I’m doing something a little different this week for Tuesday Tunes. Here in the UK this week – 11 to 17 May – is Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) and I know that in the US May is Mental Health Awareness Month. I regularly post for this, and thought it might be a good idea to combine it into my regular Tuesday offering by editing and reworking a piece I wrote some years ago.

Long, long ago, when I started this blog (well, over thirteen years ago) I began by sharing my experience of mental health issues. In my case these were depression and panic attacks, and I hoped that by ‘coming out’ I could help others to come to terms with their own experiences. Happily, feedback has been almost entirely positive, but as you will no doubt have noticed mental health as a topic has rather taken a back seat here of late. But that doesn’t mean that I have lost interest – far from it. I am still a member of some of the organisations whose advice helped me back then and whose work I have in some cases featured here. One that I hadn’t mentioned before a post in 2022 is The Mighty, an American organisation who, in their own words, provide “a safe, supportive community for people facing health challenges and the people who care for them.” If you want to know more about them, they explain who they are here.

Their emails regularly give me pieces to read around the three topics I have signed up for – depression, mental health and migraine – and one of those suggestions which prompted that post was a piece called 38 Celebrities With Chronic And Mental Illnesses Nominated For Grammy Awards, which I read with interest. The article dated back to late 2019, and it referenced the Grammy Awards of January 2020, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant now. Many of those were artists whose music I don’t really like, or in many cases haven’t even heard of. I thought it might make an interesting post for me to share some of those stories with you, and play a piece of music by each of them to show the interaction between music and mental health. Our mental and physical health is vital for all of us, especially in the wake of the pandemic we have endured since just after those Grammys took place, and from which the after effects are still being felt with the pressure on our health services..

The first one I’m playing today is Roseanne Cash. As far as I can tell I’ve only ever played her a couple of times before, notably her duet with her father, Johnny Cash, which was in response to one of the WordPress daily prompts back in 2013. That song was September When It Comes, and it is beautiful and poignant – my piece is here if you’re interested. I’ve since played it several times, plus a couple of her others. This is what The Mighty said about her:

Rosanne Cash struggled for years with chronic headaches without a diagnosis. Eventually, she was diagnosed with the brain condition Chiari I malformation after several misdiagnoses and required surgery.

“I’ve had headaches for as long as I can remember. Even though I figured I would have to undergo brain surgery, I was flooded with relief that someone finally knew what was wrong with me.“

This is Crossing To Jerusalem, for which she was nominated but didn’t win:

One of the artists I hadn’t featured before that earlier post is Lana Del Rey. She isn’t a top favourite of mine, but she makes atmospheric music which I always enjoy when I hear it. Her story goes:

The queen of “Summertime Sadness” Lana Del Rey shared in 2014 she was struggling with a chronic condition that doctors couldn’t diagnose, which also took a toll on her mental health. “I’d been sick on tour for about two years with this medical anomaly that doctors couldn’t figure out. That’s a big part of my life: I just feel really sick a lot of the time and can’t figure out why. … It was just heavy.”

That makes the point that physical health issues can be just as debilitating as mental health problems, and can impact on our mental health, too. As one of her songs that I’ve always liked is the one referenced in The Mighty‘s article it seems an obvious choice for me to play today:

I have played Lady Gaga on several occasions, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to play another of her songs: as I have said before, I’m a big fan of hers. This is what The Mighty say of her:

Lady Gaga lives with fibromyalgia and mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after surviving sexual assault.

“I get so irritated with people who don’t believe fibromyalgia is real. For me, and I think for many others, it’s really a cyclone of anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma, and panic disorder, all of which sends the nervous system into overdrive, and then you have nerve pain as a result. People need to be more compassionate. Chronic pain is no joke. And it’s every day waking up not knowing how you’re going to feel.”

Her Grammy nomination that year was for the movie A Star Is Born. There could really only be one song of hers I could play today, isn’t there? This is Shallow, from the movie, and it is incredibly good:

A brief footnote on this one: of those that I’m featuring today, this is one of only two which did actually win a Grammy.

So as not to make this an all female selection my next choice for today is Lewis Capaldi, a Scottish singer-songwriter who was just 23 when he was first nominated for a Grammy, and has since become hugely famous. This is what The Mighty said about him:

A breakout star this year thanks to his hit song “Someone You Loved,” Lewis Capaldi uses his platform to raise awareness for others living with mental health conditions. His newest song, “Before You Go,” is a response to his aunt’s death by suicide and the complicated feelings of being a suicide loss survivor. “The song’s about suicide and it’s about not necessarily the act of it itself obviously, but people after it happens, the aftermath of it and people blaming themselves or starting to think, what could I have done to help that person?” Capaldi explained in an interview.

This is Before You Go. Knowing the background to it, and how intensely personal this is to him, makes it even more heartbreaking to hear:

Since then Lewis has gone through a well-documented period of depression, which was at the root of an emotional meltdown live on stage during the 2023 Glastonbury Festival. He took a long period out from performing and recording to help him through his health issues; he has since returned with new music and is touring again right now. It’s great to have him back, as he is a real life symbol of what this post is about.

Those four tunes almost make up my regular quota of five, so there’s room for another. When I first wrote about this I played another Lewis Capaldi song, but I thought that this time I should play something different, from one of the other artists featured in The Mighty‘s article.

The one I have chosen to add is Sara Bareilles, who I think I have only previously played in my seasonal posts for Winter. This is what The Mighty said about her:

The singer/songwriter behind classic pop songs like “Brave” and “Gravity,” Sara Bareilles (Grammy–nominated this year for Best American Roots Performance) wrote about her mental health history in her memoir, “Sounds Like Me.”

“I don’t think you have to be an artist to be overwhelmed by life,” Bareilles told the SheKnows website. “Every single person I know (without exception) has had moments where they feel like they don’t know which way is up. But I think part of the work we as humans are here to do is to learn to understand and have compassion for what is uncomfortable.”

Sara is the other Grammy winner from that year. I should perhaps play her winning song, Saint Honesty, but I prefer this one, which is mentioned above:

If anyone is feeling a little down after reading this and listening to these songs I can only say that isn’t my intention at all! What I’m doing here, using the article in The Mighty as my prompt, is to show how musicians are real people, with real emotions and feelings, who share the same illnesses that we have, and how they can draw attention to this with their music and their public personae. At the time of my original post we had all been suffering the pandemic for more than two years, and it seemed that every day there was another piece in the paper about its ongoing effects, and negative predictions for the future from those who knew what they were talking about. As I said then, we needed to be aware of this, as it had become a mental health issue as much as a physical one, and we needed to take care of ourselves and those we love: perhaps now more than ever. Sadly things haven’t changed for the better in the four years since then: mental health services are stretched to the limit and are still underfunded, as they have always been, the Cinderella of healthcare.

I make no apology for hijacking my own regular series to play these songs in support of MHAW – I think we all need a gentle reminder now and again, and having others say what I want to say through their music seems a good plan. Normal service will resume next week, of course! Until then, take care 🙏

[Just before I go, my usual reminders of where I’m sharing this post. Firstly, at Esme’s Senior Salon Pit Stop, and also at Cathy’s Monday’s Music Moves Me. I can recommend both to you]