Hailea Royce: How music is continually saving her life

It's a two hour drive from Indianapolis to Fort Wayne, IN. The concert started at 6:30pm, but she had class until 5 that day. The decision to go to this show had been made completely on a whim about a week prior, so she decided easily to skip her last class, meaning they could leave a hour and a half earlier. The last three months had been pretty shit, so the moment they could, they grabbed blankets, phone chargers, an extra jacket, and some water and hurried out the front door, making a run for it, straight to her car. They hadn't told anyone about this spontaneous trip and now that it was finally happening, they were nearly bursting with excitement.

The whole drive up there was spent screaming the words to the songs they were about to see in concert. Rush hour caused them to miss the first act of the night, Can't Swim. Knowing how late they were, they sprinted through the crowded parking lot and, after getting their tickets scanned, they rushed right for the merch stand. When they emerged into the stands of the arena, they were surrounded by thousands of people as Can't Swim finished their last song.

Being a general admission show, they found a seat close to the stage and to the floor. When I Prevail, the third and final opener, took that stage, they didn't care if they were the only ones in the arena standing and jumping and screaming back the lyrics. They were lost in the moment, not caring about the consequences, not caring about tomorrow, not caring about all the shit that had gone down in the last three months. They carried that energy straight into the headliner, A Day to Remember's, set, and the crowd was electric.

The moment lead singer Jeremy McKinnon screamed "Disrespect your surroundings" during "Mr. Highway's Thinking About the End" was the moment they were splashed with beer. Someone at the top of the section had thrown their cup of beer and the splash hit nearly everyone around. But that didn't slow anyone down. Everyone was smiling and jumping and screaming the lyrics back to the band, not caring about anything else.

A Day to Remember sings "If It Means a Lot to You" while the crowd holds their phone lights up. [Photo by Tatiana Montavon]

Those are the kind of moments that Hailea Royce lives for.

"Every time I go to a concert, I would say it's reaffirmed [my love of music]. I love the atmosphere, and you're there and everything else disappears," she said. "You're in that concert, you're in that vibe, you're listening to music and you're surrounded by other people who are also vibing with the song. And you're all just there together and it's like a community."

That concert back in November 2019 was unlike any she had ever been to before, but it was something that she needed. "It was a different and new vibe, but I was excited for it," she remembered.

She lost her voice for the week that followed the show, but to her, it was worth it.

"It was a whole moment of us saying 'fuck it, let's go on an adventure," Royce said. "And I wanna do it again."

Five months prior, she and her friends had driven up to Indianapolis to see Twenty One Pilots in June. Whether she knew it at the time, that concert would become the one that meant the most to her:

"It's the only concert to make me cry."

She and the people she went with were in the nosebleeds of Bankers Life Fieldhouse. They weren't necessarily physically close to the band, and the seats were at an awkward angle. No one around Royce was jamming like she wanted to be. It was by far not the ideal setting for a concert in her mind, but the community and the music is what made it so important to her.

"I don't remember what song it was. It might've been 'Trees.' ... It was as everything was coming to an end. And I wanna say everyone had their lights up, their phone lights," Royce remembered. "Everyone just kind of paused and were taking in these deep lyrics. And it was more than just listening with your headphones in. It was very raw. ... It was one of the most raw music moments I had ever seen."

A mere couple days before that concert, she had weathered a tornado with her best friend Gwyneth, Gwyneth's friend from college, and Gwyneth's boyfriend's younger sister, just to see Billie Eilish. They got all dressed up for the outdoor concert in downtown Nashville, but little did they know that by the time Billie Eilish would get on stage, they would be drenched in rain after waiting it out in a parking garage.

"We just wanted to hear the music, along with at least half of the people, at least half of them that had been going to the concert stayed, during a tornado, for Billie Eilish," Royce said. "It was just pure and utter chaos."

Hailea Royce in the lawn section waiting for Billie Eilish to come on stage. [Photo courtesy of Hailea Royce]

When the concert was okayed to move forward, the chaos continued. The four of them held hands as they moved through the hoard of people in order to not lose each other. The opening act was cancelled, so they moved their "train" to the merch line, where they still were careful not to lose each other. By the time Billie Eilish came on stage, they had found their way to a spot in the open seating in the back.

"It was a disaster," she laughed. "But we were just thriving. We were drenched in rain, we were just listening to Billie Eilish. Everyone was just hyped. It was like like 'wow, we just went through a whole tornado and we're still at this park, watching Billie.'"

These are the live show moments that stick out to her, but her love of music doesn't stop there. The first time Royce remembers music truly helping her was her freshman year of high school.

"I don't really remember much -- I don't remember much of freshman or sophomore years of high school," she noted. "I think I was really struggling freshman -- and sophomore year. But freshman year of high school, I was struggling, like most people do -- you know, you go from middle school to high school, so there's obviously a big jump. I don't think, I mean it was that, but it was also home life, and a mix of a ton of different things that made it difficult."

She notes two bands and one specific song that helped her the most: Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, and Fall Out Boy's "I Don't Care."

"Those were like my anthems for like my whole freshman year. I remember sitting in my Christian study hall, just listening to all of these and just jamming the fuck out."

It was around this time Royce remembers developing the habit of not telling anyone when something was wrong. So instead of opening up to someone, she turned to music.

"I mean obviously I wasn't telling the music that something's wrong, but it helped me in that moment," she noted. "Something's wrong but other people have felt this way, other people have gone through hard shit."

Without any hesitation, she said music had definitely saved her life. She brings Three Days Grace back up, noting their song "Animal I Have Become:" "That's the first one I heard from them and it introduced me to them, so I'd say that that in itself, saved my life."

For Breaking Benjamin, it was "Had Enough" and "Until the End." Another song was "Fake It" by a band called Seether.

But more recently, looking at her freshman year of college, and just before that, Royce noted some newcomers that took her by surprise.

"Just generally overall, Badflower's music. Specifically 'Ghost.' I remember it somehow said what I was feeling when I didn't think anything else could. Like I didn't know how to say it. But it did," she said. "Which was both nice and surprising, because like I said, nothing else had, even the stuff from freshman year before. Music grows with you."

Badflower introduced into more bands and artists that have helped her sort through her emotions and work through tough times. Most notably being Grandson.

She notes that although Grandson and Badflower have completely different vibes and write about very different topics, there's still some similarities. Badflower, she says, is more emotional, talking about things people go through. Grandson, on the other hand, is "more this is what we're feeling because society's fucked up," she said. "And just general life and it narrows down into like this is why everything's fucked up, this is why you're feeling this way, let's stand up." They're different aspects, but they both are like this is what's wrong and this is why you're feeling what you're feeling. And that's why she loves them, and why they've helped her so much.

Royce listening to music while studying. [photo by Tatiana Montavon]

On a smaller scale, music helps Royce through her day-to-day life. She fills every moment she can with it: when she's walking to class, doing homework, sometimes just laying on her bed, thinking about life.

"Even if it's one of those days that I don't listen to music, it's still in the back of my head. I always have a song in my head, as stupid as that sounds," she said. "I can be doing some really boring bullshit thing and it's better because I have some song, not always by choice, which one it is, but some song is in the back of my head and I'm still jamming and it makes stupid tasks better."

Music makes Royce feel not alone. Understood. She chooses to listen to music that reflects how she's feeling in that moment. It's how she connects with the world and her feelings. It's how she stays in touch with some of her friends. She makes playlists for her friends and it's the music and the discovery of it that connects them and keeps them in contact.

"I'll add a random song to her playlist and she can be like, 'dude, I love this one' or something like that," she said. "So we're still thinking about each other, and keeping our friendship without being like 'hey, how was your day' and all that stuff."

On a larger scale, that importance doesn't go away to Royce. While that small level of friendship is still important, music creates communities.

"If someone's writing music and it hits and reaches a lot of people, I think that's big, not just for the person that wrote it, but also for everyone who connected with it," she said. "It makes you feel less alone." She paused. "I don't know, there's how many people on the planet? Too many people. And you're just one little dot. But now there's suddenly three thousand other little dots and it's like 'aw cute' now there's a little community or family."

Music, like to many others across the globe, has become a huge part of Hailea Royce's life. It's not just the big scale things like concerts, and it's not just the day-to-day menial stuff like walking to class and listening to it while doing homework. It's also in the moments she spends driving with her friends -- not talking, with no where in mind, just jamming to music.

"We're not necessarily talking, but we're on the same wavelength. Again it's like the concerts: you're just feeling the music. And it's just very peaceful."

She thinks back to seventh or eighth grade when she discovered that aspect of her love of music. She was in the car with her parents and her friend Suzanne, on their way to go skiing. Royce and Suzanne were screaming the words to the One Direction songs in the back of the car, having the time of their lives.

"I guess that's like the first time I've had anybody just singing in a car with me like that," she said. "Now that we do it, it's still one of my favorite things."

After it's been ingrained in her life for so long, a life without music is something that baffles Royce.

"I don't think I could just not have music," after all, Royce noted, "It's continually saving my life."