Linda Ronstadt has been known as one of the most talented singers of our time for decades. That’s why it came as heartbreaking news when she revealed in a new interview that she can no longer sing at all due to Parkinson’s disease.

Ronstadt skyrocketed to fame in the 1970s, a decade in which she won and was nominated for many awards from entities including the Grammy Awards, Academy of Country Music Awards, Country Music Association, Tony Awards, and Golden Globe Awards.

Ronstadt gave her last concert in 2009, and it wasn’t until 2013 that she told the world that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In a new interview, she admitted that her voice first started to go all the way back in 2000.

“I’d start to sing and then it would just clamp up. It was, like, a cramp,” the singer told reporter Tracy Smith. “My voice would freeze. And I said, ‘There’s something wrong with my voice.’ And people would say, ‘Oh, you’re just a perfectionist.’ I go, ‘No, there’s really something systemically wrong.’ And it’s very slow-moving, this disease, so it took a long time to really finally manifest.”

Ronstadt made the difficult decision to give up performing when she concluded that her voice was no longer pleasing to the ear.

“I was just yelling. Instead of singing, I was just kind of yelling,” she explained. “I didn’t want to charge people for that … I could hear it. It wasn’t any fun anymore. You know, singing is … there are really a lot of things you can do with your voice; you can slide on all different sorts of textures and things. And if you’re not doing that, it’s not interesting.”

These days, Ronstadt can’t even sing in the shower at home.

“I can sing in my brain; I sing in my brain all the time,” Ronstadt explained, “but it’s not quite the same as doing it physically. You know, there’s a physical feeling in singing that’s just like skiing down a hill, except better, ’cause I’m not a very good skier!”

“I mean, I’m 72. We’re all gonna die,” she added. “They say people usually die with Parkinson’s. They don’t always die of it, because it’s so slow-moving, so I figure I’ll die of something. And I’ve watched people die, so I’m not as afraid of dying. I’m afraid of suffering, but I’m not afraid of dying.”

Though she spends most of her time at her home in San Francisco, she tries to keep herself busy.

“I can’t spend very much time on my feet, or even very much time sitting up,” she said. “I have to kind of lounge around. But I’m lazy, so it’s a good thing that I lounge! So, I’m glad to have the leisure time. I have a huge stack of books that I need to read.”

Watch her full interview below.