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Watch ARIA-award winning singer Megan Washington’s moving talk as she reveals the reason behind her secret dread of public speaking
Australian singer-songwriter Megan Washington has spoken in intimate detail about her private struggle with a stutter she’s lived with all her life.
In a feature by ABC’s Australian Story, Megan opened up about how her number one fear in life is public speaking – a shocking revelation for someone who has lived such a public life as one of Australia’s best young singer-songwriters.
Indeed Megan, 28, has performed onstage at the Opera House and many times on stage in front of thousands of people – including at the 2010 ARIA Awards, where she also picked up two gongs for Best Female Artist, and Breakthrough Artist of the Year.
The news came as a complete surprise to many fans – including former Spicks and Specks host Adam Hills who’s had Megan as a guest on the music panel show multiple times. He told interviewers: “Looking back at either Spicks and Specks or even the chats I’ve had with Megan, at no point would I have even thought she had a stutter. So she’s clearly done an amazing job of disguising it.”
The Australian Story profile of Megan was prompted by the TEDx Sydney conference earlier this year (watch the video below) where she chose to break the news herself, on stage, and open up about her speaking difficulties because the topic of the day was language. “When I was told that the topic was language,” Megan said, “I felt that I had to speak about something for a moment.”
Megan sounded hesitant at first as she began to speak and the first hint of her stutter was revealed, but she went on: “I have a problem… it’s not the worst thing in the world… I know that other people in the world have far worse things to deal with, but for me, language and music are inextricably linked through this one thing. And the thing is that I have a stutter.”
“It might seem curious given that I spend a lot of my life on the stage. One would assume that I’m comfortable speaking in the public sphere… but the truth is that I have spent my life up until this point – and including this point – living in mortal dread of public speaking… Public SINGING however? Whole different thing.”
Megan on panel shows Spicks and Specks and RocKwiz
In fact Megan has appeared on television many times – on panel shows such as ABC’s Spicks and Specks and SBS’s RocKwiz, as well as countless radio interviews. Adam Hills said in the interview: “I’m really surprised to learn that she still has a bad stutter problem, because the amount of time I’ve spent talking to her. Wow, either I’m really not very attentive or she does an amazing job of dealing with it!”
Megan said that in order to get through all her public appearances – “when the economy of air time is paramount” –she employs a technique known as the “smooth speech” technique.
Megan said the smooth speech technique is “where you almost sing everything you say” and it clearly has done the trick for the public engagements she’s had in the past. Significantly though, as she said in her TEDx speech: “That’s not actually me, you know?”
Hopefully Megan’s edifying admission will help others who struggle with speech impediments that may be hiding in the shadows to embrace life and not let their difficulties hold them back. It seems that opening up proved to be a positive choice for Megan, as she posted this on her Facebook page last night after the show aired:
Watch Megan’s TEDx talk below.
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