29 Jan 25 | Europe and Central Asia, Music, News and features, United Kingdom, Volume 53.04 Winter 2024
This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
In January 2019, there was a landmark case in British legal history – it was the first time someone received a prison sentence for performing a song.
The perpetrators were Brixton duo Skengdo x AM, one of the brightest acts of the burgeoning UK drill scene. They had already been put under surveillance by the police after they and two other members of rap group 410 were handed a gang injunction in 2018. This was in response to a song they released depicting clashes with members of rival crews. Three young men from those crews were killed that year, but there was no evidence that members of 410 were involved. The Metropolitan Police still classified 410 as a gang, and the injunction prevented them from entering the “rival” SE11 London postcode area, and from performing songs with lyrics that mentioned rival crews.
But at a concert in December 2018, Skengdo x AM broke the injunction. The pair performed one of their more popular songs, Attempted 1.0, which contained lyrics that were regarded by police as inciting violence. Officers discovered videos of the performance online – and in January 2019 the pair were given nine-month prison sentences suspended for two years.
In a statement, the Met said that the injunction was breached when “they performed drill music that incited and encouraged violence against rival gang members and then posted it on social media”. But it was their fans that shared videos, not them. Shereener Browne, a former barrister for Garden Court Chambers, has spent years working on cases involving young people alleged to be involved in gang or criminal activity. She was shocked by this case, particularly given the pair hadn’t posted online themselves.
“So here, they got an order for not doing anything, and then got an order saying that they were in breach of that order for something that they didn’t do! Head blown,” she told Index. “So we’re just… tearing up Magna Carta – every principle of criminal law is up for grabs. And if it was happening to any other group? We would be marching.”
This is a case that Index on Censorship commented on at the time – and it is not the only instance of UK police trying to control the work of drill artists. One notable case was that of Digga D. In 2018, Digga D (full name Rhys Herbert) was convicted of conspiring to commit violent disorder and ultimately sentenced to a year behind bars. He was also given a criminal behaviour order (CBO) which, alongside having his movements tracked, meant he was required to notify police within 24 hours of uploading music or videos online. Additionally, the lyrics of his songs had to be verified and authorised by the police to ensure that they did not incite violence. If they did, he could be sent back to prison. These restrictions meant that police essentially had control over his work, and this will continue until 2025. Digga D is one of the most influential drill artists on the scene, but even he is forced to censor his work under police surveillance.
The Met has been scrutinising drill musicians for a while. In 2019, it launched a targeted initiative titled Project Alpha which scoured social media platforms for potential signs of gang activity in posts and videos by young, usually Black, people. As revealed by The Guardian, the force monitors the activity of young people – primarily young men aged 15 to 21 – online, which it says aims to fight serious violence, identify offenders and assist in removing videos that glorify stabbings and shootings. In many cases, Big Tech is complying, and this policy has led to hundreds of drill music videos being removed from platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
In a Freedom of Information application on Project Alpha, it was revealed that the Met made 682 requests to remove drill songs from streaming platforms between 1 January 2021 and 31 October 2023, with most requests made to YouTube. Another FOI request found that on YouTube specifically, 654 requests for removal were made between September 2020 and January 2022, and 635 of them were granted.
Browne believes that the claimed attempt to tackle gang violence has become a concerted effort to silence drill artists, and young Black men in particular. It amounts to systemic racism, she told Index, with the evidence for this being that other genres of music are not censored or surveilled in the same way.
“It creates a culture of fear amongst mainly young, Black men, and it makes them feel even more disenfranchised, marginalised and silenced,” she said. “Because if you see your heroes – and I think to a lot of these young men, the drill and rap artists that break through are seen as their heroes – being silenced in that way, it’s going to make you angry and frustrated.
“There’s this demonisation of an entire generation of young Black people, and it’s crushing their self-esteem.”
The moral panic surrounding drill music means it has become common practice for lyrics to be used in court as evidence of criminal activity amongst drill artists. Rapping about crime and violence is often seen as an admission of guilt rather than musical storytelling, and even listening to drill music can be taken as a precursor to violent behaviour.
Art Not Evidence is a campaign group fighting against the criminalisation of drill. Founded a year ago, it has collaborated with musicians and human rights organisations to battle against the use of lyrics – and creative expression more broadly – to unfairly implicate people in criminal charges when there is a lack of real evidence. Co-founder Elli Brazzill works in the music industry and has spent time at a major record label with some of the biggest names in music. She noticed how the police began to interfere with the work of drill artists signed to the label.
“I started to see the disparities between the way different artists are treated, and what I referred to as a correlation between the growing popularity of certain rap and drill artists and an increase in police interference and surveillance,” she told Index. One artist who was signed after serving a prison sentence was at risk of further criminal punishment for simply posting online about Black Lives Matter, she claimed.
In founding Art Not Evidence, Brazzill hopes that she can help change presumptions around drill music, from a violent and dangerous genre to a form of therapy and creative expression. “What all the other genres are awarded, and rap and drill music are not, is artistic licence,” she said. “Which is why it comes up in court as autobiographical, as literal, as a confession, as a premeditation to crime.”
Music can be a therapeutic tool. According to the charity Youth Music, which conducted a survey of 16 to 24-year-olds last year, nearly three quarters found that listening to, reading or writing musical lyrics enabled them to “process difficult feelings and emotions”, whilst half said it helped to reduce feelings of isolation or loneliness. “That is what these kids need, especially if you’re in a community where you don’t talk about things,” said Brazzill. “I’m 28 now, and I still struggle to talk about my emotions! When you’re 15, all you can do is let it out like this. I’m pretty sure every artist would say that that is what it is for them.”
Censoring drill music only further ostracises an already-marginalised group, Browne believes. “It’s a group of young men who have fallen through the cracks – very often excluded from schools, put into pupil referral units… they’re not doing their A-levels, they’re not going to university,” she said.
“There are very, very few legitimate ways for them to raise themselves [and] lift themselves out of poverty, and this is one of the few ways that they can do that. That’s why it’s even more cruel for the state to try to shut down those avenues of escape.”
Her point is valid. If these young Black people cannot tell the stories and realities of their lives, and they are instead silenced because their retelling is deemed “too violent” or “glorifies gang culture”, we are depriving them of a crucial outlet, erasing a core element of modern-day British culture and exacerbating the cycle of poverty and crime. And inevitably, this can only lead to prison sentences for some young people. Brazzill recalled the poignant words of one drill artist from a recent podcast interview: “You are really angry, and you don’t want us to make the music talking about our life. But you don’t care if we’ll just go back and have to do The Life.”
28 Jan 25 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, Volume 53.04 Winter 2024
This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
After three years of Taliban rule, nobody really believed women could be erased further from public life in Afghanistan.
“But the Taliban found another way: they’ve restricted our voices and faces,” said Maryam, an Afghan legal scholar and journalist.
Maryam, who uses a pseudonym, was referring to the Taliban’s “vice and virtue” laws, which were passed in August and ban women from speaking, singing or showing their faces in public. If women break the rules, they – or their male relatives – face imprisonment.
Maryam spoke to Index in hushed tones over Signal from the relative safety of her living room in Afghanistan.
The new laws typify the rapid intensification of the Taliban’s crackdown, which has already seen women banned from parks, workplaces, schools and universities since it took power in August 2021. Once implemented monthly, harsh laws, decrees, house raids and arrests are now a daily occurrence.
“It’s a very intense attack on the dignity of humans and the dignity of women,” said Shaharzad Akbar, executive director of Afghan rights group Rawadari. “Before, there was some wiggle room, but it’s very scary because now it’s law, it’s out there and people are required to comply with it.”
The crackdown isn’t manifesting just through new laws.
“The Taliban have also been destroying institutions and putting new institutions in place to actually implement and carry out their vision of society,” said Akbar. She should know, having chaired the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission before it was abruptly dismantled when the Taliban toppled Kabul.
At that time, Maryam was on the cusp of completing her legal training, having graduated from university, and working as an assistant lawyer in the country’s courts, often assisting on highly sensitive divorce and domestic violence cases that drew the ire of Taliban members.
After the takeover, the Taliban closed the country’s only bar association. All existing licences to practise law were revoked, putting lawyers out of work. Many like Maryam, who were still waiting for their licences to be formally approved, never received their documentation. As the Taliban filled the Ministry of Justice and the courts with its own lawyers, judges and prosecutors, Maryam’s chances of a legal career vanished.
Maryam was just a toddler when the Taliban was overthrown in 2001. Now 26 years old, she finds it hard speaking about the early “bad days” after the Taliban’s recent return to power and the subsequent unravelling of decades of progress on women’s rights.
She has relatives – mostly judges and their immediate families – who have managed to leave the country. Yet, like many Afghans, she’s not been deemed enough “at risk” to warrant evacuation. Instead, she’s focused on doing what she can while living under the constant threat of Taliban restrictions.
Through word of mouth, she established a homeschool teaching English to girls in her neighbourhood. It was one of the many underground schools that proliferated across Afghanistan after September 2021 when the Taliban issued a ban on girls over the age of 11 attending secondary school.
However, as rumours swirled about the rising number of secret schools, the authorities began doing door-to-door searches. She received messages over Telegram from Taliban fighters warning that she’d be thrown into jail if she didn’t stop “working against the regime”.
Maryam said she had no choice but to close the school.
“We already were in danger because of the position of my family in the justice system,” she said. “I didn’t want to make more danger for myself, my family or my students.”
In December 2022, the Taliban banned all Afghan women from attending university. Maryam’s husband, an engineer, was teaching at a local university, and he was devastated that his female students were being forced to give up their studies.
Under the most recent law, he faces losing his job if he leaves work to accompany Maryam anywhere. Without him, she’s forbidden from leaving the house.
The Taliban has created hundreds of positions for men to teach in gender-segregated religious schools – madrassas – across the country, while women with university degrees and teaching experience are forced to stay at home.
Rawadari – one of the few organisations that has maintained a network on the ground documenting violations of civil and political rights since the takeover – has been closely following the detrimental impact of the education ban on women’s and girls’ mental health across Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
The overwhelming sense of ‘hopelessness’ is undeniable, said Akbar, who now lives in the UK in exile but still finds reports of what’s happening back home extremely difficult to hear.
“I think most of the girls believed this will be temporary and never imagined they would experience what their mothers had experienced,” she said. “They are depressed and they’re struggling to keep their hopes alive.”
Maryam continues to battle her own mental health struggles as a result of the restrictions, but has found some solace in working in the shadows as an online educator, mental health trainer, journalist and advocate.
However, as the internet and social media platforms are increasingly monitored by the Taliban and its spies, she has had to be more careful about her online interactions.
“I can’t trust who is safe and who is not,” she said. “There are women on Instagram and other places who are looking for women who are disobeying Taliban rule. For that reason, I don’t share anything about myself. They just hear my voice and the teachings I’m offering them. I’m scared and my colleagues are scared, but we go forward, do the job and provide teaching for those who need it.”
Unsilenced in exile
There is also growing momentum from Afghan women internationally to give their sisters inside the country a voice. One such woman is Qazi Marzia Babakarkhail, who became a judge in Afghanistan at 26 – the same age that Maryam is now.
Babakarkhail worked in the family courts, later setting up a small shelter for divorced women in Afghanistan and a school for Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Those initiatives were a lifeline to dozens of women, but they soon drew unwanted attention from the Taliban and she fled the country in 2008 after two assassination attempts.
Since moving to the UK, Babakarkhail has learnt English and now works as a caseworker for an MP near Manchester. As well as helping campaign for the evacuation of hundreds of female judges, she speaks daily to former colleagues and friends still trapped in Afghanistan.
Her advocacy earned her an invitation to an all-Afghan women’s summit held in Tirana, Albania, in September. It was the first time since the Taliban regained power that such a large group of Afghan women – more than 100 from across Europe, the USA, Canada and Afghanistan itself – had been given an international platform to discuss the rollback of women’s rights. They are so often excluded from conversations on Afghanistan’s future.
This marked a sharp contrast with a UN meeting held earlier in June in Doha, which was heavily criticised for inviting Taliban leaders and neglecting to bring Afghan women’s voices to the table.
Babakarkhail said the summit had opened ‘a new window of hope’ for Afghan women. Seeing women who defied the Taliban travel to Tirana reminded her of her own perilous journey and gave her hope for Afghanistan’s future.
“They are real activists because they are still fighting and still stay in Afghanistan,” she said. “Of course they do a lot of things silently, but they will go back. They know how to deal with the Taliban and they will keep silent. They made us proud.”
She is hopeful the summit – which discussed the unravelling human rights situation, the urgent need for humanitarian aid and international recognition of the Taliban’s mistreatment of women as “gender apartheid” – will provide the necessary wake-up call to the international community.
“We don’t want the United Nations or other countries to recognise the Taliban as a government,” she said. “This group is a stand against the Taliban and a stand for people in Afghanistan.”
Pushing for accountability
The international push for accountability, both at the International Criminal Court – which has an ongoing investigation into alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan – and the groundbreaking move to bring a gender persecution case against the Taliban at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – are other signs that the dial may finally be shifting in Afghan women’s favour.
Akbar has been one of the leading voices campaigning to bring the case to the ICJ. Although she is appalled by what is happening to her motherland, she believes these judicial measures and the summit in Tirana will help ensure Afghan women’s voices are no longer silenced.
“We have a saying in Farsi,” said Akbar. “We say, ‘Drop by drop, you make a river.’ All of this will come together to become this river of hope and this river of defiance against the Taliban. The dream really is that we show the Taliban that the power of people everywhere in the world is with the women of Afghanistan and not with them.”
For Maryam, such developments are already reviving dreams that Afghan women’s rights and freedoms will one day be restored.
“I know that the suffering that women are enduring under the Taliban’s gender apartheid regime is unique,” she said.
She hopes the ongoing efforts, both by women like her inside the country and by those elsewhere in the world, will be enough.
“We are motivating and inspiring each other. We will win and the future will be ours – women’s.”
24 Jan 25 | Burma, News and features, Volume 53.04 Winter 2024
This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
A black square was all it took. Veteran journalist Kyaw Min Swe was arrested by the Myanmar military junta in April 2023 after he blacked out his personal Facebook profile – a sign of despair at the bombing of Pazigyi, a village near his hometown in the Sagaing region, which killed more than 100 people including children.
Around 300 people had gathered for the opening of an office of the National Unity government in exile. Eyewitnesses reported that a fighter jet bombed the village before a helicopter fired on those escaping. It was one of the deadliest attacks on civilians since the military coup in 2021.
Kyaw, the former editor-in-chief of weekly newspaper Aasan (The Voice) and executive director of the Myanmar Journalism Institute, has been a journalist for more than 25 years. He had been detained before, but this time was different.
“On a popular Telegram account that monitors high-profile people like me, I was accused of supporting the People’s Defence Force [the PDF is the military wing of the exiled government] and opposing the military with that Facebook post,” he told Index. He was summoned to the military interrogation centre in Yangon to explain himself.
“I had nine days of torture – not physical, but mental: three interrogators, working in rotation, asking me the same questions and depriving me of sleep.
“They lied about arresting my reporters, pretending they had evidence of connections with the exiled government and the PDF, but they had nothing. I simply told them the truth: I’m a professional journalist, not pro-exiled government or anti-military, but I disagree with the coup.”
Later, he was bundled into a vehicle with a bag over his head.
“I was scared. This was different to my previous experiences,” said Kyaw, who was taken first to the police interrogation centre and then to Sanchaung Township police station, where he was charged under Section 505A of Myanmar’s Penal Code – used by the junta to target those seen to criticise the regime and carrying a maximum three-year prison sentence.
Insein in chains
After almost three months, including two spent in chains in the notorious Insein Prison, he was finally released – with an order to report weekly to police.
“From then on, I was monitored constantly,” he said. “The military actually offered me financial support, but they wanted to use me as propaganda and I knew that was professional suicide.”
While detained, Kyaw decided he and his family needed to leave Myanmar.
“It was no longer the right place for my kids,” he said.
He contacted a friend at Deutsche Welle, the German state broadcaster which part-funds the Myanmar Journalism Institute, and last October he fled Yangon under cover of darkness with his wife and two children.
The daring escape to Germany via Thailand included crossing rivers, trekking through jungles, climbing walls and sheltering in safe houses. Eight months later, with the help of the Exile Hub, an arm of German non-profit Media in Co-operation and Transition (MiCT), they finally found safety in Berlin in June 2024.
“For my kids it was like an adventure, but not for my wife, who spent seven months taking Xanax because she couldn’t sleep,” said Kyaw. “She was anxious every time she saw someone in a uniform. In Myanmar, she’d got used to hiding my laptop in the washing machine every time the doorbell rang.”
Myanmar’s censors
Over the course of his career in Myanmar, Kyaw has seen censorship fluctuate between brief periods of hope and progress to crushing repression.
Before 2011, the military junta imposed strict censorship on the press. Independent media was non-existent, with most newspapers being government-owned or strictly controlled, focusing on state propaganda. Kyaw’s media house, for example, was owned by the son of the military intelligence chief.
Journalists had to submit their work to the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) before publication, and any critical or sensitive content – particularly related to the military, politics or ethnic conflicts – was censored. Kyaw said his magazine was suspended six times, sometimes for infringements as minor as running adverts that mentioned neighbouring Thailand.
With the shift to a quasi-civilian government under president Thein Sein in 2011, Myanmar experienced a brief period of media liberalisation. As secretary at Myanmar’s Press Council, Kyaw helped draft a media law to protect journalists. The PSRD was abolished, private newspapers were allowed to publish daily, and journalists, for the first time, began to report on previously forbidden subjects.
Yet they still faced threats and prosecution. Kyaw was sued for defamation by the Ministry of Mines in 2012 for publishing a story about alleged misuse of public funds, based on a report from the parliamentary watchdog.
“The ministry demanded a front-page apology, but the parliament report was so clear, we politely declined,” he said.
The case dragged on for months and Kyaw faced dozens of court appearances before it was dropped, following pressure from human rights NGOs and a ministerial reshuffle. Kyaw took this as a sign of progress.
A false dawn
Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) came to power in 2016, but the military retained significant power and media freedom deteriorated again.
“We expected a lot from the NLD,” recalled Kyaw. “We self-censored and hesitated to criticise them because people loved them so much. We didn’t want to be labelled pro-military.”
Several high-profile cases of media repression occurred, notably the jailing of Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo for reporting military atrocities against the Rohingya.
In 2017, Kyaw was arrested in his newsroom along with columnist Ko Kyaw Zwa Naing after a military official complained about a satirical article published in response to a film commemorating Armed Forces Day. Charges against Ko Kyaw Zwa Naing were dropped, but Kyaw Min Swe remained in Insein Prison for two months, on trial for “online defamation’’ under the 2013 Telecommunications Law.
“They treated us decently because the international community was watching,” Kyaw recalled. “The military, and even the Press Council, wanted me to apologise, but I said, ‘I’m sorry, this is satire, a form of art. If I apologise, my career is gone’.”
The military coup of 2021 dramatically reversed any media freedoms that had been gained. The military seized control of all state media, revoking the licences of independent news outlets such as Mizzima, Myanmar Now and DVB.
“Every journalist was watched and monitored,” Kyaw said. “Many journalists were arrested, others were beaten at demonstrations on the street.”
Draconian laws were passed, including Section 505(A) of the Penal Code which criminalises “causing fear, spreading false news, or agitating against government employees”. Kyaw’s newspaper was forced to cease publishing when businesses switched their advertising to state-owned media.
Myanmar has become the world’s second biggest jailer of journalists, second only to China, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Several “exiled media” outlets such as The Irrawaddy have relocated to Thailand and rely on citizen journalists to provide content. Kyaw said he hoped bodies such as the Myanmar Journalism Institute might act as platforms to attract funding for exiled media, as well as for journalists still working inside the country for regional or ethnic media houses. But this can also be problematic.
“Some [exiled] Myanmar media report only what’s happening in the war, and only when it’s good news for the PDF and the exiled government. But Myanmar people have a right to know true information, free of bias, about the war, the economy or even natural disasters that are happening,” Kyaw said.
“Without that reporting, our people cannot prepare for the future.”
23 Jan 25 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, United Kingdom, Volume 53.04 Winter 2024
This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
The recent passing of One Direction’s Liam Payne made me reflect on my first encounter with him during the filming of The X Factor in the autumn of 2010. The confident 17-year-old from Wolverhampton enthusiastically posed for pictures with my daughter before delivering a note-perfect performance on the show that night. There was no doubt in my mind that he had a golden career ahead of him.
In the spring of 2012, I found myself in a small, windowless room in the bowels of Cardiff City Football Club judging the first round of potential contestants for that year’s competition. During the day, I sat with an assistant producer on the show and ate a large jar of Haribo as we auditioned countless hopefuls. By the early evening, I never wanted to hear Rolling In the Deep again. A pain in my right shoulder had spread down my body and I felt like I was seizing up. When I saw the doctor the following day, she asked what my lifestyle was like. I explained that I had been to the USA twice that month, worked most evenings and drank coffee to power through the days.
“I can see it in your eyes,” she told me. “They are dull, you have no energy, the fire in your soul is out.” She prescribed immediate bed-rest and suggested I read The Presence Process by Michael Brown, a spiritual manual encouraging being present in the moment. I followed her advice, took some time off work and read the book. Four weeks later, I left my job running Columbia Records in the UK.
I had been working flat out in the music business for 25 years and was suffering from acute work-related stress, coming close to physical collapse. And yet I was incapable of doing anything about it until my body intervened on my behalf. As the head of a record label, I hadn’t recognised the symptoms of exhaustion and mental ill health in myself, and yet I was responsible for the wellbeing of both my staff and the artists on the roster.
My story was not uncommon in the music industry at the time. Whilst shows such as The X Factor had a duty of care to the contestants and employed a psychiatrist to help anyone with potential problems, the pressures on anyone following a career on the front line of popular music can very easily become too much to bear. The business frequently turned a blind eye to mental illness. If the talent could turn up and deliver then it wasn’t a problem. Signing a record deal with a major label can feel like answered prayers. Everything an act has worked towards has brought them to this point and finally they can devote their lives to making music.
No matter how much you anticipate making it in the music business, however, nothing can prepare you for the impact of fame. As Blur’s bass player Alex James put it recently: “Success will fuck you up far more than failure.”
The demands on the time of a successful artist are huge, and they are often on the go from early morning until the middle of the night if they are performing live or working in the studio. As a creative professional, they also carry the burden of relying upon their talent – which has got them this far – to take them to the next level. Their every move is being publicly scrutinised and any private life has evaporated. It is no surprise, then, that musicians frequently resort to stimulants to help them through the day, brimming with confidence, only to need something else to help them go to sleep. It is a potent and sometimes deadly cocktail.
The worst part is that you are supposed to be living the dream and any suggestion that your life is anything less than perfect feels like letting people down. For too long, the music industry ignored the pressures of work for artists and those behind the scenes across the business.
By 2017, I was running a major music publishing company and had a much better understanding of mental health than I had five years earlier. I was shocked to discover that a substantial proportion of our songwriters were suffering with psychological problems which prevented them from working. The stress of being able to consistently deliver hit songs takes an enormous toll and many writers simply couldn’t find a way forward. From that point onwards, we made the decision to include in our songwriter contracts a provision to access professional mental health care. The staff at the company were taught about the importance of looking after their own wellbeing and they had access to full healthcare if it was needed. We formed close relationships with mental health charities such as Music Support.
The music business in 2024 is very different from the one I joined in the mid-eighties and it has made huge strides in the field of mental health over the past 10 years. All the major music companies have professionals on the payroll, working with their staff and their artists. Particular attention is paid to young artists at the beginning of their careers as well as to those that are exiting the company and facing an uncertain future. There is a clear understanding of the need for personal time and breaks in the schedule to rest and recuperate. The brutal schedules of the past have been moderated. I am optimistic for the future as the new generation of executives coming through have a much greater understanding of wellbeing than I did when I was younger.
As a result, the artists and musicians in their care are finding themselves in a much kinder and safer environment. But sadly, it seems it was all too late for Liam Payne.
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