I was supposed to be editing video for my social media, a task that takes me an entire day because, a) I stink at it and, b) I can’t afford to hire someone to do it for me. Am I a filmmaker? Hell, no. I’m a songwriter. But as anybody working as a music creator knows, creating the music is only the start in a series of dancing monkey chores to make sure my work doesn’t disappear into the abyss. (This is an important distinction to show that artists can’t depend on labels or networks to promote them. We have become responsible for that.)
My work day went out the window, though, once my songwriter text threads started lighting up. The topic at hand: a guest column published by The Hollywood Reporter and written by music business executive Jeff Rabhan. The headline: “Chappell Groan: The Misguided Rhetoric of an Instant Industry Insider.” A tiny, rational voice inside my head said, “Kay. Do not read this. You will choose violence.” But of course, I did and was rewarded with a mansplaining pile of hot bologna I have come to expect from fellow members of the once mighty Generation X.
Clearly his article was written in the hours after Chappell Roan used her enormous Grammy moment to call out major labels for their less-than-charitable treatment of young, new recording artists. Her simple challenge? A living wage and health care.
Here’s what Roan, a once-in-a-generation recording artist getting another bite at the apple with her second major label deal (having been dropped from the first — she signed at only 16) and a decade of experience in her rearview, said while accepting her well-deserved Grammy for best new artist:
“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 livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists.
“Because I got signed so young — I got signed as a minor, and when I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt and, like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and could not afford health insurance. It was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system and so dehumanized to not have health [care]. And if my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to.
“So, record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection. Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
Naturally, there was a certain species of music biz veteran who felt compelled to disagree (thanks to a vestigial shut-up-and-sing bone common to the endangered mammal) and to be fair, I can see why Mr. Rabhan might have been confused at first.
Perhaps he was thinking: a young woman; a best new artist; she just materialized moments ago and doesn’t understand how we do things around here. Allow me, the 50-something music business executive, to explain: these are companies that contractually obligate music workers to churn out bangers for them exclusively until the worker either outperforms 99 percent of their peers, or some nebulous internal corporate metric renders the music worker’s service to the company unnecessary (or uninteresting, or not getting enough TikTok views, or unable to lose 15 pounds). At which point, the worker gets “dropped” — the violent, cruel term which has long been the accepted parlance of the industry.
I mean, what does Roan think this record company is? Some kind of employer? Ha! Employers don’t consider money they pay to workers an “advance,” aka a loan — certainly an employer wouldn’t make an employee sign a contract agreeing to also pay back the company’s future costs.
What’s on the recoupment tab? Everything from music video costs to your recording budget to your Grammy glam bill to the pizza party for the street team interns. The music worker is going to pay up for all that stuff out of their small fraction of the earnings. Also on the invoice: funds a record company executive spends taking a streamer’s staff out to dinner and drinks — or, in the case of some old school radio station owners, the local adult entertainment establishment — to “promote your career” or claw back money they lose when physical product breaks during shipping from you. Not for nothing, but the unmitigated stones it takes for labels to deploy “breakage” — the boiler plate contract colloquialism for “broken record” — in their draconian accounting schemes well into the streaming age is very, shall we say, amusingly on brand.
Perhaps Mr. Rabhan was thinking Roan is too green or uninformed to use the platform she earned to say the quiet part out loud. He couldn’t be more wrong. But he did get one thing right. The music business is the toughest business on earth: brutal, mercurial, unfair. The losers give up the best years of their lives trying to figure out a magic trick, while the winners take all the marbles. The music business has also given a home to some of the most important voices and radical thinkers in modern history. Recording artists and songwriters are not held in such high regard for their ability to follow stupid rules or do what they’re told. They are loved specifically because they don’t.
On Grammy night, Roan came armed with the most dangerous weapon she had — her own words written down in the perfect notebook. Oh, that white, satin-clad notebook she held. A secret beacon visible to all of us who know. She earned every second of her moment on stage and used it as wisely as anyone I’ve ever seen in my 35-year music career.
Major labels, it’s time to change your ways. The shot heard ‘round the world has just been fired by a 26-year-old icon. Good luck.
Kay Hanley is an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning songwriter, the singer of Boston-based rock band Letters To Cleo, a co-founder Songwriters of North America (SONA) and executive producer of Kindergarten: The Musical on Disney Junior. She can also be heard on your favorite ’90s movie soundtrack (10 Things I Hate About You, Josie & The Pussycats).
