A Great Big World&x27;s Chad King Reveals the &x27;Scary Moment&x27; His MS Symptoms Became &x27;Impossible to Ignore&x27; (Exclusive) Jack IrvinTue, April 21, 2026 at 7:51 PM UTC 0 Chad KingCredit: Shervin Lainez Chad King of A Great Big World released his debut solo EP The Road Ahead on Friday, April 17 The project explores his experience living with multiple sclerosis following a 2007 diagnosis King tells PEOPLE about adapting his creative process to accommodate his condition and how he hopes to release a fulllength solo album soon Chad King isn't giving up.
A Great Big World's Chad King Reveals the 'Scary Moment' His MS Symptoms Became 'Impossible to Ignore' (Exclusive)
Jack IrvinTue, April 21, 2026 at 7:51 PM UTC
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Chad KingCredit: Shervin Lainez -
Chad King of A Great Big World released his debut solo EP The Road Ahead on Friday, April 17
The project explores his experience living with multiple sclerosis following a 2007 diagnosis
King tells PEOPLE about adapting his creative process to accommodate his condition and how he hopes to release a full-length solo album soon
Chad King isn't giving up.
The A Great Big World musician, 40, released his debut solo EP, The Road Ahead, on Friday, April 17, and the four-track project finds the artist exploring his experience living with multiple sclerosis through vulnerable lyricism.
King was diagnosed with MS while attending New York University in May 2007 and ignored the autoimmune disease for more than a decade, including through the success of A Great Big World's Grammy-winning signature hit “Say Something,” until its symptoms caught up with him.
Chad KingCredit: Shervin Lainez
He's taken a step back from touring and relearned how to create music in a way that suits his condition, including a new approach to playing the guitar. The result of his journey is The Road Ahead, King's first solo project that allows fans into his world.
King sat down with PEOPLE to discuss living with MS, how his diagnosis affected A Great Big World, creating the new EP and why he wants to make a full-length solo album “as soon as I can.”
PEOPLE: How do you feel about sharing this very vulnerable new EP, The Road Ahead?
CHAD KING: I'm really excited about it. For me, it's capturing this moment when multiple sclerosis symptoms started to affect me and my world. I couldn't walk the same, I couldn't sing the same. And I was like, okay, I still want to write music. And so, these were the songs that I wrote and then was able to capture on recording. It's only four songs, but for me it was like, this is what I could do in the time I had. And I'm really proud.
PEOPLE: Why did now feel like the right time to not only release a solo project, but open up more about your journey with MS?
KING: I was starting to see my physical body decline and start to change. I got nervous — what if this progressed, and what if I didn't have the ability to record and write songs the way I wanted to? I was feeling under pressure. I was like, okay, I need to do this now before it's too late if that is the trajectory of this thing. It was such an interesting process, because the tools that I had to work with are changing. The soundscape you hear is limited, because that's all I have to work with right now. I couldn't sing the way I used to, so I didn't try to, because I just physically couldn't.
Chad KingCredit: Shervin Lainez
PEOPLE: Can you take me back to learning about your diagnosis in May 2007? How did you come to discover your condition, and what was your initial reaction?
KING: It was senior year of college, finals time — a really stressful time. I remember being on a walk with my friend and his parents. It was an afternoon walk, and I remember my legs buckling out of nowhere. And then probably a week later, I started getting tingles on my hands and legs, and neurological symptoms started popping up that I was scared of. But after a few weeks, those symptoms passed, and I was fine. A few months later, some more symptoms would pop up, but then they would go away. I did get it checked out, and a few neurologists told me I had MS, but it never really affected me. I was still able to tour and perform. So, for years, I was kind of fine. It wasn't until the pandemic when all these symptoms started to affect my walking, singing and guitar playing. That's when it was like, okay, I can't ignore this anymore. MS is here, and I have to deal with this.
PEOPLE: You and Ian Axel of A Great Big World met at NYU. Did he know about your diagnosis when you formed the band?
KING: I met him in 2006, and then we formed A Great Big World a few years later. It was such an exciting time creatively that I didn't want to have to look at my own health. And so, I didn't. He was going through it with me, and I was reassuring him that everything was fine. And for 10, 15 years, it was totally fine. And then it got to a point where Ian was like, "Okay, Chad, this is something you got to look at." And that's when I really did look at it.
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Chad King and Ian Axel in May 2025Credit: Leon Bennett/Getty
PEOPLE: The band had a ton of success, especially with “Say Something,” which won a Grammy Award. What was your experience like getting into the big leagues of the music industry knowing what you were going through?
KING: For me, it's always been, how do I manage this? I'd been managing for quite some time and doing what I thought was a pretty good job. I was hiding it from the rest of the world. In the moment where “Say Something” was at its peak, we were moving on to another single and doing a performance on a live morning TV show. There was a part where I started singing, and my speech began to slur. It was the first time I ever experienced a symptom like this, and it was on live TV, and it was a really scary moment. I thought I was doing such a good job of managing these symptoms. And I was just like, "Oh, okay, I can't ignore you for too much longer." But again, I didn't experience that again after that for a while. These symptoms would come and go until they were a little more permanent.
PEOPLE: When did you accept that playing live was not something you could do in the same way?
KING: I really started looking at it when we were doing a live version of our album Particles. I was singing one of the songs, and the producer was like, "Chad, we're not getting it. I think you should come in here and hear what you're doing." I went into the control room, heard what I just recorded, and I was shocked. I was like, "Wait, that was what I just did? No way." It sounded so off to me, and it was. I wasn't singing the notes correctly. It really scared me. That was a little before the pandemic, and it was right around then that I also started feeling weakness in my left side more, and guitar playing became a lot more difficult. It was impossible to ignore. I didn't know how touring was going to be the same. I didn't know how performing was going to be the same, and so I had to accept that it wasn't. I felt like my whole life was music in this way, and then it wasn't. That was the scariest moment.
PEOPLE: This EP was written through a lot of journaling. When did that start for you?
KING: It all started when these physical changes were happening. MS is a very lonely disease. It can feel like you're the only one going through this. No one knows what this is like. I didn't know how to talk to others about it, so I just journaled and wrote songs about it. “Change is Hard” was one of the first songs I wrote, and it was my path to accepting and embracing this new version of myself.
PEOPLE: This EP will certainly give listeners some insight into your experience and even educate them on life with MS.
KING: There's a song called “All in Time,” and that song literally came because I couldn't play guitar, but I really wanted to write on guitar still. I figured out I had the strength in two of my fingers to be able to push down two strings. So, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to push down these two strings, and then I'm going to write a song based on that." The first couple lines of that song — “My hands are not the same, my voice is not the same, these days are different for sure” — I was like, “I'm just going to write from this place of complete honesty, because I don't know what else to do." I would love to connect in a way that allows people to know they're not alone, as much as they feel that they might be.
PEOPLE: From where you are now, how would you describe your outlook on life with MS?
KING: There have been a couple of points where I've realized I was resisting and fighting, and that is so much harder than just accepting and embracing. One of the fights for me was my resistance to using a walking aid to get around. And there was a day I finally accepted it and said, “What if I accepted this walking aid to help me? Because it's only there to help." Once I did that, the whole world opened up. I could see the world. I could live again. The weight on my shoulders, I could let go of that. That was an amazing moment. I would rather lean into what feels good instead of trying to be something else.
Chad KingCredit: Shervin Lainez
PEOPLE: What do you think is the biggest misconception about living with MS?
KING: That we can't do things. We are totally capable, and there's so much that we can do. I had a friend who was really impressed that I pulled off this video shoot for one of the songs on the EP, and he's like, "I didn't know you were capable of all that." And it was just an interesting moment where I realized people might not think we're capable, but we're totally capable. We may have symptoms, but we can absolutely do things.
PEOPLE: In addition to this EP, you recently wrote the music for the musical adaptation of R. J. Palacio's 2012 book Wonder with Ian. What are you looking forward to in the future?
KING: Wonder just went up in Boston, and that went incredibly well. Me and Ian are writing another musical that I can't talk about yet, but I'm really excited about it. In terms of next steps for this solo stuff that I'm doing, I would love to turn this into an album. That's a dream of mine. I would love to do it as soon as I can, because I don't know what these symptoms are going to be like in a year from now or a week from now.
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Source: Entertainment
Published: April 21, 2026 at 11:09PM on Source: RED MAG
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