{"id":1120430,"date":"2026-07-30T16:36:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1120430\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T16:36:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:36:18","slug":"backlines-hilary-gleason-on-supporting-musicians-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1120430\/","title":{"rendered":"Backline’s Hilary Gleason On Supporting Musicians’ Mental Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Chappell Roan accepted her best new artist trophy at the Grammy Awards in February 2025, she called on record labels<\/a> to cover healthcare costs for artists. \u201cWe got you, but do you got us?\u201d she questioned. A few days later, Hilary Gleason received a call from her longtime friend, Lisa Hess, who also happened to be Roan\u2019s business manager. The outspoken pop star wanted to make a sizable donation to Gleason\u2019s growing nonprofit, Backline, which she had helped establish in 2019 to support the mental health of artists and music industry professionals. On Super Bowl Sunday, Gleason\u2019s team built a fundraising page; soon after, Roan made a $25,000 donation<\/a>. (An added bonus: Gleason\u2019s Philadelphia Eagles took home the Lombardi Trophy.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was the single largest fundraising moment in Backline\u2019s history,\u201d says Gleason, 36. \u201cIt also really motivated corporations to give to Backline in a more serious way.\u201d AEG matched Roan\u2019s donation, as did artists including Noah Kahan, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli\u00a0xcx as part of a fundraising campaign aptly called \u201cWE GOT YOU!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tYet, part of Gleason was hesitant to accept Roan\u2019s charity. Backline was built to support access to mental healthcare specifically, and Roan was calling for access to healthcare more broadly. But, Gleason says, \u201cThey really were adamant that they wanted to go with us, because how can you advocate for yourself or sign up for insurance or do anything else if you don\u2019t have your mental health in check? That positioning of Backline and of mental health as a foundational piece toward being able to access any other benefits or rights was, I think, more of a turning point than the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGleason\u2019s professional journey began in global health and nonprofits, not the music business. As a high school senior in Durham, N.C., she helped build a training program in Uganda with a Duke University neurosurgeon, and she then pursued global and Africana studies and community health education at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her first music industry-\u00adadjacent role came in the mid-2010s on the global policy and advocacy team for action platform Global Citizen. Soon, she began consulting for touring artists, helping to pair them with resources through her own nonprofit, level (which she still runs, with clients including Femme House and that organization\u2019s co-founder, DJ-producer LP\u00a0Giobbi).<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, Gleason, a lover of bluegrass and jam music, became close with that community outside of work (her former partner was a member of Greensky Bluegrass). In October 2019, as it reeled from the deaths that summer of Yonder Mountain String Band\u2019s Jeff Austin and the musician Neal Casal, both from suicide, the call to action was too loud to ignore \u2014 and Gleason teamed with eight others, from psychotherapists to music agents, to launch Backline. Its first donor was promoter Peter Shapiro, who is particularly active in the jam space and contributed $10,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tBackline\u2019s first artist supporter quickly followed: the jamgrass star Billy Strings, who had met Gleason in 2015 when he was touring the country in a van playing well over 100 shows a year. \u201cThe schedule would just wreck me in so many ways,\u201d he says. \u201cIt took a toll on my physical and mental health. Trying to make it in this music business can be a challenging thing to navigate. It can be such an incredible demand on your body and mind. Some of our friends didn\u2019t survive. Hilary was right in the middle of all of that. She noticed the effect this business had on so many of her friends and she decided to do something about it. I know how important Backline is because I\u2019ve lived it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBilly needed no explanation,\u201d Gleason says. \u201cHe did a warehouse fire sale [in December 2019]: clear out all of their merch, all proceeds to Backline. All of a sudden, we had a bank account.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat the organization didn\u2019t have was a leader. \u201cI initially thought I was going to incubate Backline as part of my consulting firm and then we would find a great executive director,\u201d she says. \u201cThe board that I was building at the time was like, \u2018That\u2019s great, except for this board doesn\u2019t exist if it\u2019s not you.\u2019 They saw something in me that I didn\u2019t see in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGleason\u2019s background in global health prepared her for the high-pressure reality of directing a mental health organization. \u201cI\u2019ve been in the operating room with no power and people are doing brain surgery,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I feel like I have a good resistance to high stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the urgency of Backline\u2019s mission, Gleason tries to maintain perspective, which has helped its success. \u201cI see Backline as hippies taking care of each other,\u201d she says. \u201cThe evolution is we\u2019re allowed to do that now in the mainstream, with the major players.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKahan is one of those major players who has collaborated with Backline since 2023, when he launched his own mental health initiative, The Busyhead Project. He partners with Backline for pre-tour wellness workshops, including ahead of his current stadium outing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTaking care of your mental health shouldn\u2019t be something anyone has to navigate alone,\u201d Kahan says, adding that \u00adBackline \u201c[makes] it easier for people across the music community to find support when they need it most\u00a0\u2026 Our partnership is rooted in a shared belief that artists, crews and everyone within the music community deserve access to quality mental healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBackline\u2019s suite of services goes well beyond tour support. According to the organization\u2019s 2025 annual report, financial constraints are consistently cited as the most common barrier to mental healthcare in the music industry \u2014 so it has worked to provide financial aid for such services to those in need. In 2025, it provided individualized case management care plans to 740 people, a 30% increase from 2024. And through a Spotify partnership, Backline went global, launching the Global Resource Hub that offers services across 29 countries and in 23 languages.<\/p>\n

\n\tGleason stresses that Backline\u2019s support is very much choose your own adventure-style, with artist teams working with it to create customized programming \u2014 and ahead, its challenge is continuing to apply that outside of the touring landscape. \u201cThere\u2019s so much visibility now of how to do this,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m hoping that more and more people trust, utilize, spread the word about us \u2014 because the differences in my community have been astounding. There\u2019s life on the other side of these harder moments, and I get to see examples of that every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn June, Ariana Grande \u2014 whose current tour Backline is supporting \u2014 announced her Brighter Days Ahead Foundation to fund small organizations that support vulnerable communities; Backline is a grantee<\/a> of its Heal\u00a0& Dream Fund that aims to expand mental healthcare access. Grande\u2019s foundation has helped fund B-LINE<\/a>, Backline\u2019s 24\/7 mental health and crisis support line for music industry personnel and their families that Gleason was instrumental in launching in January. \u201cWe\u2019ve had over 400 people use the line since we launched,\u201d Gleason says, tearing up. \u201cI think about 400 people working in music that were having a bad day or a bad week or a bad month, and it really moves me that they know that they can call.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appears in the Aug. 1, 2026, issue of\u00a0Billboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Chappell Roan accepted her best new artist trophy at the Grammy Awards in February 2025, she called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1120431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4317],"tags":[305202,73746,73747,105,18753,218,305203,16,15],"class_list":["post-1120430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-40-under-40","tag-backline","tag-billboard-green","tag-health","tag-magazine","tag-mental-health","tag-power-lists","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117009906862500574","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1120431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}