of each other, ride on each other’s successes, and lift each other up.

4. Manage your expectations

Here’s my final point. I signed to a major label as a band in 2017. I was a bright, sparky lil 23 year old, sure as rain things would go to plan. Instead, some really polarising years of my life ensued, where sure, I got to do things I’d never have gotten to do otherwise, but I also suffered a lot. Luckily, I now feel now those sufferings facilitated big life lessons, and the many mistakes made formed a foundation for a better approach now, at least. But that’s largely because in lockdown, I became a teacher, started therapy, transformed my life, and have ultimately decided not to sit in victimhood.

We can’t choose the life we get to live. We really can’t. There is a reason I wrote the song ‘I Never Had Control’ for Another Sky. When we watch award shows and wonder why we’re not The Last Dinner Party, or Wet Leg, we are putting our energy into a place that does not serve us, an empty place where nothing will ever happen, because all our energy is going into something negative - comparison. Comparison is the thief of joy. For every band or act who wins these things, as amazing and deserved as it is for them, there are the Nick Drakes who died before they got to see the impact their music had. And imagine a world without Nick Drake because somebody said to him, “well you’ve never won a BRIT”. We have to find the joy in our songs connecting to one member of an audience at an open mic, or the beauty in writing with a group of people, finding community, and simply the joy in creation itself.

Why did you do music in the first place? Was it to grind away in an industry that can tear you down at any opportunity? Or are the beautiful moments really when you sit down on a quiet summer evening, and write a song…and you feel connected, and alive?

So I guess my final question is; how do you get there?