Halsey came to Chappell Roan‘s defense after The Hollywood Reporter published a scathing takedown of her Grammy Awards acceptance speech.
On Sunday night, Chappell Roan called out the music industry’s treatment of young artists when she took the podium for her Best New Artist win. In her speech, she demanded that labels offer a livable wage and healthcare to their developing artists. “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?” she said to a standing ovation from her peers.
The Hollywood Reporter published a guest column on Wednesday titled “Chappell Groan: The Misguided Rhetoric of an Instant Industry Insider.” It was written by Jeff Rabhan, who has worked as a music journalist and label executive. He now works in higher education. In the piece, Rabhan refuted Roan’s stance, claiming that she is “far too green and uninformed” to make these demands and that labels have obligation to provide these basic securities to their artists.
In a text-only Instagram Story, Halsey tagged The Hollywood Reporter directly before sharing her own response to the piece. “I hope you’re embarrassed of the absolute personal attack that you’ve ran and disguised as critical journalism,” Halsey, who uses she/they pronouns, wrote. “Jeff Rabhan’s ranting, seething tantrum is loaded with assumptions and accusations that generalize the experience of every artist to that of the most successful. Our industry is comprised of thousands of voices, the elite at the very top of the class are not the example of a monolithic experience for all artists.”
Halsey went on to point out how record advances are “for affording survival” and are a “game of investment.” They continued, “If you want to profit off of someone else’s art; that artist should have the basic living means to feel safe enough to create that art.”
In the piece, Rabhan insisted that “elite” artists such as Roan should “put your money where your mouth is.” He brings up examples of other artists battles against industry practices, like Prince, Tom Petty and Taylor Swift.
“This is what real industry disruptors do,” Rabhan wrote. “Taylor Swift didn’t just complain — she rerecorded her entire catalog and managed to gross a billion dollars in her spare time. Prince reinvented his entire business model. Petty went on a creative hunger strike and held one of his best records hostage.”
Halsey specifically called out the Swift comparison in their own post: “An artist like Chappell who has worked for over a decade is not an ‘instant industry insider’ and to compare the payoff of her actions to those of an industry titan like Taylor [Swift], when Chappell hasn’t even spun the block enough times to see the residuals of her long earned but sudden success is irresponsible for someone with your experience in this industry.”
Halsey ended her post by calling the piece “boot licking behavior.”
Roan herself has yet to respond to the column.
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