Ariana Grande is the latest singer to suggest that record labels should be responsible for providing for their artists’ health care — specifically, their mental health.
Chappell Roan called for labels to do just that in her best new artist Grammy speech. While appearing on the new episode of Marc Maron‘s WTF podcast, Ariana said, “I think it’s so important that these record labels and these studios … these big production companies make it a part of the contract when you sign on to do something that’s going to change your life in that way, on that scale, you need a therapist to be seeing. Several times a week, really.”
She went on to say that having a therapist should be “nonnegotiable” when “people are cast in these life-changing roles or in these, when they get that record deal,” suggesting that fame, and the scrutiny that comes with it, is “impossible to navigate.”
Using her own life as an example, Ari said, “It’s strange. It’s dark. I mean, I was 19 when all of that nonsense started happening to me.” By “nonsense,” she said she meant talk about “my body or, like, rumors about my relationships or about my team or about my mom or about people I love. Like, there was just no limit.”
When Maron asked her, “Did it kind of break you down?” Ari replied, “Yeah.”
That’s why she feels companies should be “responsible for protecting you” from that. “To choose to do art, you have to be a wounded person of some sort … you’re a vulnerable person to choose to choose art,” Ari said. “So the same person that is meant to do art is the same exact person who’s not meant to deal with that s***.”
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