Interview on New Album ‘Singing,’ Losing Her Voice

“Everything unsaid, it sinks in for a little too long,” Gia Margaret sings over a calm and steady pulse on “Everyone Around Me Dancing,” the opening song on her new album, Singing, out April 24 via Jagjaguwar. The album’s title is both a straightforward declaration and a comedic relief, a single word that also stands as a full sentence. And for Margaret, it’s a bit of a quiet revelation: Not long after releasing her debut album in 2018, the musician, now 38, experienced a vocal injury that left her unable to sing. In its wake, she created 2020’s meditative ambient record Mia Gargaret, then the instrumental Romantic Piano in 2023. Now, she’s back, this time again with words. Singing.

“I had a couple other ideas for album titles, but that one just kept popping out to me. There’s always a bit of humor in the suffering,” Margaret says, Zooming in from her home studio in Chicago. “When you can’t sing as a singer, you’re quite literally unable to communicate some things that are going on inside. I felt literally silenced for a couple years. I think it was an ego death for me.”

The limitations she faced while making Mia Gargaret and Romantic Piano gave way to a surprising expansiveness, as they challenged her to dig deeper into the more meticulous composition and production aspects of songwriting. “Without having lyrics, I really had to listen to every single corner of a song,” she says. “When I returned to singing and writing lyrical songs, I noticed myself paying attention to different details that I didn’t before.”

Though Singing is a major step forward for Margaret, the album often finds the musician lingering wistfully in the memory of her past, with warm callbacks to city life and youth dispersed across the tracklist. “Reconnecting to my voice meant reconnecting to a much younger part of myself,” she says. “I think the music is reflective of that nostalgia too, because I was listening to a lot of music that I listened to as a teenager.”

She lists some of the artists that helped shape the sonic world of Singing: Frou Frou, David Gray, the Postal Service, Stars — some of which have serendipitous ties to the record. Amy Millan (who’s part of both Stars and Broken Social Scene) sings on “Cellular Reverse,” and Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth produced three songs on the album. The album is a collaborative haven, with Dave Bazan (Pedro the Lion) and Deb Talan of the Weepies also contributing background vocals.

“I feel like without those collaborations, I may have never started” making Singing, she says. “I still felt like I couldn’t record vocals in front of people. Even though I felt better, I was just like, ‘Oh, my God, I haven’t sung in front of anyone in years.’” With a heavy use of vocal processing, glistening synths, and stacked layers, Margaret obscures her voice just enough to “get out of my head and back into my body.” 

“When you’re singing into a vocoder, you’re not thinking about the nuances of the voice. You’re not thinking about anything being perfect. You’re just using the voice as an instrument and you’re thinking about melody and harmony,” she explains. “I was able to feel all the sensations, the good vibrations and sensations of singing, but I was able to not be so self-critical of my voice.”

Margaret hasn’t completely abandoned instrumental music, luckily, thanks to songs like the atmospheric “Ambient for Ichiko” (dedicated to Japanese musician Ichiko Aoba, whom Margaret opened up for on tour last year), “Guitar Duo” (a duet with Deb Talan), and “Rotten Outro” (which samples a “How to Speak Italian” tutorial CD her dad gave her years ago that was sitting in her car). And ambient sensibilities are still palpable everywhere on Singing, with Margaret weaving in fuzzy tape recordings of her own verbal notes-to-self.

Upon first listen, many of the tracks on Singing might sound like they’re meant to be love songs. That’s not an entirely untrue observation, but “I think it was the first time that I was writing to myself,” Margaret says about these songs, all of which she wrote between 2020 and 2025. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. There’s always been a subject or someone in mind, but this really felt like it was for me.” 

Singing emanates an earnestness that feels genuinely refreshing. And it’s a true musical delight, a cohesive, comforting body of work that feels enlightened in a way that doesn’t need to announce itself. For Margaret, just the fact that it exists is a triumph. “There was a time in my life where I didn’t think I would make this album or I didn’t think I’d sing again,” she says. “Looking back, I’m just so happy that I tried and I didn’t give up on it.”