Who will be my role model?

A lot of us working in music and the arts are feeling a little bit heartbroken today.?

On Tuesday night I got in outrageous amounts of pizza and hot dogs and stayed up til about 5.30am with a group of friends who'd all taken Weds off work expecting knife-edge results that might drag on for days. Things started out weirdly euphoric - I guess we were throwing ourselves into the last few hours of not-knowing. Then around 4am it all got very quiet. A couple of hours later most people slunk off in Ubers; the rest of us grabbed a few hours' broken sleep before reassembling in the living room to watch Trump's victory speech in that weird altered state that comes from knowing the world has changed while everything and everyone around you looks the same. Last night I have to admit I had a little cry.?

At about 2am on election night, before we knew which way things would go, I got a text from a mate who wouldn't call himself political, saying he knew this stuff meant a lot to me but he hoped I wouldn't go into too much of a dark place if it didn't go Harris's way. Ultimately it's not our country and doesn't really affect us, he said - he prefers to keep himself sane and peaceful by not engaging too much with the news cycle. All completely fair points and pretty much how I approached things before I caught the politics bug. I was going to leave it, but then he added "America's basically ****ed either way", which clearly broke me????. This morning I listened back cringingly to my 8-minute voice note reply, passionately preaching that apathy is the enemy of progress to the backdrop of my friends chanting along to the chorus of Call Me Al. Among a lot of obvious points around Trump's policies and their immediate impact - all of which (if we're honest) are unlikely to have much direct effect on us in the UK - I found myself really interrogating why the prospect of a Trump presidency disturbed me in such a deeply personal-feeling way? Funnily enough it was a line from that song which brought it home -

"Who will be my role model / Now that my role model is gone?"

It seems to me that the yearning for a role model is among the most fundamental of human needs. Perhaps the first thing we do as children is to identify who we trust, then imitate and absorb what we can from them as quickly and thoroughly as possible. I don't believe that impulse ever truly leaves us. Even as grown adults, it's hard (perhaps impossible) to clearly perceive our parents' fallibilities and flaws in the way an impassive observer easily could. Whether or not you believe in a God, the role of religious texts and preachers in shaping our moral framework is surely the main source of comfort and inspiration to a majority of people worldwide. At least til very recently there’s been a tendency to assume that leaders in all walks of life should double as role models. Throughout history, the qualities of pride balanced with dignity, power with self-restraint, strength with compassion have been among the highest terms of praise afforded first to monarchs, then to state leaders.?

The qualities we seek most strongly in our role models vary for each of us, though perhaps less so than we may think. I'd argue they don't only depend on the virtues we prize, but perhaps just as much on those we deep-down fear we lack. In Obama I personally saw not only eloquence, self-assurance, intelligence and humour but also - as a person who naturally inhabits the wings - a hugely charismatic public speaker who shines in the limelight. In Trump, many millions of white working-class American men in rust belt states who see themselves erased from and emasculated by the "woke" narrative, find a father figure they perceive as strong, righteously angry, and ready to fight their corner with a language and physicality they recognise as reassuringly masculine. That's another thing about role models, be it our parents, our Gods or our politicians... above all else we have to believe they care about us. That childlike need to be the centre of someone else's universe and at the forefront of their thoughts never entirely goes away.

Of course, our longing for this to be the case can be strong enough to blind us to any amount of evidence to the contrary. Our loyalty and devotion to our role models goes well beyond the ‘facts’ – if anything, like religious faith, it can be at its strongest and most zealous when most acutely tested. Detaching ourself from someone we passionately admire, and who we consider to care for us deeply, requires a conscious unpicking of many of the assumptions that make us who we are: for example, that we can intuitively tell good from evil; that devotion will be rewarded; that we actually matter in the world. Perhaps this explains how the MAGA movement is now so entrenched that, in Trump’s own words, he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters”. That statement is a perfect illustration of the untold damage that a ‘bad’ role model can do. When belief in any person or idea becomes so total that it can survive any amount of evidence of even its most obvious and manifest flaws, at that point the moral foundation of an entire society is at risk.

Trump is living proof of why character matters. Even if by some miracle, four years from now he has delivered on every election promise he made around the economy, illegal immigration, participation in foreign wars and so on, I truly believe that the invisible toxicity of this man’s words percolating through the global consciousness for four more years will do far greater damage both domestically and worldwide than all that ‘good’ combined. A generation of teens are growing up observing that with only charisma on your side, society will reward you for a lifetime of overt misogyny, racism, criminality, autocracy, narcissism, ignorance bordering on illiteracy, and complete disdain for truth, with the keys to the White House and the nuclear codes. The psychological impact not only his own citizens but on every one of us of this moral black hole engulfing the news cycle for another four years is hard to overstate. Those of us old enough to remember what dignified political debate looked like can at least find our tethers in the past, but for anyone currently defining what it means to be strong and successful, each seductively seditious soundbite that passes that man’s lips will become a part of their moral fabric. The sorrow that a lot of us are feeling today is existential in a way that goes far beyond policy, and universal in a way that extends far outside the US borders.

I’ve been skimming the landscape for role models these last few days, and for those of us somewhere Left of centre in the creative arts, it really can feel like they’re in short supply. I dread to think how we’ll all cope when David Attenborough dies! (Don't worry, he won't.) I'm not a massive Swiftie, but I totally get it - she talks intuitive sense to girls and women in a loving, inspiring way. If “every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,” she’s surely ours. Dolly Parton did and continues to do the same - if you want to see a masterclass in dignity, check her out in this interview with Barbara Walters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=If-oWqUYzlQ. It seems many of our most powerful voices are gravitating away from politics and towards either entertainment or journalism – understandably so given the degeneration of the political arena in the past decade. Politically speaking, on both sides of the Atlantic it’s a genuine struggle right now to identify figures with both the ethical framework to command admiration and the delivery to make those ethics heard.

In these dark times, I'm realising perhaps we need to start looking closer to home for our inspiration. What's lacking in too many of our leaders is fortunately in ready supply all around us in this industry.?It's a lot of pressure to put on one person, to imagine they could embody all the virtues we respect, but I don't think there's a single value I hold which isn't beautifully embodied by a good number of my colleagues and friends. Perhaps inspiration comes less as a portrait and more as a patchwork these days.?

Every day I’m surrounded by musicians who find the energy to get up and deliver the most powerful, joyful performances even when they’re sick or sad. On a show a couple of weeks ago, one of our singers found out a dear friend had passed away an hour before stage time; we told her we could cope without her, but she went out there regardless and absolutely smashed it, knowing she’d have time to grieve in coming days. Another wonderful singer explained to me how every instance of homophobia he meets, which as an openly gay man is sadly still routine, he meets with an equal amount of kindness and affection – it sounds impossible but I’ve seen him do it. I look at my friend Dave who’s adored Hans Zimmer since day dot, grafting every day to build a reputation as a bassist that’s earned him that coveted spot on his current world tour. I look at my five wonderful colleagues, Emily, Marie, Robyn, Chris and Tom, raising and educating happy children while still finding the energy and focus to achieve amazing things in their careers. I watch Chris lead a global team in the beautiful realisation of a vision he had more than a decade ago, which has already saved tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives, while still finding time to give his love and care to his music business every day. I talk to fellow music industry leaders on the phone every day – people who might once have been considered “the competition”, but (particularly since Covid) seem to have pulled together into a sort of mutually supportive organism, all keen to pass each other work, share tips and advice, and support each other through challenging times. This of all the industries out there seems to produce people with not so much reserves as veritable reservoirs of not only emotional resilience, determination and persistence, but also of hope and optimism, generosity and kindness, and true devotion to their art.

All these things are what I call strength.