A day in… The songs that dare with mental health
Report on the approach and interpretation of mental health in current music, in which some lyrics and artists who speak of this reality stand out. Published in No. 2 of Encuentro Magazine, year 2022.
All the prejudices and stigma surrounding mental health seem to disappear under the curtain of a sheet music. A voice, a piano or a guitar become master keys to open the box of mental health, letting out and sharing with other people, perhaps millions of people, sensations and feelings that would otherwise remain hidden under a pillow or in the loneliness of the night
Fortunately, these master keys work and proof of this is the endless list of songs that throughout the history of contemporary music have translated emotions into words, playing a balsamic role, or an escape route and pacifier for whoever composes it. but also for those who listen to it, who can find a reference and a starting point to talk openly about mental health.
from the mythical ‘Help!’of The Beatlesin which John Lennon asked for the help of someone close to him to overcome the situation of fame and pressure that the group was going through, until the recent ‘Hold on to life’of Rosalengoing by ‘Paint it, black’of the Rolling Stoneso ‘This depression’of Bruce Springsteen, the way of talking about mental health in songs has undergone a transformation over time. With more explicit lyrics, the themes delve deeper into emotional diversity and mental health issues.
For example, music is helping suicide stop being a taboo subject. We find explicit references to him and suicidal ideation in numerous songs. In ‘Forever winter’, Taylor Swift he interprets the voice of a person who loves another with mental health problems and narrates how he tries to help her and be by her side to avoid suicide.
Singer Bein your title ‘Breath me’, also refers to his suicide attempts and a desperate search for help. She asks for friendship, hugs that comfort her and help her breathe.
In ‘Hold on to life’, Rozalen He speaks openly about suicide and makes an authentic ode to friendship, empathy and the willingness to help those who are suffering and thinking of suicide as the only way out.
I know of the ghosts that live in you
From the cold, dark pit you can’t get out of
Of the crystals going through your gray throat
And now you only contemplate a way to stop suffering
But I also keep in memory
All the moments in which I saw you happy
…
the illusion can return
Different, but it can come back »
On the other hand, the rapper Kase.Ogives voice to his own experience in ‘Basureta’. This song is a desperate cry in the face of an extreme life situation, in which the author, with a broken voice and on the verge of tears, is aware of how his mental health is affecting his surroundings and expresses his desire to die.
“With my wishes to die when I wake up
Who the hell wants to be with a guy like that?
Another shit gesture another bad response
Another fucking accusatory look and I made her cry
That’s why I want to burst…”
Fame, success, the social system in which we live (sexist, capitalist, individualistic, competitive…) are some of the elements that singers collect in their compositions as triggers for their emotional discomfort or mental health problems.
Thus, we find expressions to the need to escape and leave the place where one is; to go to another place, sometimes located in childhood, as a safe, well-being, refuge and comforting moment.
It is the case of the topic ‘René’of Resident. In it, the rapper talks about his mental health problems, a consequence of his fame and success, and reviews moments from his past, to which he wants to return, as a solution to flee from a reality that surpasses him. :
“Stress makes me sick, I haven’t slept in 10 years…
That I don’t care about the tours, the records, the Grammys
And that on 11th Street I want to see Halley’s Comet again with mommy
I want to go back to when
My windows were sunny and the heat woke me up…
I want to stay there, I don’t want to get out of there…
I want to feel again when I didn’t have to pretend
Me, I want to be me again”
However, childhood and the experiences of this stage of life are not always positive and constitute a trigger for mental disorders in adulthood, as numerous investigations have found. There are singers who have decided to use their music to express their discomfort and free themselves from the burden that their childhood has left them.
it happens to Zaharawho in his single ‘merichane’ she brings to light the consequences that the fact of receiving this nickname when she was little, which was the one that the prostitute of her town had, had in her adult life. In an interview in eldiario.es, Zahara recalled, about her childhood, that “I was a girl and I didn’t like life. She was only happy in my grandparents’ field and in my house ”. In the song, she recounts some situations in her personal and professional life in which she has been involved, marked by experiences in her childhood and intensified by the macho and patriarchal system in which we live.
hip hop singer Ambkoron your topic ‘Fear’, recognizes his inability to talk about his fears, because since he was little he has been told that he had to hide them. In the video clip of this song a group therapy is represented.
“How do I tell you my fears, where do I start
If I’ve spent half my life pretending I don’t have them
They told me to be strong is to hide them
Live them in silence, that no one can see them
Hide your complexes, make them see you happy
Fears go inside, never talk to them about them »
Depression and anxiety have been the first mental disorders about which people have begun to speak openly. Things get a bit complicated when it comes to other more complex mental health problems, and on which a certain stigma still falls.
However, here we also find singers who show their courage to open up to the public and ensure that these disorders also stop being a taboo.
It is the case of the topic ‘Bipolar’of Vega. The composer also presents her situation from an optimistic perspective, one of acceptance and improvement.
“If I can get up and learn from my setbacks
What’s wrong with feeling like this?
It gives me to be aware of the bad and the good
I respect my mind, its anguish and its brilliance
Its precise stroke, its own balance»
Lady Gaga He also records his mental health problem in his song ‘911’, name of the antipsychotic he had to take for a time. In the song she says that her worst enemy is herself from day one.
The song was released together with a short video in which the singer exposes and reflects on her way of living, coexisting and experiencing her mental health problem.
Superchick, in ‘Courage’, o Queen Adreena, con ‘My silent undoing’, They have dared to talk about Eating Disorders (TCA), another of the major mental health problems, still stigmatized and about which there is hardly any information and, therefore, are underestimated.
Courage
“Today I told another lie…
and i spent this day
No one saw through my games
I know the right words to say
Like “I don’t feel well”, “I ate before I came”
So someone tell me how good I look
And for a moment, for a moment I’m happy
But when I’m alone, no one hears me cry.”
In ‘Return’, The Boys of the Corn they ask for help, but they also plead the desire to recover from the mental health problem. Its performer and composer, Toni Mejías, talks about his disorder and rebels against easy solutions to win “the battle.”
«And I stopped eating, drinking, dreaming
I mortgaged my life to convince others
In molding a body that was not very functional
In silencing my desires and I never knew how to react anymore
I don’t want Prozac, neither Diazepam
That turn off my brain and do not calm anxiety
And they make me give up this battle for lost
That’s why the night kiss tastes like goodbye
I want to meet again, to know myself
I want to come back”
But not all the songs that talk about mental health do so from regret, anguish or despair. We also find titles that invite hope, reflect that recovery is possible, get ahead and leave the monsters behind.
‘Off or out of coverage’ y ‘Think less, feel more…’, rapper’s Chojinor the same ‘Hold on to life’with which we opened the report, are some examples, in which we appeal to take care of ourselves and take care of ourselves, to ‘become welcome’ and to empathize, as the best path for good mental health.