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Photos by Sol Koi

Loss is a part of life, but what do you do when it feels like you’ve lost yourself? How do you figure out where to go from there? If you’re Whitney Whitney, you keep going — and make an excellent new EP, 1.3. 

“I lost my voice through a really bad vocal injury for two years,” the artist told OnesToWatch about how the project got started. “I was in and out of pure silence, couldn't sing, couldn’t write, the whole thing. I was like, ‘Okay, what can I do to stay creative and stay musical while I have lost the main thing that makes me an artist?’”

Whitney started learning how to play the piano as an outlet, “solely so that I could stay creative while I was in silence.”

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through, in my life,” she said of losing her voice. “It was like the biggest part of me was taken away, and I just kept asking, ‘Why me? Why me?’ It hurt to speak, and it hurt to sing. All the vocal doctors in LA were so confused by this mystery pain. My vocal chords looked pretty good.”

Eventually, Whitney recovered her voice, and is “singing again, writing again, as of a few months ago,” even playing Lollapalooza earlier this year, which was “the first time I sung full-out since the voice loss.”

“I have a new appreciation for my voice and for even just speaking,” she shared. 

That appreciation shines through 1.3, an EP driven by her newfound piano skills and influenced by everyone from Elton John, to her dad. The songs cover love and loss, with a musical theater vibe brought from Whitney’s own days acting in stage productions in her Connecticut hometown. 

“My brother did a few Broadway shows when we were in school. I always auditioned for the Broadway shows,” she said, adding wryly, “Never got in.”

One of the project’s major standouts is “All That It Is,” a washing-her-hands-of-it-all piano ballad that sees the artist shrug, “Oh, it broke my heart just a little bit // but a broken heart is all that it is.”

“Sherry Wine” is another throwback piano ballad, a laidback ode to the woman you wish you could be with a cinematic strings section and whining electric guitar riff that put a theatrical twist on Whitney’s dream to have “a name like Sherry Wine.”

When asked to sum up 1.3, Whitney paused for a moment, then said, “It’s the adolescence of love [and] the love of adolescence. The dreamer is still alive, whilst being heartbroken.” 

Losing her voice led Whitney Whitney to explore new facets of her artistry and musical skills, creating a collection of songs that are at once familiar and fresh. Listening to 1.3, all you can think is, Thank God she got it back.

Listen to 1.3 below: