Was Chappell Roan’s Grammys Speech Naive or Necessary? Why Both Sides of the Debate Are Right, and Sometimes Not

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Late Wednesday evening, an uproar erupted across the music industry over an op-ed published in the Hollywood Reporter, in which Jeff Rabhan (former chair of New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music) unpacked some of the implications of Chappell Roan’s passionate statement about music companies owing musicians “a livable wage and life insurance” during her speech accepting the best new artist award at the Grammy Awards.

As is the case with many such situations, both sides are right about some things and less right about others. That segment of Chappell’s speech bears repeating in full: “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.