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Baritone boom or falsetto trill?

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Just the sight of the Supertramp post set my teeth on edge a bit, and left me wondering why that was. ‘Logical’ and ‘Breakfast in America’ are good pop songs*, but particularly the former is something I can only take in small doses.

And then it occurred to me. It’s the Alvin & The Chipmunks/Pinky & Perky/ Father Abraham & The Smurfs factor – falsetto.

Like the Bee Gees & Yes, falsetto (or high tenor) voices are not my thing. I mean, not completely not my thing – I love The Communards, Prince singing ‘Kiss’, though they might be because of the presence of Sarah-Jane Morris, and that Prince can sing in pretty much any register.

But generally speaking, those are the exceptions to the rule – baritone is what I love to listen to – The Sisters of Mercy, of course; Ian Curtis; Nick Drake, Bowie, Springsteen, Elvis even. And that goes for female singers even more. I adore the dark notes of June Tabor, Nina Simone, the warm tones of Norah Jones, Karen Carpenter.

I’d dip down happily to the bass register for Leonard Cohen or Michael Gira. But the higher up the vocal range I listen, the less content I am.

How about you? Do you have a preferred vocal register? Or are you a musical omnivore?

*I’m sure there are others, but I can’t think of any. Also, no offence intended to those who like Supertramp.

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Comments

  3. It’s interesting to know that the Bee Gees’ trademark falsetto only happened when they recorded Nights on Broadway – their 13th album.

    What’s more interesting I think is that they liked what it did to that song – and then decided to do it all the time.

    • Bit like ELO and their falsetto backing vocals – first appeared on “A New World Record”, it does boffo sales, Jeff puts two and two together, and we have to put up with ’em every release thereafter.

      • I had it mind that ELO were one of the pack of high voiced pop acts, but as I steer clear of them completely, I don’t have any experience to draw on. But it fulfills my confirmation bias needs, thanks!

  4. You’d have to be some kind of hater of music and all things groovy not to like this.

    Marvin Gaye – Got To Give It Up

    And Mick he has it to deploy to great effect.

    Stones – Just Wanna See His Face

    • Paint me as black a music hater as you like, DF. The groove is unmistakably great, Marvin Gaye’s vocals leave me wanting far less. Nails on a blackboard time.

      6 years ago, I did a series of blog posts on Exile On Main Street tracks. I was more complementary then than I feel now. A horrible murky mess, relieved only by the vocals being buried so deep below the drums.

  5. High voices? You’ve gotta love a good countertenor!
    I saw this guy live once, about 12 years ago – Philippe Jaroussky.
    Here he is, having a go at that old Händel chestnut, Lascia ch’io pianga:

    • Absolutely beautiful – makes me feel like I am in a Peter Greenaway film.

      Not pop though, so it doesn’t count according to my ludicrously contrived rules of musical prejudice.

  6. Allowing for your rules being “ludicrously contrived”, Sal: do you differentiate between singers with a high tenor/alto head voice (usually high but smooth sounding) and yer actual falsetto (high but sometimes fake-sounding, sometimes grating, sometimes painful to hear)?

  8. I’m not a falsetto fan, generally. To Fitter’s point, I’m happy with high voices in full voice but falsetto generally grates on my nerves, which may explain my aversion to Prince, who I find unlistenable. A fried of mine is a huge Lewis Taylor fan and bigged him up for ages to the point where I was probably expecting too much – when I actually heard him, it was generic modern soully faux Prince and I lasted about 10 seconds per track.

    • In a nutshell.

      On a related note: I don’t think Roger Hodgson is singing falsetto – I think he has a high tenor head voice. Same with Jon Anderson – although he’s got a high alto head voice. BeeGees definitely falsetto, Prince probably falsetto but maybe not all the time, Wee Jimmy definitely falsetto.

  10. I don’t know, you rotters. I drop heavy hints that I want a thread full of baritone big hitters, and, apart from Retro, you flood it with lots and lots of trebly warblers. The AW is clearly a highball haven. I know when I’m beat.

    • Simply magnificent. A stately, magisterial voice, nicely counterpointed by piercing violin and underpinned by sinister rhythm guitar. Lots of understated drama in this one.

    • Well, whatever you think about him, you must have posted this for a reason. And if was a good reason. It’s a song that draws you in – roll away, sail away, far away – with the incessant high note keyboard tapping, and the bass rumble. It’s a slow burn classic in my book.

    • I’m so pleased the falsetto flag is still held high on this thread – the invitation was for both ends of the frequency to be represented by those who love them. And I may yet learn the error of my ways. But not just yet.

    • And there was wonderment on the off-the-record thread about why The Doors aren’t a band for all time. The instrumentation on that was quite intriguing but the vocals, my goodness!, all over the place. Sorry, but why? Just why?

        • Sorry. Thats the risk of my threads. I don’t mean to trample on your soul. Maybe, just maybe, and it’s only a maybe, if you can explain why and what you like about it, my doors of perception will be wiped.
          As you can see, in some cases I am instantly wowed. Generally a panglossian, sometimes it takes a little longer to guide me to the pearl in the shell.

          This is the second time I feel I’ve offended you on this thread, Diddley, and I’m sorry. There was no malice intended. It could just be that our musical diagrams just don’t Venn very well.

            • If anything, I’ll try again for Ray, Robbie and John.

              I have a lazy theory that The Doors produced classic first and final albums but went off on a jazz odyssey in between. Another is that The Doors were a good psychedelic band with a serviceable hired hand out front, tolerable as long as he didn’t dig out his ‘poems’.

              In these, like in Diddley’s River song, it’s the music that impresses, not the singer.

            • It’s probably those ‘sensibilities’ of mine that FS refers to below. I’m glad you held up a big sign marked ‘joke’, so I could tell the register of your comments. As you say, without the timbre of the voice or the accompanying body language, it’s hard to tell if someone’s tipping the wink or being a miserable, cantankerous bugger.

              It’s de rigueur on these pages to slag off the NME/MM inkies, but I used to enjoy the tirades from the likes of Mr Agreeable and Steven Wells, also the witticisms from Andrew Collins, David Quantick and Stuart Maconie, the latter now gratifylingly having a permanent seat on Round Britain Quiz.

              Maybe there’s a place on the blog for a post where every song referenced, every video posted, gets a complete shoeing, but also possibly not.

              I hope we can continue to disagree agreeably about music and maybe one day we’ll find that one artist, even that one song that we both adore. Then we can go skipping off into the sunset!

              • No, no, no.
                It’s de rigueur on these pages to praise the NME to the skies, to describe it as the style bible by which our correspondents (in their teen years) defined their outlook on hairstyles, footwear, which music was in or out, which genres were proscribed – and were able to read lots of vicious prose slagging the “style offenders”.

                It’s only “style offenders” (like me) who slag off the NME on these pages…very much in the minority, I suspect.

    • Smog, isn’t it? Hmm. Never heard before but know the name.
      That is resolutely gorgeous.
      The cello. And the violin. And most of all the first star which is the drumming. More than any other instrument nurturing the voice and the tale told.
      I have to forgive the gimmick of the line added to, one word at a time, as otherwise it was so unobvious what was unfolding in the song that led out of his gullet so effortlessly.
      I think I’m in love.

  19. Richard Hawley. I first saw him solo opening the main stage at a Fleadh (Neil Young headlined*) and said to a distinctly unimpressed Mrs F “Crikey – it’s the guitarist from the Longpigs”. I much preferred his earlier stuff, and gave up with the one after Cole’s Corner, which features this:

    (*) I checked: 2001

    • I was there. Neil did a particularly ravishing and well received version of ‘After The Goldrush’, pleasing the stoners and the green contingent alike. My abiding memory was my only live experience of John Martyn, swollen fingers and all, though I was really focusing on Danny Thompson, who is of course a God.

      Richard Hawley has never really left much of an impression on me, but that was quite a performance. Solid playing throughout.

      • Yes, John Martyn was the most memorable set of a rainy day. According to a pal backstage, he was already quite under the influence upon arrival and had to use the car he’d arrived in as a prop to stand up.

        I heard but didn’t see most of Shakey’s set due to being unwell in a Portaloo, followed by a twitchy tube journey back to Cockfosters. An early appearance, a decade or so before diagnosis, of Crohn’s. Urgh.

  21. Why have falsetto when you can have castrato.

    Though for falsetto I suggest Martyn Jacques from The Tiger Lilies, I took an old friend’s daughters to see them I asked if he’d care to join us. “Only if they get a different singer” no pleasing some people.

    • Haley Fohr apparently has a vocal range of 4 octaves. Here she seems to be pushing her chords to the lower limits – perversely reminding me of Samuel Johnson’s misogynistic critique of a Quaker woman preacher that it was like a dog walking on two legs. The singing is impressive as a physical feat, but it feels like inertia is pulling her back to her more regular vocal level. There’s something of Diamanda Galas in her operatic throaty vocalisations.

      I like the Nico considerably more, as it reminds me of her flat, Teutonic contributions to the first VU album. It’s a style that suits her.

      The 60s veteran who really impressed me recently was Marianne Faithful, whose version on La Belle Dame Sans Merci was the absolute highlight of the whole ‘Desire’ CD swap, courtesy of EL Hombre Malo (even though he wasn’t thinking of the Desire theme when he selected it).

        • What an extraordinary vocal talent Lisa Gerrard has, and such an artist in drawing from and combining multiple music styles in her catalogue from across Europe and beyond, and from multiple time periods. The first time I heard her (Aion), I knew this was something special, something beyond mere pop or alternative/post-punk/goth – sounds from a cold stone cellar of sound. WIki says 3 octaves, but what does it know?

          Listening to her keening voice now makes me wonder if she ever sang with Sinead O’Connor – they could have made an awesome racket together.

  24. Back to the question in the OP: ‘high’ wins every time for me: Neil Young, Jeff Buckley, Jim James. I’ve got quite a high singing voice myself, and I’ve noticed my favourite moments in songs are the bits I struggle to sing along to – like the choruses of ‘All of My Heart’ by ABC, ‘It’s My Life’ by Talk Talk and ‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing’ by Stevie… or the whole of ‘Rock With You’ by Michael Jackson. The blissful wordless coda of ‘Dear God (Sincerely, M.o.F.)’ is, to my mind, the greatest moment of recorded music ever… unless it’s Michael Stipe hitting his very top register during ‘Country Feedback’.

    For me it’s soulfulness, it’s sensitivity, it’s not being afraid to let your feminine side show. It’s why I’ve never got on with Springsteen’s macho grunt, Dylan’s gruff sneer, or Cave’s stentorian ‘the lecture begins now, pay attention’ tones… although I love bits of music by all of them.

    In my heart of heart I know there are less obvious and more subtle ways of conveying feeling than to leap into a high-pitched yodel, but these tastes were coded into me at a young and impressionable age and it’s too late to stop now.

  27. I’m an omnivore, with a special place in my heart for higher registers – you can’t be a disco chick if you don’t love a falsetto!
    But just as I wouldn’t paint with only half of the available colours, I enjoy listening to all kinds of voices, as long as the singer avoids a few pet peeves of mine (not keen on nasal singers, like Neil Young, not keen on “potato mouths”, like Heather Small or the lead singer of Swedish – thankfully retired – band Kent). But otherwise love a weird, quirky voice and tend to lose interest quickly in singers with “good voices” (Whitney Houston etc).
    Prince is a favourite, and he’s often going seemlessly from falsetto to lower tones, which is extra delicious.

    I assume that you enjoy the voice of Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner – or is his singing style too strange for your taste? I love their older albums but have stopped buying the new ones, don’t enjoy them anymore. Here’s two of my older favourites:


    Something’s Going On


    Slipped Dissolved and Loosed

    • Thanks, Locust – as you asked me about Kurt Wagner, I should reply. It’s not for me – sedate and hidden behind the guitar, I quickly got very bored. It didn’t take me long, by contrast, to hear beyond Neil Young’s nasal whine – in fact I think it goes rather well with some of his guitar chords. And although M People did seem to produce slick music for executives, I was quite fond of her unique voice.

      Each to heir own, thank goodness.

      • Indeed – although I have to say that Wagner’s voice isn’t why I used to like the band, it was the melodies and the quirky lyrics that did it. These days not even he himself seems to like his voice, judging by the constant use of vocoders (or similar) on his recorded voice on the latest albums! 🙂
        (His was just the lowest voice not yet mentioned on this thread that I could think of!)

  28. I tend to agree with the OP. The worst example of high voices is opera which I find almost unlistenable. I can put up with Joni Mitchell in her high register because – well, she’s Joni, and the songs are so good. To my ears the Bee Gees are just ridiculous. And that’s the whole thing really, it’s such an absurd sound that it’s only listenable when it’s sent up. Like all the tracks on one of my favourite albums

  29. No favourite pitch for me. I’m not much bothered by what register a song is sung in. Far more important is the quality of the song, whether the singer’s voice suits the song and if they sound as if they mean it when they are singing.

  30. Thanks for all your comments, views and clips, everyone! A few new voices for me to go away and listen to, and a confirmation to my existing bias against other singers.

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