Mental health is a big issue right now in the music business. Only yesterday I wrote about a conference being held in Manchester in October in which a session is to be devoted to mental health issues and plenty of others before it have done the same and will continue to do so.
Mental health issues in the business range from Covid-related ones (the isolation, the inability to perform live etc) to simply being unable to deal with rejection and – much worse of course – online trolling.
And then there are the historical ones such as difficult childhoods.
Now you might ask “so why is anything different for musicians; anyone can and has suffered from these events.”
And you’d be right. The difference is that musicians can at least write and sing about them to help assuage their angst. The real benefit comes from helping ease the burden on others at the same time and I recall several artists that have been featured here this year have done just that.
Lalou steps up to the plate to do exactly that. It seems she had a difficult childhood and adolescence marked by sexual abuse, and as an adult she continues to live with the mental aftermath. Her goal is to break the taboo and promote the representation of this reality.
‘Make it right’ is about banishing these ghosts of the past, even if the scars will always be there. It’s about finding the courage to speak up after many years of silence and fear of stigma, which so many have done these past few years.
There is an additional personality trait under investigation here, namely that of ‘self-love’ and the need for it. I’m not so sure about that one. While I can subscribe to what I call the Christina Aguilera Syndrome, namely that we are all “beautiful no matter what they say”, it is all too easy to let it develop into narcissism.
But let’s not get too deeply into that discussion right now.
Lalou doesn’t permit herself to wallow in self pity. ‘Make it right’ is upbeat and you do get the impression she isn’t pleading to some spiritual force to help her out as much as trying to find the inner strength to come fully to terms with her past.
Musically, well I thought I’d clicked onto something by Barbra Streisand by accident; a track mistakenly cut from ‘The way we were’, discovered in a trash can, and resurrected by Lalou.
You think I’m kidding? Check it out and see for yourself.
She has a top class band as well, the drummer in particular shines.
Lalou’s album ‘Keep the Change’ will be released on October 13th.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LalouDKOfficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lalou_music/
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