Nadie knew this would be her last concert. But she was there. Octopus Hecha. Shivering, staggering and crying on stage at Kalemegdan Park in Belgrade, Serbia. Like a girl without protection. Among the 20,000 people who mistreated her. Nadie thought that maybe Amy Winehouse wasn’t able to go out and sing on June 18, 2011. And Nadie was impidió. The deep-voiced British singer spent a month alone in her bed, next to three bottles of vodka. He was 27 years old.
Since then, the music industry has changed. “Now there is a lot more protection for artists. You are not obliged to go on stage if you are not in the right conditions,” explains Domingo García, CEO of the representation agency Arriba los Corazones and ex-director of Universal Music. This executive has worked with singers such as Emilia, David Bisbal, J Balvin, Carlos Vives and Raphael, who accompanied the Christmas special of The Revuelta Last year, the day you had a stroke. “I brought up my brother and told (David) Broncano he had to stop because Raphael was giving inconsistent answers. We settled down,” he recalls.
Currently, the physical and mental health of artists has improved in the center due to increasingly frequent temporary withdrawals. The last, the Argentines Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso, whose success has soared over the past year and a half, who announced last week that they had decided to slow down to “rest and heal”; And also, in the world of entertainment, Andreu Buenafuente himself, who canceled his program, including the presentation of New Year’s campaigns on RTVE, brings a stressful episode. “I had a moment where I couldn’t, I was out of line and my body was saying, I have to stop, and that’s how far,” he explained.
Many things precede stress, pressure, fatigue or speed, which implies a more demanding profession than what can be seen at a glance. “This industry is just rats that burn the peña. That’s why there are so many singers who are barely in contact with psychologists and psychiatrists. From January they retire for a year… This was not the case before,” said singer Álvaro de Luna in an interview with EL PAÍS a few months ago.
I was anxious and exhausted, but stopping is a privilege that not all artists can afford economically.
Muerdo, singer-songwriter
Another of the last to launch a season was Rozalén, who joins names like Delaporte, Lola Indigo or Vetusta Morla. The Manchega singer-songwriter has announced an indefinite hiatus from her career to rest due to “emotional exhaustion.” Parones for those who also passed Quevedo, Pablo Alborán, Valeria Castro, Rigoberta Bandini or Dani Martín, and for those who managed this 2026 Mikel Izal or Dani Fernández, at the end of their tours.
What you don’t see in a “hostile” industry
“The music industry is not at all supportive of mental health, but we are raising our voices more and more in public,” explains Julia Medina (San Fernando, Cádiz, 31), finalist of Operación Triunfo 2018 and one of the candidates for this year’s Benidorm Fest. Artists usually talk about anxiety, depression and addictions, but what is behind these upheavals?
“When you finish your year, you enter the game of other things like being able to be on the Spotify lists, that the record company forces you to compete with comrades, that you have to do the ball on the radios for sonar… The way the industry is organized is cruel. Every day I think about what it would be like if I was a teacher, the career that I studied. Me Extraña que não abandon más gentes”, recognizes the singer.
An opinion shared by Diego Arroyo (Toledo, 36 years old), singer of the rock group Veintiuno. An architect by training, he also feels the need to stop. “The pressure of constant exposure to statistics, numbers and trends exists. Every artist notices it differently, and may even notice it, but there is no barrier to this pressure happening in the background and affecting him on a day-to-day basis,” he explains.
The question of whether you deserve the punishment is common among those who don’t top the hit lists on the platforms. Among those who do not fill the stadiums. Among those who have had a 20 or 30 year career, they must adapt to a new changing model that they have not yet fully understood. Between them, they developed their careers independently.
Communicating a temporary withdrawal sets a clear benchmark for the industry and the public, as a form of self-care. »
David Moya, communications director at Sonde3
This is the case of Muerdo, artistic name of Pascual Cantero (Murcia, 37 years old). At the end of November, I had to cancel the last three concerts of my tour. Your body and mind are saying “enough.” “I was anxious and tired. He was competing with several groups in Spain and Latin America with all that that implies logistically, but stopping is a privilege that not all artists can afford economically,” he explains.
Stop making big decisions like Julia Medina. He left Universal Music to gain more control over his career. “With each release, my only concern was that the song had a lot of numbers so as not to miss the record. Sometimes I would be sitting at a table and he would say to me: ‘Mira, this is the Spotify Top 50 list. We have to make this type of song.’ explain.
My only concern was that the song had good numbers so as not to be kicked out of the label. »
Julia Medina, singer
This pressure to build a sticky trend that goes viral on TikTok and catapults the song onto global hit charts makes many people doubt the meaning of their calling. “Leave a day where you don’t know if you play music because you love it or if you stop playing it. rankings», recognizes Álvaro de Luna. rankings which also raises eyebrows due to the lack of transparency and the existence of artificial threads through robots and automated accounts.
The pressure of social networks
Another of the prisons is the obligation to be omnipresent on social networks so that the algorithm does not result in sanctions or even visibility. “It reinforced the idea of the artist as a product for immediate consumption,” explains David Moya, communications director of Sonde3, an agency that organizes festivals like el Río Babel or el SanSan de Benicàssim. “Emergencies are particularly difficult and the desire for rapid results often leads to the pursuit of viral success.”
To avoid falling into the trap of tastesvisualizations and listening, Muerdo believes, you have to be “well grounded in what you want and be as a musician.” “My biggest pressure is the one that harms myself. The struggle for survival. The feeling that if you don’t do anything at all, the mouse doesn’t exist, but I’m not real. There is a follower base connected to me with more data,” he added.
The pressure to feed TikTok or Instagram generates a lot of stress, according to Domingo García. “Some people if they have five followers become depressed,” explains the executive. Also, according to musical psychologist Rosana Corbacho, they disconnect from their creativity. “I recommend not bringing a cell phone to the study. The networks are there and many lack real, physical connections.”
These dynamics impact artists with experience and success in the same way. This is how Nena Daconte, who retired to face her problems with addiction and depression, admitted in a charla with this periodical. “Numbers are valued more than art. If you don’t have a lot of followers, you won’t get hired at a record company and that’s very sad, especially for my generation. We’re not used to being measured in such a superficial way.”
A perception that the psychologist also noticed during her sessions. “I don’t understand why now I have to be a content creator and be so accessible. A patient told me that they demanded to publish photos of their vacation and that it was going badly because they needed a real rest. He recommended that we plan the moment and the time that we have to dedicate to the networks”, explains Corbacho.
“I don’t understand why they have to be content creators and be so accessible”
Rosana Corbacho, musical psychologist
Artists particularly suffer from harassment in the digital world. According to a UN study, women are 27 times more likely to be attacked online than men. Last October, Valeria Castro announced that she was resting after a wave of hatred in X which criticized her guest performance in Operación Triunfo. Generally speaking, a large majority of comments question his physical appearance.
Canadian Nelly Furtado also retired. He left the stages, tired of being called fat. “In consultation, I only had one male artist with a nutritional breakdown,” assures Rosana Corbacho. “The others were women. They thought that if they didn’t control their weight and their appearance, they wouldn’t go further in music. Sometimes they gave up on treatment and that, as a psychologist, is hard to see.”
Crusher and self-operation
The Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, Princess of Asturias Prize this year, explains that we are immersed in a society of fatigue based on income, he multitasking and self-exploitation. Something that leads to depression. “Here, self-exploitation is marked by the crusher that is the industry. We all suffer. And we assume, for example, that we have to release a song every month,” concludes Julia Medina.
New times also bring anxiety. Because discs have a very short lifespan. They are published, promoted and disappear. And everything is for you: actions, filming, collaborations with brands… “If you are a year before releasing songs, people think that they are sick or that they are going through something. And that was before it was normal. You have to get used to the public which is less full. Saturation is not positive for anything”, if you want Franchejo Blázquez, Dani Fernández’s manager.
If it’s a year without uploading songs, people think they’re sick.”
Franchejo Blázquez, manager of Dani Fernández
After new years of fun, being at the head of a festival cartel and publishing three albums and a documentary, Dani Fernández will also have a partner in 2026. “Announcing is a way of setting a clear milestone in front of the public and the industry itself,” concludes Moya, who has managed artists like Rayden, Travis Birds or La Pegatina. “A way to set boundaries and legitimize rest. There shouldn’t be a need to communicate, but, in this ecosystem, it’s just a form of self-care.”
Musicians “don’t retire,” said trumpeter Louis Armstrong, “stop when there’s no more music in them.” This is perhaps the main underlying reason. The need to pause for self-care, recovery, and connection with those surrounded by noise. So that the music comes back to them.
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