Axl Rose - voice of a whiny punk. And I don’t mean punk rocker.
Eddie Vedder - blue-eyed soul dreariness. David Clayton Thomas not pleased.
Roger Chapman - Family vocalist and his vibrato squakings that sound like some poor duck getting taken advantage of by a swan.
Dagmar Krauss - just…oh my goodness.
Bob Dylan
Morissey - his vocals were so weak compared to his stage presence.
Yoko
Bonnie Tyler / Kim Carnes - sounding like they smoked six packs a day. saving worst for last…Perry Ferrell - that ridiculous voice is bad enough, but also hard on the eyes too. (SKEEVY).
Robert Plant. He’s either shrieking in a head voice, or crooning with an unremarkable delivery. If your dad can hold a tune, he probably can sing the non-shrieky parts just as well.
I’m not the only one who finds his “singing” voice an attack on the ear? I’m sure the guy’s at least as good a songwriter as most, but he needs to let someone with a halfway decent voice sing his works.
My picks not already listed:
Mariah Carey - super high sopranos are painful to me anyway (which is why I dislike opera), and her eight-notes-per-syllable showoffy vocal gimmicks make it irritatingly hard to actually make out lyrics. I know she doesn’t care about anything other than the showing off, but still…
Carole King - like Dylan, she’s an at least decent songwriter, but has an incredibly irritating nasal yowl of a voice
There is an (apparently) popular female hip-hop singer I hear sometimes on TV soundtracks and commercials and something about the sound of her voice just disgusts me in some indefinable way. She sounds like she is singing while tensing her throat muscles, like she is about to gag. (I don’t remember her name, IIRC in one of the commercials she’s singing about how much she likes money.)
Yeah, I get ya, despite me being the hugest Rush fan around '79.
Interesting - never quite realised that. Indeed, good songwriting - I thought “Tapestry” was super good. And not just because of the cat on the front cover.
I’ve said this before here: It’s the 21st century, why can’t we order up songs with à la carte personnel?
“Hellooo, I’d like to order some Rush with Freddie Mercury on vocals… and all of YES with lyrics by Joni Mitchell… I’m okay with Jon Anderson’s voice, but this way he’ll be singing lyrics written by a bona fide poet.”
Two “singers” I hear with annoying frequency while shopping: Kelly Clarkson and Whitney Houston. Ms. Houston actually was a fine singer. Unfortunately she too often shrieked, a malady shared by Ms. Clarkson.
I actually found Geddy harder to listen to later in his career than earlier. It was probably six months after I bought it that I was finally able to get through all of “Clockwork Angels” (Rush’s last album) in one sitting.
My nominee for this thread is Natalie Merchant. I know she’s a good singer but something about her voice just bugs the crap out of me.
Lots of annoying singers already on this list, but Yoko is in a category of one. Speaking personally, though, Sting and Rod Stewart. I find Sting’s voice thin and watery, but what kills it for me is how my BIL used to talk about how beautiful Sting’s voice is. As for Rod Stewart, my FIL calls him the greatest balladeer of his time. Gag.
Anyone with a unique voice or style gets a pass from me (even Yoko). It’s the people who are clearly aping another singer that bug me like the innumerable Sinatra clones (Michael Bublé, Harry Connick Jr.. etc.)
Whitney Houston’s style is like a guy on a high powered motorcycle sitting at a red light and revving it up higher and higher. She has no nuance, just an on/off switch
Why are all of you misspelling Anthony Kiedis, the Red Hot Chili Peppers singer, who can only slide up and down to notes rather than simply find them directly?
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