Singer Fractures Neck After Headbanging During Concert

Irish singer-songwriter CMAT said she was “rocking out” so hard during a 2022 concert that she fractured her neck. The most disturbing part of the injury for the “Whatever’s Inconvenient” singer was that she did not immediately realize something was wrong. Her larynx later collapsed, and she lost her voice for weeks.

CMAT, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, told BBC Newsnight recently that she continued head-banging on stage, even after the injury. “Over the course of the entire tour, I was just fracturing it little by little,” she said. It came to a point that she could not ignore it because her larynx “collapsed,” she said. “It twisted and my voice box wasn’t closing together, so I lost my voice for a month.”

After the injury, Thompson told her fans her larynx was “in its flop era” and had “rotated and has slightly collapsed on one side.” She is thankfully “all healed” now and ready to get back on the road. She doesn’t plan to do anything differently, aside from getting a new hairdo. “I’ve cut my hair shorter. So hopefully that should help,” she told the BBC. “But I’ll probably be out there rocking out tonight.”

Thompson, 27, told fans on Dec. 31 that she was “watching about 10 films a day and living in a Wikipedia hole” while she was at home on full vocal rest due to her injury. She was inspired to come up with her own “Ten Cowboy Commandments” after watching Gene Autry movies. She called her version “The Cowgirl Cues,” which was a “collection of things I have realized on my travels this year, and a reaction to the problems I have felt around me currently.” 

Her inspiring and hilarious list included following your dreams, investigating things you are curious about, learning another language if you plan to be a writer, and taking breaks from social media. “Listening to yourself, truly listening to yourself, should be one of the hardest things you ever do,” Thompson wrote in one list item. “If it isn’t then you are probably listening to your ego or your fears.”

CMAT’s injury was not unusual for singers, vocal physiotherapist Nikki Franklin told the BBC. “We do see this kind of repetitive strain and injury with performance,” Franklin explained. She added that singers do “something quite unique for numerous shows throughout the year on repeat,” and that can take its toll on them.

“Singers are athletes in that small area of their neck, throat, and voice box,” Franklin said. “We see them using their bodies in different ways and putting a lot of strain on that area.” Franklin noted that this gradually builds up tension and microtrauma, leading to “something that breaks the camel’s back… or in this case, a singer’s neck.”

CMAT released her first album, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, last year. It topped the Irish Album Charts and Album of the Year at the Choice Music Prize, which honors Irish-born musicians. CMAT’s latest single, “Whatever’s Inconvenient,” was released in April. Her next album, Crazymad, For Me, will be out in October. Her current tour began in Cork on May 12 and she has more dates scheduled throughout the U.K. and Ireland this summer.