Guide
Lola Young Fainting
Young’s collapse matters because it’s not an isolated incident. It’s the visible manifestation of an industry structure that has fundamentally broken since streaming disrupted traditional revenue models. With artists earning an average of $0.0038 per stream and 82% making less than $270 annually from streaming platforms, touring has become the only viable income source. Yet post pandemic touring itself has become economically and physically unsustainable, with costs skyrocketing while mental health support remains fragmented and voluntary.
Young had just released her third album, entered rehab for cocaine addiction earlier in the year, and was juggling a brutal schedule while managing diagnosed schizoaffective disorder and ADHD. Her story illuminates why September 2022 saw a wave of British Mercury Prize artists (Sam Fender, Arlo Parks, Wet Leg) simultaneously cancel tours citing burnout, and why the music industry now has suicide rates three times higher than the general population for artists under 40.
The incident: “I’m going to faint” (Lola Young Fainting)
At Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on a Saturday afternoon, Lola Young had successfully performed four songs from her new album I’m Only Fucking Myself which included “Spiders,” “Fuck Everyone,” “Dealer,” and “Walk All Over You.” Before her fifth song, the 2023 single “Conceited,” she addressed the crowd about having “a tricky couple of days” and explained she’d woken up and “made the decision to come here” rather than “wallow in my sadness.” The crowd cheered her on.
But during “Conceited,” she appeared visibly flushed and emotional. She paused mid song to communicate with her keyboardist, looked offstage, and appeared to mouth “I’m gonna faint.” Moments later, she stumbled backward and collapsed. She was down for approximately 30 to 45 seconds before her band, team, and security surrounded her and carried her offstage. The audience went silent, then erupted in supportive applause.
Fellow performers immediately stepped in to reassure the shocked crowd. Remi Wolf, who performed next, told the audience: “That was really fucking scary. My friend Lola is backstage, and she is okay.” Later, Doechii closed out the festival by leading the crowd in chanting “We love you, Lola!” The incident came one day after Young had canceled her September 26 performance at Audacy’s We Can Survive concert in New Jersey, with her manager citing “a sensitive matter” and noting there are “very occasionally days where myself and my team have to take protective measures to keep her safe.”
Hours after collapsing, Young posted to Instagram: “Hi, for anyone who saw my set at All Things Go today, I am doing OK now. Thank you for all of your support, Lola xxx.” The next day, she canceled her scheduled Washington D.C. performance with a longer message: “I love this job and I never take my commitments and audience for granted so I’m sorry to those who will be disappointed by this. I hope you’ll all give me another chance in the future. Thank you to all those who listen and care. To all the people that love to be mean online, pls give me a day off.”
A young artist navigating impossible pressures (Lola Young Fainting)
Lola Emily Mary Young represents the modern emerging artist archetype: immensely talented, brutally honest about mental health, experiencing viral success, and struggling to survive the industry machinery that success activates. Born January 4, 2001, in South London to a Jamaican Chinese bass player father and English mother, she began piano and singing lessons at age 6 and attended the prestigious BRIT School (alumni include Adele and Amy Winehouse). She won the Open Mic UK competition at 15, signed to Island Records at 18 in 2019, and began releasing music while managed by Nick Shymansky (Amy Winehouse’s former manager) and Nick Huggett, who first signed Adele.
Her career trajectory accelerated dramatically in 2024 when “Messy” went viral on TikTok, becoming her first charting song. The track topped the UK Singles Chart for four consecutive weeks, reached number 1 in Australia, Ireland, and Belgium, and by April 2025 became the biggest streaming single from a British artist globally. She was the youngest British female solo artist with a UK number 1 since Dua Lipa’s “New Rules” in 2017. The song’s music video has over 112 million YouTube views. In May 2025, she won the Ivor Novello Award for Rising Star, was nominated for a Brit Award for Best Pop Act, and was featured on Tyler, the Creator’s “Like Him” from Chromakopia.
But this success came with brutal personal costs. Young has been remarkably open about her mental health struggles, a transparency that makes her both a role model and a cautionary tale. At age 17, she was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which combines symptoms of schizophrenia and mood disorders. She experiences what she calls “crazy fucking highs and immense lows” and takes medication for symptoms. In 2022, she told The Telegraph: “I try to see it as a superpower.” In May 2025, she revealed a recent ADHD diagnosis and how starting medication (Concerta) “genuinely changed my life.”
Most significantly, Young entered rehab in 2025 during the peak of “Messy’s” success for cocaine addiction, something she’d struggled with “for a long time.” In a September 2025 Guardian interview, just eight days before her collapse, she said: “It’s been a struggle. I’ve definitely had to work on some internal healing while grappling with touring and stuff. I’ve had to be away for a bit while battling with things. But it teaches you a lot, being addicted to substances.”
She expressed gratitude for access to treatment that “a lot of people don’t have the privilege of being able to do” and noted she’s grateful to be in music during a time when “mental health wasn’t a conversation, addiction wasn’t a public conversation” unlike during Amy Winehouse’s era.
Young also deals with recurring vocal cord cysts that have caused show cancellations and ongoing vocal challenges. Earlier in 2025, at her Coachella debut in April, she experienced severe nausea throughout her set in 40°C heat, gagging and briefly leaving the stage to ask for a bucket before returning to finish the performance. She later posted videos acknowledging the incident with humor but revealing the physical toll of performance anxiety combined with extreme conditions.
Her 2025 schedule was relentless: album release on September 19, festival appearances, opening for Billie Eilish on the Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour, headlining her own “I’m Only Fucking Myself Tour,” plus promotional appearances including The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in January and performances at Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, and multiple Coachella weekends.
An industry that runs on fumes and hope (Lola Young Fainting)
Lola Young’s collapse illuminates a fundamental economic crisis in modern music. The streaming revolution promised democratization but delivered exploitation at scale. Spotify pays an average of $0.0038 per stream—meaning an artist needs 229 streams to earn $1. Major labels receive 46% of streaming subscription revenue while only 7% ultimately reaches artists. A 2019 study found that 82% of artists on streaming platforms earn less than $270 per year, and only 0.4% of artists earn enough from streaming alone to make a living.
This economic reality forces artists to tour as their primary income source. Yet touring itself has become increasingly unsustainable. Post pandemic, U.S. artist visa fees quadrupled from $460 to $1,615 per musician in 2024. Inflation has affected transportation, accommodation, and venue costs. Gas prices increased sixfold in some areas. Tour buses became more expensive. The COVID 19 pandemic created a calendar backlog with everyone touring simultaneously, creating venue shortages and market oversaturation. Even Coachella took nearly a month to sell out in 2024, a festival that previously sold out in hours, and over half of attendees used payment plans.
Chartmetric analysis found that mid level touring artists decreased from 19% to 12% between 2022 to 2024, and even superstars dropped from 44% to 36%. The “middle class” of musicians is disappearing. In 2022, major artists including Jennifer Lopez, The Black Keys, and Lauryn Hill & Fugees canceled tours due to low ticket sales. Independent artist Santigold canceled her entire Holified Tour in 2022, explaining in a detailed post that everyone else makes money on tours (managers, crew, agents take their cuts off the top) but “if there’s nothing left, we get nothing.”
She experienced vertigo, chronic fatigue, and chest pains before deciding that as a mother of three, she couldn’t justify leaving her children for weeks with no financial return.
The mental health toll is staggering. A 2019 Record Union study of nearly 1,500 musicians found that 73% of independent musicians suffer mental illness symptoms—rising to 80% for ages 18-25. A UK study of 2,200+ professional musicians found 68% experience depression and 71% suffer anxiety and panic attacks. The Tour Health Research Initiative found “elevated levels of suicidality, risk for clinical depression, stress, anxiety and burnout” among touring professionals. Research shows that pop musicians have an average lifespan 25 years shorter than the general population, with suicide rates three times higher than average, especially before age 40.
Tamsin Embleton, founder of the Music Industry Therapist Collective and author of “Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual,” explains the physiological mechanism: “Performing is often thought of as eustress, so good stress; you get a lot from it and it feels restorative in some ways. But it’s very draining and the cortisol levels can be really high… On tour you might have another show, so your baseline stress level’s already elevated when you wake up; essentially that’s how stress accumulates.” She notes: “It’s really hard for mid-level artists to break even, so they’re going to cram as much as they can in.”
The industry operates with no standardized rest periods, no duty of care requirements, and no systematic mental health support. Artists are independent contractors without health insurance, sick days, or vacation days. Economic pressure overrides wellbeing considerations. As music manager Anneliese Harmon put it: “The real problem, when it comes down to it, is financial pressure.”
September 2022: When Britain’s rising stars said “stop” (Lola Young Fainting)
Lola Young’s collapse echoes a remarkable moment in recent music history when three British Mercury Prize-connected artists simultaneously canceled tours within days of each other in September 2022, citing burnout and mental health crises. The synchronicity was impossible to ignore.
Sam Fender, the Mercury Prize-nominated singer behind “Seventeen Going Under,” canceled his US headline shows, a Florence and the Machine support slot, and Life is Beautiful Festival appearance. His statement was direct: “It seems completely hypocritical of me to advocate discussion on mental health and write songs about it, if I don’t take the time to look after my own mental health. I’ve neglected myself for over a year now and haven’t dealt with things that have deeply affected me.”
Days later, Arlo Parks—just 22 years old, a Mercury Prize and Brit Award winner for her debut album “Collapsed in Sunbeams”—canceled multiple US tour dates. She wrote: “I’ve been on the road on and off for the last 18 months, filling every spare second in between and working myself to the bone. The people around me started to get worried but I was anxious to deliver and afraid to disappoint my fans and myself. I pushed myself unhealthily, further and harder than I should’ve.” She described her mental health as having “deteriorated to a debilitating place” and called herself “broken.”
She had been opening for Harry Styles and Billie Eilish while experiencing exponential growth since her 2019 debut.
Within the same week, Wet Leg, Mercury Prize nominees and breakout British duo, canceled shows in New Mexico and Denver. Their statement noted: “Truth is that it all got a bit on top of us and we just couldn’t quite manage to get back on that plane. It’s been an amazing year playing our music all over the world but our busy touring schedule finally got the better of us this time.” They added: “Our mental and physical health are such easy things to overlook when everything is so exciting and so busy, you barely have a moment to check in with yourself.”
This wasn’t coincidence. It was a cohort of young artists hitting the same wall at the same time, each discovering independently that the industry’s demands were unsustainable. The post pandemic “revenge touring” environment, where everyone tried to make up for lost time and income simultaneously, created a perfect storm. Artists found themselves in an oversaturated market where venue availability issues led to inefficient routing, costs had skyrocketed, and financial pressure forced them to pack schedules without adequate rest.
Other artists have experienced even more dramatic health crises onstage. In August 2024, 16-year-old K-pop idol Kotoko from UNIS fainted during a performance at South Korea’s Midsummer Night’s Cultural Festival, immediately raising concerns about young artists being “pushed to exhaustion” by their companies. In August 2024, Fatman Scoop collapsed during a Connecticut concert and died, highlighting the potentially fatal stakes. In 2022, Chappell Roan canceled All Things Go festival appearances (the same festival where Young later collapsed) after being diagnosed with severe depression, despite being in therapy twice a week during her Midwest Princess Tour. She was previously diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder at age 22.
Earlier cases include Joe Perry of Aerosmith collapsing backstage during a Hollywood Vampires show in 2016 after not eating for two days while doing 8 shows in 9 days with 25 to 30 song sets. Corey Taylor of Slipknot fainted immediately after the final note at a Dallas show in 2012 after performing for 90 minutes wearing a mask and jumpsuit surrounded by fire. The patterns are consistent: inadequate nutrition, dehydration, exhaustion, heat exposure, insufficient rest, and relentless schedules.
Awareness without action: The industry’s inadequate response (Lola Young Fainting)
The music industry has developed significant awareness of its mental health crisis, particularly after the 2017 deaths of Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell by suicide shocked the community. This catalyzed the creation and expansion of multiple mental health organizations. Backline connects music industry professionals with mental health providers through case management and saw submissions quadruple during COVID 19. MusiCares, the Recording Academy’s charity, expanded its mental health services significantly and is launching “Headlining Mental Health: A Tour Study” in partnership with Amber Health in April 2025 to study mental health risk factors during tours with over 50 individuals.
Amber Health, founded in 2020, provides therapy, crisis support, and on-tour care with a global network of providers and has been backed by major artists including Ed Sheeran, who brought them on his global tour. In the UK, Music Support runs a helpline and email service staffed by people with lived music industry experience, offering support for addiction and mental health. Music Minds Matter (Help Musicians) provides free 24/7 mental health support and has seen a 200% increase in people seeking support over the past two years. Live Nation funded the Tour Support nonprofit in 2019, providing 24/7 therapist access for everyone on a tour.
The Music Industry Therapist Collective, founded by former booking agent turned psychotherapist Tamsin Embleton, published a comprehensive 640-page guide “Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual” in 2023 and provides seminars for music companies. These organizations represent genuine progress and fill critical gaps.
Yet this patchwork of support services treats symptoms without addressing root causes. The fundamental economic structures haven’t changed. Streaming payment models remain exploitative despite artists’ advocacy. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers pushed for “user centric” payment models, but streaming services resist. The UK Parliament’s “Brennan Bill” proposing equitable remuneration for streaming failed due to major label opposition, despite artist and parliamentary support. Labels continue receiving 46% of streaming revenue while artists get 7%.
There are no industry wide standards for tour schedules, mandatory rest periods, or duty of care requirements. Each tour operates independently with widely varying conditions. Economic pressures continue overriding wellbeing considerations. 84% of musicians seeking help prefer industry experienced support, yet such therapists remain limited. Worse, insurance companies have begun screening artists’ public mental health disclosures and may limit coverage or increase premiums, creating a perverse incentive against the transparency that experts say is crucial for recovery.
The paradox is stark: A 2022 academic study in Music and Wellbeing vs. Musicians’ Wellbeing found that music making positively impacts wellbeing for amateur musicians, but professional music career building is detrimental to emotional wellbeing and mental health. The “unique characteristics of building a career as a professional musician” create distinct harm. The industry simultaneously benefits financially from artist output (multi billion dollar streaming platforms, rejuvenated labels) while failing to provide sustainable compensation to most creators and lacking systematic protections for artist health.
Joe Hastings of Music Minds Matter notes that “common contributing factors include poor working conditions, lack of recognition and unstable working patterns.” George Levers of Music Support describes the post-pandemic shift: “When COVID happened the music industry was decimated… when the music industry opened its doors again, it went from famine to feast,” leaving workers “utterly exhausted and overwhelmed.” Anneliese Harmon of the Music Managers Forum emphasizes: “The real problem, when it comes down to it, is financial pressure. If the artist is broke, the manager gets 20% of broke. The manager cannot protect an artist if they are not taken care of.”
What happens next: The collision of transparency and career survival (Lola Young Fainting)
Media coverage of Young’s collapse was overwhelmingly sympathetic, with mainstream outlets like Billboard, NBC News, ABC News, and E! News emphasizing concern for her safety and providing context about her mental health struggles. The majority of fans flooded her social media with supportive messages. Yet the video’s viral spread—25 million views on Twitter alone—raised implicit questions about privacy, consent, and the ethics of filming medical emergencies.
Young’s direct address to online critics (“To all the people that love to be mean online, pls give me a day off”) sparked discussions about the harassment artists face. Some social media users had accused her of being “unprepared for live performances” or “using the moment to draw attention,” though these represented a minority view. Her plea highlighted a cruel irony: artists are encouraged to be authentic and open about mental health, which Young has been courageously, yet this transparency can be weaponized against them both by online critics and, more insidiously, by insurance companies assessing tour coverage.
Young faces a particularly complex situation. She has been exceptionally candid about her schizoaffective disorder, ADHD, and cocaine addiction—using her platform to destigmatize these issues. Her third album I’m Only Fucking Myself, released just eight days before the collapse, directly addresses her battles with addiction. This openness has made her a role model for Gen Z audiences who value authenticity. Yet this same transparency may affect her ability to secure tour insurance going forward and has made her vulnerable to online criticism.
Her manager Nick Shymansky’s experience with Amy Winehouse adds another layer of complexity and concern. His statement that there are “very occasionally days where myself and my team have to take protective measures to keep her safe” suggests active crisis management. Yet questions arise about whether one more show should have been added to her schedule so soon after canceling for mental health reasons the previous day. One social media user captured this tension: “Yesterday Singer Lola Young’s manager posted a message that Lola had to pull one performance due to her mental health and today she was back on stage and collapsed. This music industry really pushes artists over the edge.”
Notably, neither All Things Go festival organizers nor Forest Hills Stadium issued any public statements about the incident, despite media outlets reaching out for comment. This silence reflects the industry’s discomfort with these situations and lack of established protocols for responding to artist health crises at events.
Young’s career trajectory now faces uncertainty. She remains scheduled to perform at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in December 2025, though her status is unclear. She’s meant to continue opening for Billie Eilish and headlining her own tour dates. The incident occurred at a critical moment—the immediate aftermath of a major album release that typically demands intensive promotion. The economic pressure to continue is immense; stepping back could mean losing momentum, disappointing a label that reportedly signed her to a £10 million publishing deal, and missing opportunities to capitalize on “Messy’s” global success.
Yet continuing without adequate recovery and systemic support risks more serious consequences. Her openness about addiction is particularly significant given the music industry’s well documented pattern of substances being normalized as coping mechanisms. A Record Union study found that among independent musicians experiencing negative emotions, 50% self medicated as treatment. The industry, as one expert noted, has “excess built in” to manage elevated stress states, creating perfect conditions for addiction. study found that among independent musicians experiencing negative emotions, 50% self-medicated as treatment. The industry, as one expert noted, has “excess built in” to manage elevated stress states, creating perfect conditions for addiction.
Conclusion: A system that devours its young (Lola Young Fainting)
Lola Young’s collapse at All Things Go wasn’t a random medical event—it was the predictable outcome of an industry structure that has become fundamentally extractive and unsustainable. The streaming revolution promised to democratize music but instead created a system where 82% of artists earn less than $270 annually from their recordings, 73% of independent musicians suffer mental health issues, and suicide rates are three times higher than the general population. Artists are forced to tour to survive, but touring economics have collapsed post-pandemic while schedules remain relentless. Mental health support exists but remains fragmented, voluntary, and inadequate to address systemic problems.
What makes Young’s case particularly instructive is her radical transparency. She has been remarkably open about schizoaffective disorder, ADHD, and cocaine addiction—using her platform to destigmatize issues that many artists hide. Yet this same honesty creates vulnerabilities: online criticism, insurance complications, and public scrutiny of every health crisis. She represents a generation of artists trying to navigate career success while maintaining mental health, discovering that the industry offers awareness and resource lists but not structural change.
The September 2022 wave of British artists simultaneously canceling tours (Sam Fender, Arlo Parks, Wet Leg) and the pattern of young artists collapsing onstage (Kotoko at 16, Young at 24) reveals that this isn’t about individual resilience—it’s about a broken system. Research consistently shows that while music-making benefits wellbeing for amateurs, professional music careers are detrimental to mental health specifically because of industry demands. The economic structures haven’t changed: streaming still pays nothing, labels still take 46% while artists get 7%, touring costs have skyrocketed, and there are no standardized protections for artist wellbeing.
Organizations like Backline, MusiCares, Music Support, and Music Minds Matter provide crucial lifelines and deserve support. Research initiatives like the MusiCares/Amber Health touring study launching in 2025 may provide valuable data. But until the industry addresses root causes—exploitative streaming economics, unsustainable touring schedules, lack of duty of care standards, absence of mandatory rest periods—these remain band-aids on a hemorrhaging wound.
Young told her audience before collapsing: “Sometimes life can throw you lemons and you just gotta motherfucking make lemonade.” But what happens when the industry keeps throwing lemons faster than anyone can process them, when making lemonade requires superhuman resilience just to break even, and when 73% of people trying to make that lemonade develop mental illness in the process? The music industry is learning, slowly, to have conversations about mental health. The harder question is whether it will actually restructure itself to stop creating the crisis in the first place.
Sources For Lola Young Fainting
- E! News: Lola Young Speaks Out After Collapsing Onstage at All Things Go Music Festival https://www.eonline.com/news/1423109/lola-young-speaks-out-after-fainting-onstage
- TODAY.com: Singer Lola Young Gives Fans Health Update After Collapsing on Stage at Music Festival https://www.today.com/popculture/music/lola-young-health-update-after-collapse-on-stage-rcna234200
- NBC News: British pop star Lola Young cancels D.C. show after collapsing onstage in New York City https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/british-pop-star-lola-young-cancels-dc-show-collapsing-onstage-new-yor-rcna234433
- Billboard: Lola Young Collapses Onstage at All Things Go Festival in New York https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/lola-young-collapses-onstage-nyc-concert-all-things-go-1236077195/
- The Tab: ‘Pls give me a day off’: Lola Young issues health update after fainting mid-song in now-viral clip https://thetab.com/2025/09/29/pls-give-me-a-day-off-lola-young-issues-health-update-after-fainting-mid-song-in-now-viral-clip
- Wikipedia: Lola Young (singer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Young_(singer)
- Rolling Stone: Santigold on Canceling Tour, Mental Health and Burnout in the Music Industry https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/santigold-mental-health-touring-music-industry-1234612985/
- Chartmetric: Why Some Artists Are Rethinking Touring https://hmc.chartmetric.com/why-artists-arent-touring-2025/
- Clash Magazine: The Music Industry’s Growing Mental Health Crisis https://www.clashmusic.com/features/the-music-industrys-growing-mental-health-crisis/
- Music Musings & Such: When All Is Said and Done: The Burnout and Exhaustion of Touring https://www.musicmusingsandsuch.com/musicmusingsandsuch/2022/9/18/feature-when-all-is-said-and-done-the-burnout-and-exhaustion-of-touring
- The Forty-Five: How do we break the cycle of artist burnout? https://thefortyfive.com/opinion/how-do-we-break-the-cycle-of-artist-burnout/
- Marketplace: Musicians struggle with costs of concerts and tours https://www.marketplace.org/story/2022/10/28/live-shows-are-back-but-the-economics-behind-them-arent-great
- Berklee Online: The Music Industry is Having a Mental Health Crisis https://online.berklee.edu/takenote/the-music-industry-is-having-a-mental-health-crisis/
- SPIN: Stress, Boredom, Burnout: The Impact of Touring on Mental Health https://www.spin.com/2023/05/stress-boredom-burnout-the-impact-of-touring-on-mental-health/
- OnLabor: Streaming Services Are the Future of the Music Industry. But They’re Leaving Musicians Behind. https://onlabor.org/streaming-services-are-the-future-of-the-music-industry-but-theyre-leaving-musicians-behind/
- Spotify for Artists: A Psychologist’s Take on Mental Health for Musicians https://artists.spotify.com/en/blog/a-psychologists-take-on-mental-health-for-musicians
- Backline: Mental Health And Wellness Resources For The Music Industry https://backline.care/
- Billboard: A Guide to Mental Health Resources for Music Professionals https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/mental-health-resources-music-industry-guide-9568086/
He discovered the gem when he was 12 years old and still has it now, claiming it to be why he fell in love with music. He likes to play disc golf when he's not writing about music. He is a one-of-a-kind individual who is always the first to bust out his air guitar on the dance-floor.
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