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Musicians being depressed is not a new phenomenon \u2013 but with the recent suicides of Avicii and Frightened Rabbit\u2019s Scott Hutchinson \u2013 there\u2019s a sense that performing artists aren\u2019t coping under the pressure that\u2019s placed on them in an increasingly demanding industry.<\/p>\n
We might think that a musician\u2019s hyper-awareness of their emotions is their greatest tool \u2013 how else would we have got songs like Amy Winehouse\u2019s ‘Back To Black’, Fleetwood Mac\u2019s ‘Go Your Own Way’, or even ABBA\u2019s ‘The Winner Takes It All’? That ability to tap-into the saddest moments in their lives and put it into the kind of three minute pop song that could only ever come from real-life experience is the stuff of any record company executive\u2019s dreams. You could say, depression is a lucrative business in the music industry.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t help that the likes of Kurt Cobain, or more recently Lana Del Rey, romanticise the stereotype of the depressed artiste. In possibly her most infamous interview, Del Rey, now 32, told The Guardian in 2014 that she \u201cwished she was dead already\u201d, suggesting that dying young was somehow glamourous. The New York-born singer cited the tragic Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain as her inspirations. In the same interview she described her life as a singer\/songwriter as \u201cone f**ked-up movie\u201d and said that she desperately wanted to \u201cstop doing everything\u201d.<\/p>\n