Singer Natalie Merchant.Photo:Claire Rosen
Claire Rosen
In 2019,Natalie Merchantbegan experiencing an ache in her neck that eventually turned into “unendurable pain.” Diagnosed with a rare, degenerative spine condition known as OPLL, the singer, who has sold 15 million albums as a solo artist and as lead singer for10,000 Maniacs, underwent surgery to replace three deteriorated vertebrae. Afterwards, she was left without her singing voice for 10 months. Merchant, who is now on tour with a fully healed voice, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue how she accepted the loss of her singing ability — and wrote her new album,Keep Your Courage,during the pandemic as a message of hope in turbulent times.It’s an unseasonably cold day in upstate New York, and Natalie Merchant is bundled in a purple parka for a Zoom call. She turns her computer screen to show the thick haze outside that has drifted in from Canadian wildfires, obscuring the sky above her rural home and making the unusual summer weather all the more disturbing.
“We haven’t been able to go outside for days,” says Merchant, 59. “It’s hard to think about anything else.”
Then suddenly, an unwanted guest appears at her window, stopping her mid-sentence: a 2-in.-long gypsy moth caterpillar. “They’re so destructive that the forest canopy is disappearing,” she explains. “I spent the entire winter crushing their egg sacs. But there she is, so I’m going to knock her down.” She excuses herself to do battle with the invasive species that has been devouring woods across the Northeast: “I will risk going out and breathing that air to kill that caterpillar!”
Since she first hit the music scene in the early ’80s as the teenage frontwoman for the alt-rock band 10,000 Maniacs, and later as a solo artist, Merchant has been a warrior for a cause. Racism, pollution, colonialism, poverty, child abuse — all have influenced Merchant’s songwriting. Her passion for social justice and her literary lyrics — she was once praised as “the thinking man’sMadonna,” to which she replied playfully, “I prefer the Emily Dickinson of pop”— have earned Merchant, who has collectively sold 15 million albums, a devoted fan base.
But three years ago a personal crisis threatened to silence her when surgery for a rare and painful degenerative spine condition left her unable to sing for 10 months. “I thought maybe I was retiring from music,” says Merchant. “I thought, ‘Well, I had a good run.’”
Instead the singer, with her distinctive contralto intact, returned this year withKeep Your Courage, her first full album of original material in nine years — a collection of pandemic-inspired songs that “remind you that you are not alone in your suffering” — and herfirst major tourin six years, which begins its European leg in October. Now fully healed and back to her whirling dancing onstage, “I’m singing better than I ever have. I think my voice is actually better now.”
Natalie Merchant performing on tour in Florida in April 2023.mpi04/MediaPunch
mpi04/MediaPunch
Natalie Merchant with 10,000 Maniacs, c. 1988.Larry Busacca/WireImage
Larry Busacca/WireImage
The earnestness of Merchant’s lyrics — and her activism — attracted both praise and snark. (“Even as you wish she’d lighten up, you can’t help but admire Merchant’s uncompromising vision,” anEntertainment Weeklycritic wrote in a 1995 review.) But Merchant, who acknowledges her reputation with dry humor, remains unapologetic. “Some people at my record company would’ve appreciated if I had been less cause-y and more sexy,” she says. “But there are worse things than being too serious. And I think time has vindicated me."
The singer, who spends nearly as much time in our interview asking questions as answering them, clearly more interested in conversation than cultivating fame — “I think it requires an obscene level of narcissism to assume that everyone wants to know everything you think, and you feel, and what you are doing,” she says — took another unconventional turn after 2003, when she had her daughter Lucia, whom she shares with her ex-husband. For a time, she stepped away from songwriting and touring. “The most important job I had was being my daughter’s mother, and I was able to be present in a very intense way,” she says. She sewed costumes for her daughter’s school plays, was a class parent and helped run the craft fair.
She also volunteered with a local preschool, made a documentary about domestic violence victims and protested fracking. “Songwriting requires solitude for me, and it seemed self-indulgent in the face of these things,” she says. “People think, ‘Oh, you weren’t writing or touring? You must have been sitting on a couch eating bonbons.’ But they were very busy years.”
In December 2019 her health crisis brought her to a standstill. It began with a nagging neck ache that extended down her arm: “The pain was unendurable.” She was diagnosed with spinal degeneration with ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament, or OPLL. If left untreated, she says, “there’s a chance you may become paralyzed."
OPLL “is a process that occurs when a body over time turns a ligament that’s normally soft and mobile into calcification. Essentially, it hardens,” says Dr. Byron Stephens, division chief of spine surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who has not treated Merchant. The condition, uncommon in the United States, is more prevalent in eastern Asia. Because of the risks, surgery should be done “as a last resort but if properly indicated can have an incredibly positive impact,” he says.
In March 2020 Merchant underwent a four-hour surgery to replace three vertebrae that had deteriorated. An incision was made over her vocal cords, which needed to be pulled aside during the operation. When she woke, Merchant discovered she could speak but couldn’t sing: “I couldn’t find the power or keep the pitch. I could sing in falsetto, but I couldn’t sing in my real voice anymore.”
Natalie Merchant’I could talk but I couldn’t sing with my real voice, I couldn’t find it.'
Natalie Merchant
‘I could talk but I couldn’t sing with my real voice, I couldn’t find it.’
Natalie Merchant’s first solo album, 1995’s Tigerlily, which sold 5 million copies, and her latest, Keep Your Courage, released earlier this year.Credit: Amazon
Credit: Amazon
source: people.com
