Musician Greta Morgan’s Poignant Memoir Details The Loss Of Her Voice

One day in the spring of 2020, the singer Greta Morgan felt something was quite off during her online vocal lesson with her instructor—this was a few weeks after she contracted COVID-19. Previously, Morgan had always been able to hear a note in her head, and her body would naturally perform whatever she was envisioning. But on that particular day, she experienced a moment that would become life- and career-changing.

“All of a sudden,” she now recalls of that lesson, “when I started singing up higher in my range, I would hear a note and I couldn’t hit it. And when I would try to reach the note, it would almost tear apart. It was like there was no vocal tone. It almost sounded like a screech. The more I tried to push for the note, the more I felt this kind of closing up of my throat.”

Morgan would be later diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder defined by Johns Hopkins that causes “involuntary spasms in the muscles of the voice box or larynx,” resulting in a “strained or strangled sound.” For Morgan – a longtime musician who co-founded the indie pop group The Hush Sound in the early 2000s and later performed with the likes of Jenny Lewis and Vampire Weekend – her inability to sing like she once did was a major blow. But it also led her on a journey of self-discovery, which has now been documented in her new and moving memoir, The Lost Voice.

“I was [earlier] misdiagnosed with acid reflux,” she recalls. “So I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll be a perfect acid reflux patient.’ Months went by, and my voice was still getting worse. So I started to feel concerned. But again, I’ve had so many friends who are singers that I’ve heard like, ‘Oh, so-and-so, oh, they had to go on steroids for a couple of days. They had vocal inflammation.’ I still thought there was a really easy solution. I had never heard of spasmodic dysphonia.”

Morgan, who was living in the Los Angeles area, later returned to her home state of Illinois to see a voice disorder specialist. Hearing the diagnosis of spasmodic dysphonia from the specialist was devastating.

“There were two metaphors that I wrote in the book,” she says. “It felt like I was a mile underwater. The other thing was when I was watching the video — like the introduction to what spasmodic dysphonia is — and all these people are telling their stories and talking about treatments and getting Botox shots and all this stuff. I looked at my phone and searched for professional singers with spasmodic dysphonia. It was just a graveyard of ‘so-and-so had to quit their career as an opera singer.’ It just felt like this guillotine landed.

“I had been a musician and a songwriter my entire life,” she continues. “It was the only thing I’d done. I didn’t go to college. I had no backup plan. And then there was this new version of life where I had no idea who I would be or what I would be doing. It felt like being dropped off in the unknown. I had no idea how I was going to survive it.”

What followed was a period of reawakening for Morgan about her voice and identity, as she later wrote in the book: “I decided to redefine my voice as any expression of my heart. The way I listened could become my voice, the way I wrote postcards to friends could become my voice. The way I witnessed the world around me could become my voice…Any art I made, in any medium, could become my voice as long as it came from the truth of my heart. By that definition, my creativity was boundless.”

She further explains in this interview: “I would never prescribe what other people should do. But for me personally, I need to redefine it in a way that makes sense to me. I have to find the meaning in it. I think that’s how I got my power back.”

Morgan’s book not only talks about the loss of her voice, but it also recalls some of the professional and personal setbacks she previously experienced, such as the end of her parents’ marriage, her romantic breakups, and the unpredictability of working in the music industry.

“The litmus test for every scene was, ‘Does this explore a dimension of my voice?’ she says. “Like, I could write about my parents’ divorce because that’s how I became a songwriter. I could write about some of my career stuff because that’s how it changed my relationship with my voice. I could write about my relationship because he amplified my voice. So that was the way everything was woven together.”

Between her struggling to sing during that vocal lesson and officially receiving the diagnosis, Morgan visited Zion Canyon in southwestern Utah to be surrounded by nature. It was there she met a therapist and photographer named Sadie, who invited Morgan to a wilderness fast at a spot in Bears Ears National Monument. Morgan looks back at that experience, which she also wrote about in the book, as a period of healing.

“I think some people come into our lives to remind us who we are,” Morgan, who now resides in upstate New York, says. “And Sadie really helped me with that. She sort of gave that gift back to me. I have prioritized my relationship with the wild world ever since. I live in a very wild place in the mountains. I have like 50 acres of wild land right behind me. I have completely changed my life to live closer to nature as a result of that trip.”

As she describes in The Lost Voice, Morgan received Botox voice injections starting in 2021 that allowed her to regain a semblance of her previous singing. At first, the idea of using Botox made her nervous. “It is not something I would ever choose to do,” she says. “I was really concerned about putting a neurotoxin in my body, and that there could potentially be more harm than good…”

“We experimented and we finally got the dosage right. Once I started being able to use my voice again, it felt like singing for the first time. It felt like having access after not having access for over a year. It was such a gift. To lose something and then get it back — even if it’s not the same — just creates such an incredible sense of appreciation.’

These days, Morgan has continued to work on music. “I’m writing very different kinds of songs,” she says. “So many of the songs I’ve written are two octaves, but I am writing with a very different voice now. I started writing a new record and I’m really embracing how weird it is. I think it’s interesting to have like a ‘broken voice.’ I am wondering, ‘What can I say with this voice that I couldn’t say with my other voice?'”

But don’t expect Morgan to sing a full set of songs on stage in the near future as she is still recovering from the after-effects of the coronavirus. “This is not in the book, but the second and third time I had COVID, I was acutely disabled for 18 months,” she explains. “I don’t know why I am one of these cases where I had a perfect track record of health my whole life, and for some reason was uniquely susceptible to COVID.

“So I’ve been really focused on my whole body recovery. I’m in the Mayo Clinic’s long COVID treatment program because I was officially diagnosed in 2024. It has given me back so much capacity. Unfortunately, I’m not able to travel extensively right now. So I’m focused on supporting my body and recovery and writing new songs. But if I can perform one day, I would love to.”

The Lost Voice by Greta Morgan, published by HarperOne, is now available through booksellers.