Mental health has always been a major part of any artist’s work. The different challenges each individual faces separate artists from each other. Recently, however, artists have been trying much more to actively put their mental state on full display. Before, the mind was the creator of the artwork. Now, musical artists have been trying more than ever to transform the mind into the artwork itself. So when did this trend start? How has the role of the human mind in art changed over the decades?
It’s impossible to find an exact album or song that transformed musical art form into such a personal form of expression. However, there is one album that can be pinpointed as the largest and most extreme example of putting mental state into the forefront of a piece of music: Hi, How Are You by Daniel Johnston.
Daniel Johnston was a diagnosed manic-depressive schizophrenic from Austin, Texas. He had been deemed an “unprofitable servant of the Lord” by his parents and was regarded as a loon by everyone in his town. It was through these circumstances in which his debut record (err, cassette tape) Hi, How Are You was born. The so called “unfinished album” was suffocatingly personal, with Johnston often going on eerie and strange tangents about his depression. It is also an incredibly insightful look into a confirmed mental patient’s mind. However, from a musical standpoint, it’s nothing special. Honestly, Daniel’s wailing voice gets pretty annoying at times. But it is also an example of how music can be about so much more than the sounds produced. It resulted in one of the most important albums ever, and helped eliminate a lot of stigma surrounding mental issues at the time which would probably be considered ableism today.
However, not all artists have a serious mental disorder they can make into music. Recently, they’ve tried to overcome that by making music about mental health issues that almost everybody deals with, like social anxiety, loneliness, or just feeling sad. Genres like bedroom pop, garage rock, and shoegaze/dream pop mainly deal with these issues.
Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest consistently shows how well this approach to making music can work. Instead of just talking about abstract ideas, he ties the abstractivity to specific events that cause him mental distress. His debut record, Twin Fantasy, was a concept album about a relationship he was in at the time of recording. His experimental EP, How To Leave Town, is a deep exploration of moving onto something new only to find out that you were better off before, which was reflective of his real-life decision to sign with Matador Records and cast away his freedom as a purely indie artist. By connecting his mental struggles to actual events, his music has a much higher sense of legitimacy, and is much more coherent and enjoyable. He strikes a perfect balance, resulting in genuine, personal, and real music that still sounds incredible.
So what happens when an artist doesn’t strike that balance? What happens when someone is too personal or too alien when mixing in music with actual events?
A recent example of the former can be seen with Kanye West’s recent release Jesus Is King. I go deeper in this review. It was full of some amazing songs, but Kanye tried to stay so raw that he proudly put the bad parts of his mind up to see as well. This obviously doesn’t work out very well, and results in one of the most bipolar albums of the decade.
Even if too much rawness does result in a crowded and bombastic sound, at least the emotion inside the rawness is discernible. You can appreciate it for being honest and compelling. However, the other side of the spectrum is much worse, and has no such upside. This kind of music just sounds like emotionless whining about topics so general that any connection the listener could’ve had to the lyrics is virtually nonexistent. A prime example of this type of music is Drake’s newest album, Scorpion.
Drake’s first few albums were had musical potential, and also provided a clear look on what his mind looked like. However, his newest album is a step back on all fronts. Full of filler-sounding beats, incomplete vocals, and confirmed ghostwritten lyrics, Scorpion is a dead and desperate attempt at getting the common person back on Drake’s side. The most this shows about Drake’s mental state is that he does not care at all about his music. Drake didn’t add his own personality to the general issues he sang about, losing any emotion that might’ve come from his incorporation of mental topics.
This foregoing of emotion is becoming more and more prevalent in music in general. All too often, a track has a solid instrumental and subject matter, but the lyrics are so generic and bland that listeners cannot make an emotional connection. It all boils down to an artist’s insecurity about their own mind. The average person is much more guarded and self-keeping than many celebrities or popular singers, and as a result, many people who want to create music but who are too insecure to connect their personality just end up making dead, soulless works which all sound the same.
Of course, not everyone makes mentally personal music, and trying to force yourself to follow the trend will only create a disconnect between musician and listener. Drake found this out the hard way, creating a dead, cold, fake work that I hesitate to call music. Kanye found this the other hard way, creating a bombastic, loud, and inconsistent album which reaches incredible highs and even lower lows. Putting an artist’s mental state in the forefront of their work can yield incredible results, but there’s a very fine line to tread between sounding foolishly raw and chillingly dead. Hopefully, the musical community and industry can work toward thickening the line. The idea of music sounding this inconsistent forever is a bleak future I’d like to avoid.
Article by Edwin Jiang of Richard Montgomery High School
Graphic by Charles Wang of Walter Johnson High School