Antony Szmierek: Creativity feels magic to me, something powerful and frightening to the people who need to be frightened

The rapidly rising Manchester-based musician on sensitivity, censorship and why power always fears the arts.

I’ve always been an emotional person, but this year my emotions have been right at the surface. All my dreams have come true this year. It’s been super overwhelming, but that sensitivity is also what makes me who I am. It’s why I can engage with the issues that matter to me. Being an artist is a strange curse – the people that do it well are the people that do it honestly and that are really sensitive. But artists are also the ones who take it all to heart. 

I never planned any of this. I didn’t train to be a musician, didn’t go to university to do this. I was a mainstream high school English teacher for six years, and then spent three years in an arts college for students with special educational needs; some of them as old as 25 or 26. 

As a teacher, you’re basically the empathy of the school. At the end of each day I had a queue of waifs and strays waiting to talk about boyfriends leaving them or friends falling out. In many ways, the job I do now is the same job in a different form. It’s really funny how many parallels there are between the two worlds – creativity, care, and emotional labour sit at the centre of both worlds.

When my music career started taking off, I struggled with the feeling that it was selfish. Eventually I got past that, because in a strange way it still feels like teaching. The first record was almost called Sincerity Overdrive. It would have been too on the nose, but that really is the mission statement. I’ve reached the end of the year emotionally exhausted, but that’s by design. 

You don’t necessarily want to shout every cause into the air at once – Palestine, trans rights, the planet – because it dilutes the message.

This year I watched artists I admire fight for things. I watched them break down, I watched them try to keep going. There were some incredibly hard moments. This summer there was a lot of censorship, particularly at one of the festivals. The Mary Wallopers walked on with a Palestine flag and the organisers pulled their set, then lied about it in a statement. That’s the post-truth era we’re living in. Friends were playing there the next day and it upset everyone. We were there to make music and talk about the things that matter to us. Seeing that happen was heartbreaking, and bringing people round afterwards was hard because everyone was exhausted.

As the year went on, it became impossible to keep everything out of the show. It was supposed to be an hour of hope, an hour to shake off the horrors of the world and give ourselves a break. It still was, but when so many crises were – are – happening at the same time, I was really worried about conflating them all. You don’t necessarily want to shout every cause into the air at once – Palestine, trans rights, the planet – because it dilutes the message. There’s also the fear of virtue signalling: how many flags do you put on stage? Who said what first or who’s doing more? None of that brings people together. It just divides the left while the right gets on with doing harm. We’ve seen so much infighting this year. None of it helps.

But despite all of that, the artists I met this year were incredibly supportive of one another. I’d feared the opposite. Most of the problems in this industry come from the people who hang around the edges, not the artists themselves.

Music especially terrifies governments because it’s something people can rally behind.

There are so many wrongs happening at the same time that sometimes I genuinely don’t know which one to speak about without letting others down. One thing that makes me angry is the removal of music and arts from state schools. It frightens me. It feels like a deliberate nullification of the working classes, and that terrifies me. Creativity is powerful. Music especially terrifies governments because it’s something people can rally behind. You saw that this year with Kneecap being dragged into court. The government was scared because ordinary people suddenly had a mantra and a banner to stand behind. It was eye-opening to see that fear so clearly.

That fear also plays out in everyday life. I really miss being able to talk to working-class men and have a normal conversation. At the moment, and I say this as a working-class man, within ten minutes many conversations veer straight into racist or xenophobic territory. It’s not their fault. They’ve been convinced everything has gone wrong and told who to blame. It’s a distraction. Look over here so you don’t blame the government. Everyone has been skint for two decades. Divide and conquer has always been the playbook. It happened before the big wars, and it’s happening again. The complacency around art, and the decision to remove creativity from education, feels like part of that same playbook.

Representation in music weighs also heavily on me. There’s such a profound lack of female headliners. Recently four or five festival line-ups were announced and they were just the same recycled list of male acts. It’s exhausting. And the thing is, the best musicians I know are women or female-identifying people. They just are, so it really pisses me off. As a man, I find it embarrassing. I was raised by my mum. This is clearly a matriarchal society. Women bear children and do all these incredible things; they’re the people we should be looking to. And yet, a long time ago, someone stood up and convinced society that men should be in charge. We’ve been playing out the consequences ever since. Men are often clueless, emotional, messy – all the traits the world pretends belong only to women. It’s ridiculous.

And on top of all of that, we’ve all spent the year watching a genocide unfold: the horror of that, the weight of it, the way it sat on everyone’s shoulders every day. People are still fighting for justice. It’s been a horrible storm to live through. On my worst days I sit in my flat thinking, What are you doing? This is pointless. You’re not a paramedic. You’re not saving anyone. But on better days, I remember that art matters. Music matters. You can be a voice for people who don’t think they have a voice. And I hope I’m doing that. I hope I’m doing some good without really noticing.

Coming into all of this from a working-class background, without knowing anything about the music world, gives me a strange kind of power. If some kid who feels like an outsider sees me and thinks, Maybe I could do that too, then maybe they’ll go on to make real change. That idea of playing it forward matters to me.

I’ve also started thinking differently about how change happens. It’s overwhelming to ask yourself how to fix everything. You can’t. You affect change in small, localised ways. You do little things. Something as simple as putting pronouns in your bio. People might say, “Obviously you’re he/him,” but if someone who feels uncomfortable sees me do it, maybe they feel safe enough to add theirs. That’s change. If I put something in a song or say something at a show and 3,000 people hear it, that’s change too. Small changes ripple outward.

Art and creativity are the foundation of everything, everything intersects

Something that gives me hope is young people. They’re braver than we were. They don’t care about the rules we cared about. They look at the world we’ve handed them and say, You ruined it. We’re protesting every Saturday. People roll their eyes at them the same way they roll their eyes at women, but these young people are the ones who will make change. They’re more clued up than I ever was at their age. I was just messing about. The COVID generation especially – they had everything taken away from them and they still want to help others and fight for justice. They’re doing a better job than my generation ever did.

And creativity sits at the heart of all of this. Art and creativity are the foundation of everything, everything intersects. Creativity is powerful, and the suppression of women is tied into that same fear – of forces that threaten the systems that want control. 

Music is important. Art is important. On the days when I doubt it, I think about the people who say they needed a song or that something I wrote made them feel less alone. I take that responsibility seriously, even when it’s overwhelming, even when I’m tired, even when the world feels like too much. Creativity still feels like magic to me, something powerful, frightening to the people who need to be frightened. I feel genuinely lucky to be part of a group of people who care about something that matters.

This conversation took place on 27 November and has been edited and condensed for clarity and flow.

 The digital deluxe release of Antony's critically acclaimed debut album, Service Station at the End of the Universe is out now.

One more thing

Antony recommends checking out Nordoff & Robbins.

Nordoff & Robbins is a music-therapy charity supporting people for whom music can be a more reliable form of communication than speech, including those living with autism, dementia, learning difficulties or brain injury.