Two Voiceless Weeks
What mandatory vocal rest taught me about my life
On September 3, 2022, Abel Tesfaye, more commonly known as The Weeknd, took the stage at SoFi stadium as part of his After Hours Til Dawn tour. It was meant to be an electric night. Nearly 70,000 fans buzzed with energy as they waited for the global sensation to take the stage and sing. But something was wrong.
The Weeknd’s voice cracked as he welcomed everyone. And just three songs into the setlist, he stopped abruptly, then addressed the stadium.
“I don’t know what just happened… but I just lost my voice,” he told the crowd from the stage. “This is killing me, I don’t want to stop the show but I can’t give you the concert I want to give you right now. I’m gonna make sure everybody’s good — you’ll get your money back — I’ll do a show real soon for you guys. But I wanted to come out and personally apologize.”
And so it ended. A few murmurs rippled through the crowd, some cheering in support, some disappointed. The most puzzling aspect of all this? This had never happened to him before, and he had performed through arguably worse–breakups, fevers, death in the family. This complete collapse blindsided him. He couldn’t rally.
In a later interview with Variety, an even more baffling detail would come out. The day after the concert, his doctor told him “There’s nothing wrong with you — your [vocal cords] are inflamed, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
I haven’t been so kind to my voice lately. I’ve put it through the wringer. I’ve shouted song lyrics in my car as I careened down the 405, windows down. I scheduled job interviews back-to-back in a dash for my next career move. I barely sipped my water as I bounced from apartment to apartment in LA, checking studios and one bedrooms to rent. I stay up late into the night working on pieces like the one you’re reading now, and videos like the one I posted last week. I think, I dream, I wake, I can’t sleep.
I wasn’t very careful. So of course, I found my frail voice asking “what happened?” to my doctor on a sleepy Thursday afternoon. Doctor S was efficient and attentive, asking a series of diagnostic questions as he checked my thyroid for anomalies. It felt relieving to see the doctor proceed so matter-of-factly rule out serious diagnoses before landing on his informed medical opinion–I definitely strained my vocal cords and I absolutely needed rest.
“We’ll do a follow up in a few weeks. Until then, give your voice a break. Try not to speak so much. Hydrate. Hot teas. Humidifier.” And with that, it was over. I sank into the chair a little more relieved before a pressing question came to mind.
“Hey doc, I have an interview next week. I can’t reschedule it further out, will I be okay to go through with it?” He glanced at me.
“I get why that’s concerning you. You’ll likely notice improvement over the next few days with intentional rest. I’d recommend no talking unless absolutely necessary. No whispering because that strains your vocal cords even further. You should be able to go through with it. Maybe not 100% just yet but speak slower and from your diaphragm instead of your throat. Try and relax as well. Anything else?”
“No, that’s good to hear, thank you,” I said, trying not to whisper. I left that day, resolved to get better. I wanted to heal.
However, as I tried to settle back into my typical life rhythms, staying quiet was a lot more difficult than I expected. I relied a great deal on my voice. To not use it felt strange because I could still produce sound, it just wasn’t Emmy winning, radio show announcer worthy. I definitely wasn’t going to be belting The Weeknd’s songs anytime soon, or going out for karaoke.
I felt the normal longing for my voice. The classic trope: “you never know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” Beyond that, however, I felt weirdly frustrated at knowing what I wanted to say but being blocked from saying it.
The effect is trippy. You feel a bit like a ghost when you’re unable to communicate like you used to be able to. And any attempts to force sound from my vocal cords would only delay my recovery and make me harder to understand. I even found myself falling back on the little sign language I’d been trying to learn just to add some level of comprehensibility to the thoughts trying to escape my mind. Other times, I’d recall a painful memory and feel like screaming. But I couldn’t. Listening to music became torturous; I couldn’t sing along.
I realized how relentlessly I’ve pursued my dreams over the last few months. I’ve done a lot. I’ve grown much. I’ve pushed myself to do more but this growth coincided with stressful life events. It had all got to me at once.
I needed to slow down and rest. This made the lesson painfully clear–you can’t rush healing.
________________
The Weeknd pointed at his head as he spoke to the Variety interviewer, “and that's when we came to the realization that it was all up here.”
He continued:
“Maybe it was that year, but maybe it was my whole life: survival, school, family, friendships, relationships, making it in the music industry. I'd always kind of suppressed it. You know, delusion helps! My voice has always been my secret weapon, my superpower, to get through whatever I need to get through. And in that moment, reality hit: Everything can change after this moment.”
At the time, Abel had put himself under a lot of pressure–flying from concerts to home and back out to set for his show because of reshoots. Exhaustion and stress compounded. Given this, it made sense that such a thing could happen to him. It could happen to any of us.
________________
As I lived with silence, I started to find some peace. I could live in my head a little more easily. I turned over thoughts strewn across my mind’s wooden floor panels and arranged them into different associative webs.
While I couldn’t speak, I could write. So I tried using it as a means to exhaust some of my feelings. After two days, I’d gently test my voice before sleeping. I’d say a short sentence, something silly like “Hello, testing my voice. Mic check 1-2-1-2.” It felt great to see the progress. As it happened, I was feeling more and more myself again.
________________
Thankfully, The Weeknd’s voice recovered after a couple days and as promised, he performed several make-up shows to rapturous reception. He used the experience not only to reflect on the circumstances that led him there but also put his processing into new music.
“I knew that I really needed to sit the f––– down and figure out my life,” he says. “To understand what happened, face it, learn something new and start again.”
And start again he did. He went on to release the critically acclaimed album “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” which became his fifth number one debut on the Billboard 200, moving 490,500 albums in first-week sales.
________________
Vocal rest made me more attuned to my environment. Silence was a gift in a way. When I couldn’t speak about it, that gave me space to process and reflect in other ways. I couldn’t sing but I could move my body through dance. I could write. I could take a breath, ease my foot off the gas pedal a little, and just appreciate how much I’ve overcome, if only for a moment.