Charli XCX, Noah Kahan pledge to match Chappell Roan’s $25,000 for artists’ healthcare
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After her Grammy Awards acceptance speech about how record labels treat their developing musicians, Chappell Roan made a donation of $25,000 to “struggling dropped artists” — and might have started a trend.
Charli XCX and Noah Kahan announced pledges to match Roan’s donation, which she made in response to the author of an op-ed critical of her Grammys speech.
“I’m inspired by you,” said Kahan in an Instagram story on Saturday. “Happy to help get the ball rolling. Money where my mouth is!”
“i am going to match your $25k to support artists’ access to healthcare,” Charli XCX also said in an Instagram story on Saturday. “i saw [Noah Kahan] say that he would do the same and so i thought i’d follow suit. your speech at the grammys was inspiring and thoughtful and from a genuine place of care. happy to help get the ball rolling too. money where my mouth is.”
Roan was dropped by a label after her early work didn’t immediately resonate with audiences. Part of that journey was also reflected in her speech.
Roan first called out record labels during last Sunday’s Grammys ceremony, when she accepted the award for best new artist. “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 in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists,” said the pop singer, who was signed as a teenager by Atlantic Records in 2018.
When she was dropped by the label, “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,” she said to applause from fellow artists including Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and Benson Boone. “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].
“If my label would’ve prioritized artists’ health, I could’ve been provided care by a company I was giving everything to,” she continued. “So, record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection. Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
Roan tagged Jeff Rabhan on Friday in an Instagram story screenshot of his Hollywood Reporter op-ed, in which he described the 26-year-old musician as “far too green and too uninformed to be the agent of change she aspires to be today.”
“If labels are responsible for artists’ wages, health care and overall well-being, where does it end and personal responsibility begin?” wrote Rabhan, the former chair of New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. “There is no moral or ethical obligation by any standard that hold labels responsible for the allocation of additional funds beyond advances and royalties.”
Since Rabhan wrote that Roan should “do something about it — rather than just talk at it,” Roan made the donation and challenged Rabhan to do the same.
“Mr. Rabhan I love how in the article you said ‘put your money where your mouth is’ Genius !!! Let’s link and build together and see if you can do the same,” she said in the Instagram story, adding that she’d “show receipts of the donations” and shouted out a handful of artists “that deserve more love and a bigger platform,” including Hemlocke Springs, Sarah Kinsley, Devon Again and Baby Storme.
The pop superstar’s win with “Cowboy Carter” says as much about the Recording Academy as it does about her.
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