Meghan Trainor is 2016’s GRAMMY winner for Best New Artist. In 2017, she and Gayle King went on live television to announce the GRAMMY nominees. And in a recent interview with Zane Lowe on Apple’s Beats 1, she revealed that she was barely holding it together at the time.
“I had, like, a mental breakdown and I had panic attacks live on television with Gayle King,” she told the host. “I was reading the nominees for the GRAMMYs the year after I won and I was shaking and I was like, ‘Please don’t collapse on TV right now. We’re live.'”
She made it through the broadcast, but “as soon as they were like, ‘cut,’ I fell and started scream crying and couldn’t breathe.”
“And later, they took me away. I was supposed to do more work and they were like, ‘We’re done. This is it,’” She added.
She says her mental health struggles stemmed from health issues that arose after she released her first album.
“After Thank You, which was my last album… I met the love of my life. Everything was great. And I had vocal problems ’cause I was working too much,” she said. And all the pressure took its toll – she “finally collapsed physically and emotionally.”
“I had a lot of people tell me like, if you cancel on this 30 minute set, we’ll never play Meghan Trainor ever again. So I had everything. I had my Grammy, I had what people dream of for years,” she shared during the interview.
“So, my mind was like, ‘No I’ll keep going, I’ll keep going.’ And my body was like, ‘Bye.’ And my body had to tell me, instead of me being able to take a break,” Meghan continued. “Like, the saddest thing is, like, your whole team is in the hospital with you like, ‘Everything’s gonna be OK.’ And you… cannot speak. So I was alone with my thoughts for way too long and I blew up. I freaked out.”
She revealed that dealing with her vocal surgery and all the “crazy things happening” at the time led her to see a psychologist.
“I met so many doctors and I would just cry to them, and be like, ‘It’s something right here. Can you just fix it for me? Help me out,'” she said. “And finally I went to a psychologist and I said, ‘My back is burning, like, as if someone’s holding a torch to it. But I’m OK.’ And he was like, ‘OK, so what’s happening is your chemicals are like this and we gotta get them back here.'”
“And he gave me two medicines that I take every single day and it saved me. Saved my life,” she added.
Working on her latest album, Treat Myself, also helped her overcome her mental health struggles, sharing why she centered on self-love as the theme of her album. “Trust my gut. Believe in myself…I try to write my songs that are like, treat yourself, remember to love yourself. It’s all to me. It’s also all to my fans, but I keep listening to these songs and I keep having to remind myself. Like, baby girl, love yourself.”
