Dark side of Australia's music industry

On stage, musicians look like superheroes, performing sold-out shows as dedicated fans sing along. Backstage, however, it can be a different story.

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On stage, musicians look like superheroes, performing sold-out shows as dedicated fans sing along. Backstage, however, it can be a different story.

It’s an unfortunate truth about the music industry that putting yourself out there emotionally and tiring yourself out physically can be damaging to your mental health.

Paradoxically, it’s often these low periods that bear the most fruit creatively, inspiring relatable songs that keep audiences turning up to live shows and streaming tracks online.

“Mental health in the music industry is very shambolic. It can be a devastating industry to work in,” says John-Henry Pajak, one half of Sydney-based rock duo Polish Club.

“There’s no money in it … and there’s no equation to financial stability in any way. It’s like throwing a dart at the board and hoping it gets 50 million plays and that your record deal is good enough to let you see some of that,” agrees bandmate David Novak.

“Then when you go on tour and you’re living out of a bag and drinking too much, not sleeping enough, and just living this weird lifestyle. When you come home, your body is in tatters, your mind is in tatters, and you just have to try to go back to work like normal,” continues Pajak.

“Also, there’s the creative thing. Sometimes you just don’t think you can ever write a good song again, and something you’ll write songs that you think are good, but when you show them to your management they’ll say it’s s***.”

The band speaks to the Daily Telegraph in a Surry Hills cafe after a particularly difficult week in the recording studio. They created over an album’s worth of songs, which they say is normal, but when they gave them to the powers that be they were told to go back into the studio and try again.

“The creative thing this week broke me, mentally. I just shut down. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life,” says Novak, explaining that the process is incredibly draining.

“The [worst] part, or the most beautiful part, of it all is that having a trough bears fruit, undeniably. This stuff manifests itself in a creative way, and that’s how we write songs that people like,” he laughs.

It’s something a lot of musicians can relate to.

Charlotte Gemmill, a Melbourne-based singer who performs under the stage name Eliott, tells the Daily Telegraph a break-up and a period of low mental health inspired her most popular song.

“I think it was in the middle of 2016, I was studying music and I hit this point where I wasn’t motivated. I’d gone through a pretty crap break-up and I just wasn’t feeling motivated to do anything,” she says.

“I suffer a lot from anxiety and depression and that built up a lot in those six months, so I decided to make the move from Melbourne to the Blue Mountains where my cousins live. I just wanted some new scenery and a fresh start.”

She only meant to be there for six months, but ended up staying a year, because she realised she needed some extra time to work through things and look after herself. Changing her environment was an important step in the process.

“Actually, when I moved, that’s when I wrote Figure It Out. Everything just started to feel right and I was motivated again and I wanted to really pursue music. I didn’t have that feeling before.”

She’s also recently debuted another song inspired by the same period called Shaking My Hips, which she says is about the first time she saw her boyfriend out with another girl.

“It’s probably the most honest song I’ve ever written,” she says.

“I’ve been playing it at my live shows a fair bit, at all my headline shows in July, and it’s one of the most fun to sing … I had a memo in my phone, I wrote it super quickly when I was living in the Blue Mountains.”

Mental health issues in the music industry are endemic.

According to a report from Melbourne’s Victoria University in 2015, which surveyed 3000 music industry workers, musicians are five times more likely to suffer from depression and 10 times more likely to show symptoms of anxiety compared to the rest of the population.

Meanwhile, a study conducted by the University of Queensland in the same year found that almost two thirds of musicians were drinking at harmful levels.

A positive thing to come out of it all is that musicians are starting to talk about mental health, take proactive steps to look after it, and be mindful of the impact it has on their lives.

Take Polish Club, as an example. The pair recently received an American Express Music Backer’s Grant, which they’re planning to use to create a five-part podcast series about the music industry.

“It’s going to be real talk, non-glamorous talk,” Novak explains.

“Not, ‘What’s your new single?’ It will be like, ‘Do you have any money?’”

“It’s all about creating conversations,” says Pajak.

“We’re pretty good at keeping conversations going.”