Cody Simpson Says a Vocal Cord Hemorrhage Has Forced Him Into Silence and Canceled Shows

Cody Simpson has been forced to pull back from his music campaign after revealing that he suffered “a serious hemorrhage” on one of his vocal cords, an injury that has already led to medical treatment, vocal rest and the cancellation of TV and radio appearances.

The Australian singer shared the news on Monday, May 11, saying he had initially intended to keep the situation private. “I originally thought I could keep this private but it’s come time I share what I’ve been going through,” he wrote, posting a selfie that appears to have been taken in a doctor’s office lined with CDs and signed music plaques.

Simpson said the problem began more than a month earlier, after he pushed through what he thought was ordinary fatigue while singing in the studio during a sinus infection he did not know he had. “Assumed it was just fatigue and kept showing up to the studio until one day I could no longer sing,” he wrote. The result has been a stop-start recovery, with Simpson moving in and out of vocal rest for weeks while trying to avoid anything more serious.

That has put a strain on the rollout for “Baby Blue,” the single he released in March, and on the larger task of finishing his next album. “This has also affected my ability to complete the album and polish up the next singles,” he said, adding that he has now been prescribed another two weeks of silence in hopes of avoiding surgery, which would require a much longer recovery. For now, he says he is still working, just in a different register: writing with collaborators as a lyricist on mute and mapping melodies on guitar before eventually singing them himself again. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he wrote.

The update arrives at a delicate moment in Simpson’s career. His self-titled fourth studio album came out in 2022, during a four-year stretch in which he stepped away from music to pursue competitive swimming. Before formally retiring from the sport, he qualified for the 2022 Commonwealth Games and the 2024 Australian Olympic Trials, a detour that made his return to recording feel more considered than impulsive.

In March, BMG announced that it had signed Simpson in partnership with Range Music for future releases. At the time, he said he had spent nearly a year experimenting in the studio after his swimming career, describing the sessions as a chance to make something “new and fresh.” “Coming back to music I decided I only wanted to do it if I could go in and have the best time ever everyday,” he said then.

Now, instead of treating the injury as a private interruption, Simpson says he plans to share the recovery process with fans, many of whom responded supportively in the comments on his post. The complication may slow the momentum around his return, but it also underscores how fragile a comeback can be when a voice is both the instrument and the obstacle.

See Simpson’s post below.