Chappell Roan made headlines at the Grammys by calling for record labels to provide their artists with a livable wage and health care. On Thursday, music biz insider Jeff Rabhan wrote an op-ed for The Hollywood Reporter saying that Chappell was “far too green and uninformed” to be calling for such a thing — and at least one artist is furious about it: Halsey.
Among other things, Rabhan wrote that Chappell’s speech was “a hackneyed and plagiarized script of an artist basking in industry love while broadcasting naïveté and taking aim at the very machine that got her there.” He also said she “lacked the nuance and industry awareness to build any consensus.”
On her Instagram Story, Halsey tagged The Hollywood Reporter and accused it of publishing an “absolute personal attack … disguised as critical journalism.” She described Rabhan’s column as a “ranting, seething tantrum loaded with assumptions and accusations,” and criticizes him for referring to Chappell, who spent 10 years trying to break through, as an “instant industry insider.”
Supporting Chappell’s suggestion, Halsey wrote, “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.”
Halsey also takes issue with Rabhan comparing Chappell negatively to artists like Taylor Swift, Prince and Tom Petty, who he describes as “real industry disruptors” who, in their own wars with their record labels, “took the hit to elevate everyone.”
“To compare the payoff of [Chappell’s] actions to an industry titan with the power and financial leverage 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 writes. “Shame on you. Boot licking behavior.”
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