From her mouth to the music industry’s ears.
Nearly one year after taking the music industry to task over its lack of support for artists — on the Grammys stage, no less — a new resource has launched to support those who are struggling with their mental health. On Tuesday, Backline Care, a nonprofit dedicated to musicians’ mental health, launched B-LINE (1-855-BLINE99), a hotline that offers artists counselors trained to assist music industry professionals, per The Hollywood Reporter. B-LINE also offers a text help line (254-639).
“This has always been the dream. We’ve supported thousands of music industry professionals in their mental health and wellness journeys, but one critical piece was missing: real-time access to care,” Backline founder and executive director Hilary Gleason said in a statement. “B-LINE changes that.”
A 2025 survey from MusiCares, an initiative from the Recording Academy, which awards the Grammys, found that rates of suicidal ideation among music industry professionals are more than double those of the general U.S. population.
Backline said that Roan’s 2025 Grammys speech, which she gave while accepting the award for best new artist, “helped set the stage” for the initiative. Following her Grammy win, Roan gave a $25,000 seed donation to a Backline initiative called We Got You! to support artists’ mental health. Brat singer Charli XCX and singer-songwriter Noah Kahan later matched her donation. A number of music industry big names, including Spotify and Live Nation, are sponsoring the initiative.
After winning best new artist at the 2025 Grammy ceremony, Roan specifically called for the music industry to support its artists by offering them health insurance. “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 and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists,” Roan said at the time.
She continued, “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 insurance. And if my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could’ve been provided care by a company I was giving everything to. So record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection.”
Roan has been open about her own struggles with mental health, as well, including a diagnosis of severe depression. As an artist she has also prioritized her mental and physical health; in 2024, she dropped out of New York’s All Things Go festival, citing health concerns.
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