Born with hearing loss and told repeatedly she’d never make it, Carla Franco just dropped her third studio album. The industry should’ve listened!
Cape Town, South Africa (30 April 2026) – South African alternative artist Carla Franco has just dropped her third studio album, A Funeral for My Grief, a ten-track concept record that walks through the five stages of grief.
Born with hearing loss, Franco was rejected from every choir she auditioned for, turned away from theatre productions, and told by major labels that her acoustic and alternative music would never sell. She launched her debut album at 16 to near-total industry silence. Her response was to keep going and to keep doing it on her own terms.
That commitment to her craft earned Franco a South African Music Award nomination for her sophomore album Layers. Now A Funeral for My Grief is doing all the good things!
The album was born from a difficult few years when Franco and her family faced multiple losses. But it was the end of a deeply personal relationship that became the creative spark. She wrestled with something many people feel but few talk about openly, that grieving someone still alive can be more disorienting than mourning someone gone.
Each track of the new record maps a stage of that grief. The emotional anchor is Alone in Purley, which captures a moment of abandonment in a foreign country and sets everything else in motion. Outside of two features, If I Wanted You with Sophia Frank and Finally with NTU2KO, Franco wrote and composed every track herself.
With dual citizenship and an EU passport, Franco has her sights set well beyond South Africa’s borders, taking local music to even greater heights, and wearing her hearing impairment with pride.
A Funeral for My Grief is out now. Go listen!
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