Music
Doctors told Whitney Whitney she would need two weeks of vocal rest.
That was two years ago.
“It was the most scary and depressive period of my life,” Whitney says, “because it is the thing that I love the most.”
It wasn’t just her singing voice that was affected. She was also unable to use her speaking voice for routine, daily conversations, she says.
“It would be a month of silence, full silence, and then I would see if I was better. Each time, it got worse,” she says.
Still, Whitney is trying to find the meaning behind it all.
“I think I was meant to not be able to do music for two years. That’s how I’m thinking about it in a more spiritual way, because I believe everything happens in divine timing,” she says.
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“So it wasn’t my time… and I think I’ll figure that out once I’m back — why I was meant to be put on pause.”
She makes her return to the stage later this month at Lollapalooza. It will be her first live show in two years, and her first under the moniker Whitney Whitney after moving away from her legal name, Whitney Woerz.
With an EP released earlier this year — 1.2, a follow-up to 2025’s 1.1 — and a new single, “All That It Is,” out today, Whitney has a catalog of fresh material to pull from.
“All That It Is” was written about the breakup of one of the song’s co-writers, Whitney says. “I love tapping into other people’s stories along with my own,” she says.
It was also written “in the thick of the vocal problems.”
“It sounded so good, but it felt so terrible,” Whitney says. “We had to step out because I was like, ‘Why? Why is this being taken from me?’ It sounds good. No one would know that I’m in excruciating pain.”
Now, Whitney is looking ahead — she’s set to play Lollapalooza’s BMI stage on Friday, July 31 at noon.
“It was the hardest thing ever for me to release this music when I couldn’t speak and couldn’t perform it live,” she says.
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