"I Love Singing, But..."

Carrie Griffths
Apr 17
7 min read

The Conversation No One In The Music Industry Is Having

There's a conversation I have with singers that nobody else seems to be having. And it usually starts the same way — with four words.

"I love singing, but…"

I said those four words myself for seven years. I've heard them from singers at every stage of a career — from artists just beginning to build something real, to established professionals with genuine credits and serious experience. The sentence always trails off. And the trailing off is the most honest part.

Because the "but" is where the real conversation begins.

The Particular Exhaustion Nobody Talks About

It doesn't look like burnout, exactly. It isn't the exhaustion that comes from too much work, too many gigs, too little sleep. It's quieter than that. And more specific.

It's the feeling of finishing a gig that went well — the audience was warm, you hit everything, nobody noticed the moments you felt uncertain — and then sitting in the car afterwards feeling relief rather than satisfaction. It's scrolling through your social media feed and feeling nothing. It's being technically better than you've ever been and somehow, at the same time, feeling increasingly disconnected from why you started.

It's the sense, however difficult to articulate, that you are performing at people, rather than creating an experience with them. And somewhere in your body, you already know the difference.

This is not a crisis. It is a signal.

And it's almost universally misdiagnosed — including by the singers themselves, who tend to frame it as a motivation problem, a confidence problem, a marketing problem, or some vague creative block that needs a new playlist and a week off to resolve.

In my experience, it is none of those things.

The work is happening. The foundation underneath it is missing.

What Formal Music Training Doesn't Teach You

Let me say something plainly, because I think it needs to be said.

Music college - including the big ones - conservatoires, university music degrees — they are excellent at what they do. They produce technically accomplished, industry-ready musicians. The craft taught in those institutions is real and rigorous and worth having.

But there is something they don't teach. Not because it's unimportant — because it's invisible to a curriculum. You can't put it in a module. You can't formally test it. And the music industry, by and large, has decided not to ask.

That something is this: what is your message as an artist?

Not your genre. Not your influences. Not your brand identity or your USP or your target demographic.

Your message. The specific, singular thing that you — this particular human being, with this particular set of experiences and truths and irreplaceable perspective — are here to say through your art.

Most serious singers have never been asked this question directly. And the ones who have been asked it often discover, to their discomfort, that they can't fully answer it. Not in their body. Not with the kind of settled, unshakeable certainty that changes how they walk into a room.

That absence — the unanswered question — is almost always what's underneath the "but."

Seven Years In The Wilderness

I want to be honest with you about my own experience here, because I think it matters.

I have spent 25 years in music. I have performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Glastonbury, the O2, punk venues, folk festivals, corporate stages and cult venues that only a few hundred people ever knew existed. I have worked with touring artists, recording acts, and industry professionals across rock, pop, reggae, punk and related genres. I have coached singers at every level of the industry.

And for seven years — in the middle of all of that — I said those four words.

I loved singing. But.

I knew how to perform. I didn't know what I was here to say. And the industry offered no roadmap out of it — because the industry, talented and driven as it is, was not asking these questions. The craft was being refined. The deeper thing was going unexamined.

Finding my message — my real, specific, embodied artistic message — took years. And when I found it, something shifted that I hadn't anticipated.

Not just in my career. In my life.

Knowing your message as an artist is not just the foundation of a sustainable career. It is the source of resilience. Of longevity. Of the kind of presence in a room that makes people stop talking and start listening.

My relationship with my voice with music, with the industry completely transformed. Instead of doubting myself and believing external success, I began trusting my inner voice and building from self-trust. The industry's inevitable noise and chaos and shifting trends — all of it became navigable from a place of settled clarity that none of it could dislodge.

That's what I've spent the past three years helping other singers find.

You don't have to take as long as I did.

Three Singers. Three Different "buts."

I want to share three stories with you. None of these singers are identified — but each of them will be recognised by someone reading this.

The singer who carried a fear for years.

This singer came to me with something she'd held for a long time. Not stage fright — something older and quieter. A deep, settled belief about herself and her security as an artist that had formed early and operated underneath everything since. She'd resisted building a career, playing a cameo in her own life. She couldn't see any other way keeping herself safe, unseen and fully secure while singing. Her lack of fulfilment left her depressed, bereft of purpose. A ship without a rudder.

In one session, that shifted. Not because of a technique or a framework or a set of exercises. Because we went to the source — the exact moment that belief had formed, and the truth it had been obscuring ever since.

What she found on the other side wasn't confidence. It was something steadier than confidence. It was clarity.

The singer whose voice had been working against her for decades.

She was experienced, committed, technically trained. And she was fighting herself every time she opened her mouth — years of ingrained physical habits and compensations so familiar that she'd come to believe they were simply how her voice worked.

They weren't. They were trauma patterns. Learned, layered — and entirely reversible, once you understand the source rather than just the symptom.

We didn't drill exercises until the habits changed. We went to the root: the physical pattern, and the emotional and energetic pattern underneath it. When those two aligned — something she'd been fighting for decades simply stopped being a fight.

This is not what they teach at music college or conservatoire. This is the work that happens after the training — and makes the training finally make sense.

The singer who knew exactly what she needed to do — and couldn't make herself do it.

This one is perhaps the most common. She wasn't blocked creatively. She wasn't lacking in talent, direction, or understanding of the industry. She was circling the action she needed to take, week after week, finding increasingly sophisticated reasons not to take it.

What that pattern looked like from the outside was procrastination. What it was, underneath, was the fear of being seen and judged — of putting something real and specific and irreplaceable into the world and having it found wanting.

She didn't need more information. She didn't need another marketing course or another branding framework. She needed someone to hold a mirror with clarity and care — and then hold her accountable to what she saw in it.

Real challenge. Real accountability. Real movement forward.

In every case, the work was never about the surface. It was always about the source.

What Becomes Possible When The Question Is Answered

I want to paint a picture of the other side — not as a sales proposition, but because I think serious artists deserve to know that this territory exists and is reachable.

When a singer knows their message — genuinely knows it, in the body as much as the mind — several things change simultaneously.

Their relationship with the audience shifts. They stop performing at people and begin creating an experience with them. The transaction becomes a communion.

Their relationship with the industry's noise changes. Rejection no longer destabilises - becomes information. Because the thing being rejected is not the whole self. It is one response to a clear artistic truth that remains intact regardless of the response.

Their longevity changes. The artists who build careers that outlast trends and setbacks and the industry's inevitable chaos are not always the most packaged or the most strategic.

They are the most present. The most sovereign. The most completely, unapologetically alive to what they came here to say.

A superstar is an artist who lives completely true to themselves — without compromising their truth, their values, or their personal integrity. That artist is undeniable. In any room. At any level.

The size of the room, it turns out, is irrelevant. The completeness of the person in it is everything.

The Question, And What To Do With It

So. What is your message as an artist?

If you can answer that question right now — clearly, specifically, with the kind of settled certainty that lives in the body rather than just the head — then you already have the foundation that everything else is built on. Keep building.

If the question doesn't yet have your full, certain, embodied answer: that's not a problem. It's a starting point.

The work of uncovering it is not mysterious, though it may be unfamiliar. It is structured, personal, and — in my experience of doing it with artists for the past decade — one of the most significant investments a serious singer can make in their career and their life.

I've built a programme specifically for this, designed to uncover your artistic identity from the inside out — your vision, your purpose, and your message for the world. What I call your Artist Fingerprint™: distinct, inspired, and impossible to imitate.

Because it was never constructed. It was always there, waiting to be uncovered.

The first step is your Vision Session — 75 minutes of deep work - the beginning of the most important conversation you'll have about your career.

And if you're not yet ready for that — follow this conversation. Stay with the question.

Because the "but" you've been carrying? It has an answer.

It always did.

Carrie Griffiths is a vocal consultant and artist development mentor with 25 years of professional experience working with touring artists, recording acts and industry professionals. She is the founder of the Secret Vocal Academy and the creator of the PRIME Artist Accelerator™ and the Artist Fingerprint™ framework. She works with emerging and established professional singers internationally. secretvocalacademy.com