Raw Power. It’s the title of the 1973 third album by Iggy and the Stooges. And it describes Iggy Pop to a T. An extreme heroin addict, Iggy Pop is a punk icon. He was a punk even before there was something called “punk.”
Pop was notorious for reckless performance antics — indecent exposure, rolling around shirtless in broken glass (he always performs shirtless) — and vomiting on the audience. He invented the stage dive.
David Bowie attacks rock ’n’ roll as if it were performance art. A musical chameleon, Bowie is a glam-rock god. But he was out of control with drugs.
Halsey is a tough girl with a rebellious mystique. A rare commodity in this world of plastic music, she is a pop star who writes all her own material. Her debut album Badlands currently sits at number 16 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart. It peaked at number two. She’s accomplished all of this in the face of bipolar.
Whether it’s showing his support for same-sex marriage or talking candidly about his addiction, Macklemore is one of the most genuine rappers making hip-hop today. Macklemore’s 2012 Grammy-winning album with Ryan Lewis, The Heist, is chock full of references to his drinking days and the demons he fought while trying to get sober.
Fits of rage. Depression. Mania. Addiction. Angst. These are the essential ingredients of In Utero, an album that foreshadows bipolar genius Kurt Cobain’s suicide.
With all the fame and fortune comes great instability and hardship as with many who live in the world of celebrity. Until he got sober in 2008, Eminem had a problem with prescription drugs – particularly Vicodin, Valium, and Ambien. According to an interview with Rolling Stone, the pill-popping was intense. “In a day I could consume anywhere from 40 to 60 Valium. And Vicodin… maybe 20, 30? I don’t know. I was taking a lot of shit.”
“Every now and then I hear voices in my head, but not very clear,” Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson told the New York Times Magazine in 2004. “I can’t understand what they are saying. It’s a mental illness. I have been diagnosed as a manic depressive.”
Alcohol. Heroin. Cocaine. Crack Cocaine. Ecstasy. Ketamine. All of Amy Winehouse’s drugs of choice. They rendered her Lithium treatment for bipolar useless.
