Soul singer Gladys Knight says she will ease into fewer performances

Gladys Knight is cutting back. The 82-year-old singer posted a statement on Instagram on Thursday night, August 27, telling her 540,000 followers that she has been thinking about it hard. "After much soul searching I've decided that I will be easing into fewer performances," she wrote, describing a move into the next stage of her career and life.

She said the time would go to projects with her husband and to visiting her grandchildren, and thanked the audience that has followed her, in her phrase, across three quarters of a century. She was also careful to close off the obvious reading: this is not a retirement announcement, and she still expects to be seen on the road.

The timing was not accidental. The post went up hours after TMZ reported that fans and people working on her tour were alarmed at her being on stage at all, with sources describing the situation in blunt terms.

The concern comes from footage. Clips from recent concerts, including a July date at the Hollywood Bowl with Smokey Robinson, have circulated widely and appear to show Knight wandering the stage, turning away from the audience, missing cues and stepping aside while her backing singers take lead vocals. In one, she waves off a backup singer trying to bring her back into the song.

Her husband and manager, William McDowell, has answered the reporting directly rather than through a statement. He told TMZ that she has good days and bad ones, and that continuing to perform is her own decision. He would not claim she is well, he said, but singing is what she wants to do. He denied that she has been diagnosed with dementia and said she would undergo a medical evaluation soon.

This is not the first time it has been raised in public. In 2025, while Knight was on the Queens Tour with Chaka Khan and Patti LaBelle, her son Shanga Hankerson said the schedule was detrimental to her health and that McDowell was pushing her to perform. Knight denied those allegations at the time. Stepping back is being negotiated in public elsewhere too, as when The Weeknd reversed course on retiring his stage name, while her Queens Tour co-headliner Chaka Khan has kept releasing new music. More is on the rnb-soul hub.