Several voices linked to music have questioned the possibility of minors becoming stars in the pop world, in reaction to the death of Liam Payne, former member of One Direction.
Liam Payne (1991-2024): the pop star who was still looking for the right path
“I think putting a 16-year-old in an adult world like that is potentially very damaging. “Robbie Williams certainly went through that,” said Guy Chamber, quoted by The Guardian. The British songwriter collaborated with Williams, who in the 1990s enjoyed a rapid rise to fame as a member of the band. take that.
Liam Payne has addressed his difficulty finding mental stability after his rise to stardom as a member of One Direction.
Robbie Williams, who mentored One Direction on the show. The x factorHe said he was processing “a shock on a global scale” after Liam fell from a balcony at a Buenos Aires hotel last Wednesday. “I’m dealing with depression, I’m dealing with sadness.. “A lot of this is motivated by Liam,” he said in an interview with Deadline.
Drugs in the room and several calls to 112 before the fall: everything that is known about the death of Liam Payne, former member of One Direction
Williams downplays his influence on the company’s success. boy band: “I barely did anything, to be honest. I just spent time with them. “They were all bold and charming.” However, he confesses to having been more interventionist by recognizing a familiar pattern in the path of artists off the stage. “Liam’s trials and tribulations were very similar to mine, so it made sense for me to reach out to him and offer him what I could. And that’s what I did,” he confesses.
He remembered when he was a teenager and the requests for help he made were viewed negatively. “How dare you not be grateful?” he says he was asked. “This is not a fame problem, it is a human problem.. A social problem, this is a social media problem. “This is not just a problem for us celebrities, it is a problem for us humans,” he said.
Guy Chambers, who co-wrote the Robbie Williams songs Angels and Let Me Entertain You, argues that Payne’s death should spark change. “I suggest that people They shouldn’t be in a boy band until they’re 18. and the music industry must maintain this commitment.”
“I have four children, so I think about this a lot. I know that in the case of Robbie with Take That there was no protection to look after the teenagers. That was a long time ago, but I don’t see much change. There’s not a lot more care on the part of the people involved in major television talent shows,” Chambers said.
Mike Smith, head of publishers including Warner, EMI and Columbia, responded to Chambers’ proposal: “I’m not sure if it should be some kind of legislation, but the longer a person can postpone their career in music, the better.”
Smith said he admires “those who can go through an early career in a good state of mind,” justifying that “at 16, people are still immature, the idea of having to go through all this madness when you don’t do it yet.” “know who you are. “It’s alarming.”
He also commented on how major music publishers were approaching the topic over time. “When I was at Warner in 2018, we improved this. “We created a fund in young songwriters’ contracts to cover mental health care, because we saw that about 25% of them were suffering from anxiety or depression and these were not our A-list pop stars,” he said.
“I know this didn’t exist in Robbie Williams’ time, but that’s partly because we had these conversations about it,” said Mike Smith, who is currently the president of Downtown Music Publishing. “What hasn’t changed yet is the incredible pressure these young artists face. “People want you to be happy all the time and they constantly examine you,” he concluded.
Source: Observadora
