Opinion
10 Oct 18

100 Voices: Jinx Lennon On Mental Health in Irish Music: #NowWereTalking

We invited a 100-strong chorus of artists, writers, musicians, broadcasters, sports stars and more to contribute to Now We’re Talking, a mental health campaign, run in partnership with Lyons Tea and Pieta House. Jinx Lennon shares his thoughts...

I think it's healthy to understand that there is a bit of madness in every human being. I think that's a good bulwark against going completely insane. I do not trust anyone who says they have complete sanity. Ireland has a Victorian attitude towards mentally disturbed people. God help you if you have severe mental problems in this country.

I'm interested in where creativity and mental illness meet. We live in a land where tablets get thrown at mental patients to no avail. I would encourage people to heal themselves and develop self-belief through lyric and song, and write and compose about how screwed up they feel. There are some truly demented sounding people in Irish music now and Irish music is better for it. I do not call these people insane, but they are prepared to loosen up a bit and let the raw feeling out.

Junior Brother channels the sound of a man about to lose his mind and because he is a brilliant guitar player, it balances it out and makes it into something life-affirming.

Post Punk Podge and the Technohippies - the sound of people getting the demons out of their souls never sounded as much fun.

Girl Band's last album is the contrast between a really hot band and a singer who sounds like he's working out his psychological disorders in front of you and it's very powerful.

Captain Moonlight, the Kilkenny rapper is another brave lyricist: his songs like 'OCD' from his second album give you a full picture of the disorder at hand.

Syd Barrett - the original Pink Floyd singer his songs are disturbing and beautiful too, and yet it's all too clear he was heading into a dark hole of no return. But we are richer by far for that. We need more of it.

There's still a sleveen mentality that seeps through all the arts in Ireland that needs to loosen up a bit and let the humanity out. "Everyone has a mental home inside their head," as my former stage partner Miss Paula Flynn once wisely said...

100 Voices was published in the Hot Press Mental Health Special in conjunction with Lyons Tea and Pieta House as part of the Now We're Talking Campaign. For more please visit hotpress.com/now-were-talking/