All through my life I have heard peoples opinion about my voice. Good and bad. To give you some background to this… My grandmother, Maj-Lis Wichmann (later re-married to Nilsson) was an opera singer. She performed mostly at Copenhagen Royal Operahouse but at the Wagner Opera house in Bayreuth, Germany, and all over Europe and South Africa. As you can imagine, when you are a child and you love music and you love to sing and you have a professional singer in the house you get singing lessons for free and you are taught, whether you want it or not, to project. My grandmother took me with her to the theatre several times, put me on stage and went to the very back and then she asked me to sing a song so she could hear it. And I am not talking the local little theatre club on the corner, this is what I saw…

Imagine being a girl, less than 10 years old. Surrounded by professional opera signers and performers. They are on stage doing their thing, some sitting in the seats and you have to sing a song so loud so your grandmother can hear it in the very back, without microphone. When you sing the song, the people around stops what they are doing and starts paying attention to you and when you are done they all start a huge applaud. You know what that feeling is for a little girl? Empowering.

At home I lived with my mom. My parents divorced when I was an infant so my family was always mom, grandma and granddad. Then we have distance family that we saw every 10th year or so. My mom worked as a stewardess at Scandinavian Airlines for 12 years. That was before I was born. And that was before they thought about protecting their ears while on the tarmac for example. My mom started experience hearing loss when I was a kid. But it was never a problem. My grandmother had obviously no problem projecting her voice, my grandfather had a very good voice and had no problem making himself understood to mom and then me, well I didn’t know anything else and for me it was natural to speak up so mom could hear. I never thought anything about it.

My friends growing up always accepted my loudness. I can’t remember anyone specifically complaining of me being loud. It was more that I always sang. Maybe that’s why no one really thought about it, or it may just have been me ignoring the comments. I toured Europe singing and performing for a couple of years.
Life moved on and for several different reasons the stage was farther and farther away from my daily life. I still sang but other things occupied my time. I had a huge ranch in Sweden and I was teaching equestrian lessons. I was standing in a 20x60m arena and I had to make myself heard to my student sitting on the horse at the other side. I never had any problems, I had the vocal training and projection training since I could walk!

Then I moved to the US. I don’t know if it is because I am different in all other possible ways that people notice my loudness more here than before, just the fact that I am “analyzed” more in what I say and do or if it was that mom’s hearing got worse and I unknowingly had to speak up with her. I know that when people spoke to mom and she didn’t hear, it was very often said to me “now we know why you speak loud”.
But since I moved over here I hear complaints on my voice regularly. People’s opinion about my voice has really been all over the place. Sadly most negative. And the most things I’ve heard is that it is loud. Y’all must have very sensitive ears here. But I’ve also heard that my voice ain’t good enough. I have been asked to leave a church choir because it wasn’t good enough. When I have uploaded things I’ve done on social media I’ve heard mixed reviews. Which is okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but the tings that has been said to me is not acceptable. I’ve been asked to never take a note again, my voice is horrible etc. etc etc. I can take criticism well and I totally accept if you don’t like my voice. But to tell me to be quiet and never sing again is rude! And when you hear that over and over again and you come from my background, performed all over the world actually you start to hesitate yourself. At that time in my life I wasn’t doing it professionally anyway but I lost the joy of music. I lost the joy of singing. I tried over and over again but the fear for what was coming if/when I published or posted it became worse and worse. I stopped listening to music in my car!

Last week a person told me that my loud voice had been brought to attention (again) and I was asked to be more quiet. I’ve been walking around with this for a couple of days, thinking about how to even handle this situation. I honestly did not know at all what to do. I was really hurt about this to be honest. Am I just gonna avoid people? Not talk to people? Am I not entitled to talk anymore? What’s gonna happen then? People think I am mad, sad, moody. I will be locking myself in to something I am not and that’s not gonna do good to me. It was an attack on my personality. A disrespect of me. Sure I can be quiet. But why can’t you accept me for who I am. Why don’t you start writing with your left hand if you are right handed, why would you wright at all by the way, I don’t like your handwriting. To me it’s the same thing.

I woke up this morning very sad about this words. I don’t know why I was so hurt this time but the words burned and echoed in my head. And that is why I am writing this long long blog.

I am not the one with the problem here. You are. If you don’t like the way I speak, act or sing, that is your problem. Do not come and tell me to change. Do you want me to come and tell you what I think is wrong with you. I know that I am loud. That is who I am. And I hope that if you read this far and you have opinions about my voice, you may have more understanding of why I can’t just change that. I have lived this way for 40 damn years. And I don’t want to change.
If you don’t like my voice or how I am singing, that is also your problem. I respect your opinion but don’t come and tell me to stop singing. I will most likely not sing professionally again and I will hesitate to post my singing and even sing in public but no one can take my voice and vocal cords away from me. Don’t you dare ask me to be quiet again. Walk away instead. As a matter of fact, if you have concrete critique to help me improve, bring it on but if you just have your opinion and it’s no good, keep it to yourself. I am not sorry for who I am, loud or quiet! If you have anything positive to say, I would LOVE to hear it!

In trying to find the joy in singing and music again I did a couple of TikTok videos earlier. I found a couple where someone is playing the piano and you just duet with them. It turned out pretty okay and then I also did a duet with myself that I thought was pretty cool. There are some more on my TikTok channel so go and look there…

@swedeintexas

##duet with @deweyspianoparty ##broadway ##jekyllandhyde ##music ##singer ##foryou ##fy

♬ original sound – deweyspianoparty

@swedeintexas

##duet with @deweyspianoparty ##aladdin ##singer ##fyp ##foryou ##disney

♬ original sound – deweyspianoparty

@swedeintexas

##duet with @swedeintexas and @elevenbstudios did a harmony with myself! ##elvis ##harmony ##misic ##singer ##fy ##foryou ##foryoupage

♬ original sound – elevenbstudios

If you want to sing with me, I love to do duets, I love to do collabs so just let me know!