On Wednesday (Oct . 22), 2025 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Ashley Gorley, and artists Madeline Edwards and Chase McDaniel spoke about the importance of caring for mental health, challenges and opportunities that non-performing songwriters face.
The chat was part of a day-long event, Hollywood & Mind, which focused on an array of topics at the intersection of music, the music industry and mental health. The event was held at intimate Nashville venue Anzie Blue. In conversation with Hollywood & Mind founder Cathy Applefeld Olson, Gorley spoke of the impact of the vulnerable ballad “I Am Not Okay,” which Gorley co-wrote with Taylor Phillips and Casey Brown. The song became a Billboard Country Airplay chart-topper and Billboard Hot 100 top 15 hit recorded by Jelly Roll and the lead single from Jelly Roll’s Billboard 200 chart-topping album Beautifully Broken.
“The artists are the ones taking that big initial gamble. I’m not a song I’m putting out to radio to represent myself, so it takes someone like [Jelly Roll] and like other artists,” Gorley said. “Right around COVID times, especially, I think everybody got real introspective…and there were a lot of heartbreak songs, a lot of vulnerable, honest, songs about what a mess we all are, and those started sticking. People were responding to that,” he says of the ballad’s focus on mental health.
Gorley recalled of writing “I Am Not Okay,” “It was an idea I had in my phone…I thought, ‘Hey, that could be a song and he would be the person, if he’s down to do it, to sing that… so credit to him on that. When you do a song like that, that heaviness of it and it’s a ballad and then you never know… for him to be like ‘I’m going to launch this album with this’…It’s not a ‘roll down our windows’ type of song.
“I got to see a couple of [Jelly Roll] shows,” he continues, “and the signs… the fact that people attached to that thought… and that it doesn’t solve any problems, like, ‘Hey, if you’re not okay, do this and you’ll be great.’ That was really important. Lucky for me, we got to be a part of that and write it with an artist that was not afraid for it to be his single.” Gorley also recently donated royalties from the success of “I Am Not Okay” to launch mental health initiatives benefiting songwriters.
He also related advice for songwriters when it comes to setting realistic goals in an industry where accolades are the hope of so many creators, saying he has advised songwriters to not set goals that they have no control over.
“That’s the theme of the past six months or so, and I need to hear that, too,” he explained. “I’ll hear a writer say, ‘All I want is a No. 1 [song] or a Grammy,’ or fill-in-the-blank of whatever it is, and check in and say, ‘Do I have any control over that at all?’ I’m always like, ‘Let’s write the best thing, and if everybody misses it, they missed out. If we think we crushed it, that’s what we can ride on and if you don’t get the whatever award, that’s out of your control. You gotta be careful to make something matter too much. The work matters and let’s do the best that we can in a room. Let’s give it all we got, but you kind of have to leave those results up to whatever they are. You can’t control what season something comes out, or what happens to a promo staff, or when Taylor Swift puts an album out…there are a lot of factors there that a song has nothing to do with that come into play. So that’s my warning shot as of late to a lot of writers.”
Gorley was then joined by singer-songwriters Madeline Edwards and Chase McDaniel — both of whom have addressed issues involving mental health in their music. Edwards’s most recent album, Fruit, delves into pain, loss, and reclaiming joy after losing a loved one to suicide. McDaniel’s debut album Lost Ones delves into his own story of growing up in a poor community in Kentucky, and dealing with mental health struggles, both personally and within his family — as well as McDaniel’s story of being saved during a past suicide attempt years ago.
“Music was always a part of me,” McDaniel said. “I didn’t know I was actively escaping from my reality. I think something about this life that we are so privileged to live is that my life has gotten astronomically better since I moved to Nashville and had the resources to find help. I think a lot of what I deal with now is the guilt of being lucky and the guilt of knowing that my family will not get to experience the things that I’ve experienced, unless it’s with me and through me. So It’s such a responsibility to me to take the second chance that I was given, that so many people don’t get, to write about it and put it into words the best I can and take pain and turn it into purpose.”
They also went deep into the process of deciding what parts of their individual stories to share within their music, in order to help others, while also being protective of their own stories.
“I wanted to write a grief record because there has been a lot of unexpected joy that has come from grief, and a lot of hope. It is processing what do I keep to myself, and what do I express in these rooms,” Edwards said. “Obviously, there are a lot of things you should keep to yourself and it’s not for others’ benefit, it’s really to protect these pieces of your family’s story. We have to promote our music and put our faces on TikTok all the time, so how do you sell music that’s really deep without bastardizing it? It’s a hard line, but I think if you use your intuition, you can be really protective and still share really deep and vulnerable things.”
McDaniel responded, “That was so beautifully put. There is a fine line between being honest and telling the truth, and in today’s world of music, you are so involved in the promotion, the marketing aspect of the music, what can I say and also know that I’m going to have to sell? There’s a sliminess to that, that feels wrong and you can feel guilty about it, so I ask myself, ‘Who is going to pay the consequences for my decision to sell this piece of truth that I have to get off my chest, that was really just for me?’… there are so many things that go with that. It’s a balancing act. What parts of my story am I willing to tell and hopefully help someone else?
“It’s a picking process, because the whole point of this is to help people and make them feel not so alone, but also in a way that doesn’t feel like a bumper sticker,” he continued. “When I was going through the deepest parts of my own struggle, I kept hearing, ‘You’re not alone,’ which is great, but what does that mean to someone who is struggling in a hell of addiction? You have to tell some deep parts of the story, or they are not going to get it…it’s taking parts of it that are true and specific, but realizing there might be consequences.”
Founded by journalist Cathy Applefeld Olson in 2022, Hollywood & Mind bills itself as “the entertainment industry’s mental health coalition for innovation.” In additional to an annual summit in Los Angeles and selected events in New York, with the Nashville conference Hollywood & Mind launches its On Location series, which will travel to various cities across the country. Across its franchises, Hollywood & Mind brings together stakeholders from the entertainment and mental health fields for conversations that establish best practices and solutions to bring about mental wellness.
In addition to Edwards, Gorley, and McDaniel, the daylong event, held at Anzie Blue, included singer-songwriters Ashley McBryde, Gayle, Maggie Rose, Sam Williams, Stella Prince, and Summer Joy. Among the executives taking part were BMG/BBR’s Katie Kerkhover, FEMco’s Leslie Fram, The Core Entertainment’s Kevin “Chief” Zaruk, Q Prime South’s John Peets, Warner Chappell Nashville’s Austen Adams, Belmont University’s Brittany Schaffer, YouTube’s Margaret Hart, Warner Music Nashville’s Mike Dupree, former Onsite executive Debbie Carroll, Porter’s Call’s Beth Barcus and NAMI Tennessee’s Katrina Gay.
