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Two years ago Lauren Aquilina released her first and only album before calling it quits touring and releasing music due to the negative impact it had on her mental health. Since then Lauren has been writing songs with and for other artists, until recently. Last night Lauren released a single ‘Psycho’ (which is ace, go check it on Spotify here) On her live stream she answered the question “When will you be touring?” It was more an ‘if’ than ‘when’. Lauren explained that right now she couldn’t “mentally do it yet” and followed it up with “I’d love to be able to get to a point where I can tour again”. I LOVE the new track ‘Psycho’, I’ll definitely be shouting along to it in my car (I can’t sing, so shouting it is.) I just hope that the pressure of the music industry doesn’t get in the way of Lauren doing what she loves. She’s 23, and it took a lot of courage to stop recording and touring 2 years ago but hopefully now any record labels will not pile on the unhealthy pressure that led Lauren to that decision. In 2016 Lauren was under a lot of pressure to release her first album and wasn’t gaining traction from radio stations etc and when a huge amount of money is being spent on an album release questions are going to be asked. But that means artists aren’t then creating because of their love of it but because of the demands from those who are expecting too much. People often assume artists are confident and bulletproof because they continually put themselves out there and open. Except they are like everyone else, they have their own struggles, demons and uncertainties. The added pressures from the music industry, from labels, managers, press and sometimes fans just exacerbates the artist’s mental health. We need to support and encourage artists to do what is right for them. I photographed Lauren several times when she toured and played at festivals and hope some time in the future I can again.

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Justin Bieber has not been the best role model for young people in the past; he’s been accused of reckless driving, arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and had smoked marijuana, charged with vandalism, arrested and charged with assault and drink driving, had videos release of him using racist slurs. All of those either happened in 2014 or came out then. People seem to have forgotten all of this now because of his third album, Purpose. Which admittedly does have some catchy tunes that even I have found myself singing in the shower. Bieber even has a song called ‘Sorry’ all be it about an individual. In a video posted January 2015 Bieber said “I didn’t want to come off arrogant or conceited, or basically how I’ve been acting the past year, year and a half … although what’s happened in the past has happened, I just want to … be kind and loving and gentle and soft.” Should we be forgiving Bieber so quickly after all this? Yes. Should we forget? Not yet. He was and is still is a young lad trying to get to grips with being one of the most famous people in the world. Of course he was gonna do stupid things and probably still will mess up. When he messes up instead of just laughing at him and thinking he’s being ridiculous can we acknowledge he needs help and guidance?

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