For a singer, there must be nothing worse than losing your voice or struggling through a vocal problem. Suddenly finding it hard to do what they usually excel at, these 5 singers have all faced their own voice battles. Some have had to go under the knife to fix their problem after they injured their vocal chords, while others have missed concerts or suddenly not been able to hit the high notes at a crucial time. Battling their problems, these amazing singers have thankfully made it through their struggles with their voice and can still sing just as beautifully as before. Their talent hasn’t disappeared and the voices that brought them fame continue to shine through.
Adele
Adele had to have vocal chord microsurgery to stop bleeding from a benign polyp, unfortunately putting a halt on her career while she recovered. Describing what happened, the singer revealed that she instantly knew something was wrong: “It felt like someone put a curtain over my throat. It felt like something popped in my throat.”
Joe Budden
Joe believes he needs surgery: “I might have to get surgery to get my voice back. I got some swelling going on back there. It just comes from a lot of acid. I drink a lot of acidy s**t. You’ll never see me without a beverage. Even now my voice is a whole lot deeper than normal. You can hear something is going on.”
John Mayer
John visited a doctor to address his problems and he was immediately worked on by the doctor which scared him: “I met this great doctor and he said, ‘We just give you Botox’. I said, ‘What day would that be?’ and he goes, ‘We can do it right now’ and I said, ‘So would you put me under (anaesthetic) and then you would put that (the needle) down my throat?’ And he goes, ‘Nope, we go right in through the neck’ – and I started crying. I was just trying to tip my head back so the tear wouldn’t break the surface, and then I was like, ‘Ok…'”
Meat Loaf
Meat Loaf’s vocal chord became swollen right before a show: “I was in the emergency room because I had a swollen vocal cord, and they told me not to go on. This was after the same thing happened to Adele. I didn’t go on. However, all of this didn’t happen until five o’clock. By the time we got back, they’d already opened the doors. Everyone was p**sed, but we didn’t know. You can’t win when that stuff happens. There was a blood vessel protruding off the left vocal cord, and they were afraid it was going to really haemorrhage. There was a tiny bit of blood. I went and did the last two shows on that Australian tour. Then it took me all of November and most of December to get over the swollen vocal cord. I’ve done so many shows where I shouldn’t have gone on. The audiences mean more to me than anything.”
Usher
LaFace Records boss Reid reveals that when he first saw a 14-year-old Usher, his voice failed to impress him because he was having trouble at the time but Diddy believed in him: “He (Usher) couldn’t sing… It was like, ‘Damn, where’s the voice? What happened to his tone? Where’s the power and the range?’ It was all gone.I wanted to drop him. I wanted to be out of business with him. I broke his heart. I broke his mother’s heart. It was a very tough period in both our lives. Then someone said to me, ‘Don’t be a fool. Don’t sell your stock in Usher. He’s still going to be a star. He’s everything you thought he was the day you signed him.’ And that person was Puffy.”
