A recent comment in another thread by misterioso regarding my usually intense dislike of any “football anthem”-style song by The Jam (eg, “Billy Hunt”) got me thinking about singers I usually like who nevertheless have a certain vocal range or affectation I consider a “danger zone,” an area that usually saps their vocal superpowers, or at least my ability to enjoy their singing voice. Paul Weller sounds like he’s vomiting mud whenever he sings one of those hooligan chant songs. I’m curious to hear whether you share my feelings over the following singers’ vocal range or affectation danger zones, whether you find other zones to be hazardous to your enjoyment of their voices, and whether you want to identify another singer you like who has a a clearly dangerous vocal range of affectation.
As an example of what I’m talking about, although I will not include this singer in my list, because he’s got too many danger zones for my tastes, as soon as David Bowie slips into his “Anthony Newley” voice (eg, “Stay”) I’m most likely lifting the needle. To my ears, that is an incredibly unpleasant vocal affectation from a frequently enjoyable singer. He has other vocal affectations that have been known to spoil the party for me, but that one is really annoying.
Another example is Jim Morrison‘s voice almost any time he tries to “rebel yell.” For a guy with a deep, manly voice, he’s got one of the worst rock yells in history. Listen to him try to exhort his bandmates into a solo on “Break On Through” or “L.A. Woman.” I am willing to give Morrison plenty of rope, in part because he’s so unintentionally funny, but it’s sad hearing him attempt to do a rebel yell. Another rough-voiced singer who suffers from this weakness is David Johanssen. He can push it so far on those New York Dolls records and sound pretty good for a guy with a lousy voice, but push it one step too far and he sounds as phony as he would in any of his future performance guises.
Following are a few singers I like a lot so long they stay clear of their danger zone, at least as I hear it.
Paul McCartney: One of my favorite rock singers, but nothing turns me off to a Beatles song like the “Sammy Davis Jr.” voice Paul wheels out for his lamest crowd-pleasing rockers. “She’s a Woman,” my least-favorite Beatles song of all-time, is the best example of this prime offense.
Debbie Harry: Call me old-fashioned, but I usually don’t like her “tough-chick voice,” as employed on otherwise decent songs like “One Way or Another.” I feel like she loses any pleasing vocal tones her limited vocal range afford her. If I don’t feel like I can make it to the cool tough-talking coda in that song I usually lift the needle to the next “dreamy” voice Blondie song.
Elvis Costello: Any song in which he overenunciates, a habit he fell into on many of the otherwise strong songs on Blood and Chocolate. Enunciation and rock ‘n roll usually find it difficult to coexist.
Iggy Pop: Almost any song on which he sings in a deep Bowie-like croon rather than the high-in-the-throat midwest snarl exemplified by his performances on the awesome Fun House.)
Mick Jagger: One of my favorite rock singers gets a lot of shit from me for him and his bandmates’ forays into “blackface” performances, but for Jagger specifically it’s actually his attempts at singing in a “sincere” voice that are most likely to turn me off: “Lady Jane”…”Angie”…
I really don’t mind personally, but I think that Ray Davies’ voice might be a turn-off to people when he goes in the “cute Cockney” mode like in “Art Lover”
Roger Daltrey’s latter day overly enunciated sing-speak voice “.. and I look pretty crappy SOMETIMES!”
YES! I was trying to think of whether there was another example beyond “My love is VENGEANCE…” or whether I just hate the song “Behind Blue Eyes.”
Yeah, I was thinking about the super-fey voice he puts on for “She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina.” Along the “cute Cockney” lines, you’ve reminded me of an atrocious affectation for an otherwise highly enjoyable singer: Steve Marriott. Oh how I can’t stand his “cute Cockney” voice that’s all over Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake! I find him more annoying than Davey Jones on that album.
It took me years and years to warm up to this song for precisely that reason. I tend to blame Pete, now, actually. He was guilty of the same sort of thing all over All the Best Cowboys (which I nonetheless mostly like).
100% in agreement with every example so far.
I would add Jagger’s falsetto and Ray Davies’ posh voice (“Dedicated Follower of Fashion”) to the list.
Viv Stanshall’s affectation of a black voice has always left me feeling extremely uncomfortable – although probably the effect he had intended, it doesn’t show his humour in the best of lights.
Love Mick, love the Stones, love the song, but wish Mick hadn’t gone to the farcical over-bearing country bumpkin durr-awwwwl for “Far Away Eyes.” Couldn’t he have put half-a-heart into it like he did on “Dead Flowers”?
aloha
LD
I find Steve Marriott’s cockney preferable to Ray Davies’ cockney, but Bowie’s cockney is worse.
This video demonstrates cockney as it should be done http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8kRNMyvkAw&feature=related
Completely understandable point of view, although I find myself chuckling at “Far Away Eyes” because it’s so over the top while only tolerating his hillbilly voice on most other songs of that ilk, “Country Honk” probably being my favorite of those performances.
First of all, you’re wrong about Debbie Harry.
Secondly, I would nominate Joey Ramone in the latter years doing his Heavy Metal voice. Like on Somebody Put Something In My Drink. http://youtu.be/nBFdvcF7auY
1. Bruce Springsteen has two bad voices – his bovine bellow and his straining-on-the-toilet “intense” voice.
2. Prince’s falsetto on songs like “Kiss”. He’s no Smokey Robinson, that’s for sure.
I think the Ig’s Bowie-like croon works pretty well on songs like “Night Clubbing”.
(except for Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, obviously)
I got two things to say about that video: 1.) I am greatly intrigued by the passive indifference with which that performance is met by the young audience. I could understand many different responses, but that one is a head-scratcher. 2.) I would rather watch that 20 times in a row than the version of “Pictures Of Lily” Oats so thoughtfully posted yesterday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8FGoArdRmU&feature=related
i was gonna say i don’t like when Barry Gibb tries to sing like a cowboy…..but i just listened to it and i DO like it!
That’s magic! It reminds me of the converse of this thread: singers you typically don’t like who you actually like better when they sing in an unexpected voice. Back when I hated Robert Plant, for instance, it was a revelation to hear him occasionally sing in a lower, rockabilly voice. Same goes for Michael Stipe when he does that Elvis Presley line in “Man on the Moon.” Same goes for Freddie Mercury when he does “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Maybe all singers I don’t typically like should just sing in a ’50s voice.
Speaking of singers in an unexpected voice, here’s Jon Anderson of Yes in a guest-vocalist role for King Crimson on the 1970 Lizard album. He’s singing in an unusually low register atypical of his Yes work. Fripp apparently asked Anderson to become KC’s fulltime vocalist but Anderson decided to stay with Yes – a smart move in that Yes began taking off commercially not long after.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQcUV3X_UFk
I forgot about that guest stint!
Take the over enunciation and add extreme earnestness and you have a whole crop of 80’s singers. To me, the major offender is the (Reverend) Jim Kerr. But you could add Bono, Ian McCulloch, the guys from The Alarm and Big Country. What was it about the 80’s that brought that out in them?
I’d missed Oats’ clip, I’ve now watched it. Daltrey seems to have been enjoying rather too many clips of mid 70s Bryan Ferry.
Top of the Pops was a peculiar beast. Kids would go on a waiting list for tickets, stand around half of the day doing not very much and then spring into action dancing to whoever had been summoned at 24 hours notice (the charts came out on a tuesday, TOTP was filmed on wednesday afternoon). Given that the charts at that time included singles by Bryan Ferry, the Commodores, Andy Gibb, 10CC, the Stranglers, David Essex, Meat Loaf, the Jam, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Blondie, the Ramones, Leo Sayer, Rose Royce, ABBA, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, Buzzcocks, Ramones – all of whom were liable to jet in to appear on the programme – it’s not entirely unlikely that a bunch of teenagers presented with two septuagenarian comic actors doing that in front of them might have led to the sort of emotion I felt when I had to leave to get the last coach home halfway through Pink Floyd’s set at the ridiculously late running Live8 having endured Sting, Madonna, Mariah Carey and sodding UB40 earlier in the day.
I think the ‘dancing’ can be put down to seething resentment that they could have been watching anything else but that. It was very rare that a performance on TOTP could be directly blamed for a record plummeting out of the charts the next week, but this one did so. The only other one which springs to mind is New Order’s execrable live version of Blue Monday, (although conspiracy theorists may wonder if this was done because they were losing money on every copy of the record sold due to the elaborate sleeve).
I add Roger Water’s “Dad Lecturing You” voice.
And to add to Misskir, 80’s under-enunciator Simon LeBon. What’s up with that tic where his voice goes down a notch at the end of a line?