Can singing damage your hearing? Are there any singers in history who have gone deaf due to singing?

See a board-certified ENT doctor immediately. His audiologist will check your hearing at all the appropriate frequencies. Do not put your ears into the hands of amateurs, so to speak.

Whether you are a singer or not, you want to protect your ears and the delicate and miraculous mechanisms inside of them.

Singing cannot damage your hearing. Loud band music could though.

It sounds like you might have an ear infection. You need to see an ENT as @gailcalled says.

Singing alone is okay. the problem arises when you put headphones on your ears and have the music jacked up to the moon.

I should know. i was a drummer for many years in a very loud rock band. i could not hear the guys singing in front of me, so i went for the headphones. slowly, but surely, my hearing began to fade. i now wear hearing aids.

Singing alone or like in a chorus, is not damaging to your ears.

I would be on the lookout for ringing in your ears, popping noises in your ears, and when the birds stop singing to you. THEN, its time for a hearing test.

@john65pennington I definitely already have tinnitus. It hasn’t gotten to the point of making my life miserable yet, though. But, yeah, I get the whooshing, whirring and the high pitch stuff.

I’m pretty sure it’s not an ear infection, cause I get the pain only when singing very loud, sans headphones, and then it goes away.

I mentioned this to my ENT but he doesn’t seem to think there is anything to be done. He joked that I might be “allergic to music” and I wanted to punch him in the face.

I would get a second opinion! He sounds like an ass! I wouldn’t have thought this was normal…. As an ex-opera singer who can sing pretty loudly, this has never happened to me.

@rjb1983: What an unprofessional and inappropriate thing for your ENT to say. I hope you talk to another doctor.