Scott Hutchison Wanted You To Be Better

As the lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, Scott Hutchison sang about the unbearable tonnage of everyday life — its uncertainties and anxieties, the broken relationships, the endless grey that hung overhead. Yet unlike so many other musicians whose songs trade in these topics, Hutchison wasn’t seeking your pity, nor did he want you to drown with him in sorrow. Just the opposite. He wanted to be better. He wanted you to be better.

The band released their first full album, the seminal The Midnight Organ Fight, in 2008, just at the end of Emo’s crescendo. While Frightened Rabbit was never considered emo, in sound or in subject, they were, in a way, its evolution. Part of the reason why Emo’s golden days was so short lived was because its audience had grown up, but their music, with a few exceptions, hadn’t grown with them. What cradled them through adolescence couldn’t carry them through the nebulous period of early adulthood.

But Hutchison could. Here was a 26 year old who was going through everything they were, who was also struggling to get out of bed the next day, who also felt so damn alone, who was just as awkward in a crowd, and so damn uncertain. For over 10 years, Hutchison was just trying to figure it out, same as us, same as everyone else.

There was an optimism to his music, perhaps not one that led to outright victory, but at least a stalemate. I imagined Hutchison as a boxer, sitting bloody and bruised in his corner after his anxiety and depression battered him for another round. Yet, rather than reach for the white towel, Hutchison is smirking, always smirking, round after round, to the endless frustration of his opponent. He’d never win, but he’d never lose, either.

Which is what makes his death so devastating. Hutchison seemed like a realistic role model for those dealing with mental illness, who were always mere steps away from the edge. True victory over mental illness isn’t abolition, but management — finding a way to co-exist and keep the demons at bay. For a while, it seemed like Hutchison had managed to do just that.

He made small triumphs — putting on your pants when all you want to do is shrivel up and waste away in bed, mustering up the courage to talk to someone even though every cell in your body is telling you you’ll just make an ass of yourself — seem colossal, mainly because they were. He made them worth singing about, worth shouting at the top of his, and our, lungs.

There were jigs about broken relationships, anthemic choruses about longing for connection, defiant bridges about fighting depression and anxiety. Though mental illness was certainly at the forefront of a lot of his music, Hutchison wrote in such a way so both those who were similarly diagnosed and those who weren’t could relate to his songs. Long-time sufferers of panic attacks could find comfort in his music just as easily as someone who was simply dealing with a bad breakup.

Hutchison never lied to his listeners, he didn’t promise a way out, that it would get better, that it would get worse. What his music did was more worthwhile than any of that: he made it all right. There is a shame that comes with depression and anxiety, diagnosed or not, that gives birth to a reluctance talk about or, god forbid, show how someone is actually feeling. We’re adults now, dammit, and being sad or lonely or anxious or terrified is something adults Simply Don’t Do. That’s not true, and everyone knows that, but no one talks about it. Hutchison did. He made it OK to not be OK.

He was the arm around your shoulder as you buried your face in your hands, he held the glass that clinked yours at the bar after life’s latest curveball, he was the voice on the other end of the line on your first night in a new city, far away from all you knew.

The wry, clever wordplay he injected into the darkest of subjects showed there was still humor to find in even the worst situations. He didn’t have all the answers, but at least he’d been there before, or maybe was still there, and, through his music, could sit with you, tell you it’s okay, sometimes life is shit, but hey, we can still laugh about it, right?