I’ll second Josh Groban, although I’ve mentioned him in prior threads, so I didn’t here. My favorite of his being “Higher Window”
José James and Emily King are both amazing singers
I think his rendition of Strange Fruit is special
Not exactly “these days” though…
How about…
Look up the YouTube channel for Postmodern Jukebox. They use a lot of great singers and the performances are live and not auto tuned.
Brandi Carlile has a nice voice too.
I’m a big fan (as you can tell by the singers I linked above).
I meant to play two other songs by Sia.
The first song I ever heard by her was this one…
She is mesmerizing.
“Ripped off”? No more than she’s “ripped off” Tori Amos…
I recently had the privilege of attending a production of Das Rheingold in Seattle, featuring the great Greer Grimsley as Wotan. He’s been the undisputed best Wotan on the international opera scene for quite some time, and though I’d never heard of him before, I was blown away by the visceral experience of his booming vocals. It takes a special kind of talent to be able to sing so that thousands of people up to a hundred feet away can hear you clearly without amplification, and he’s got it in spades.
Here’s a Youtube video with 719 million views, Pentatonix, an a capella group doing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. I know that number of views doesn’t automatically mean quality, but I love their voices and harmonies https://youtu.be/LRP8d7hhpoQ
And @smapti 's post reminded me of a great bass-baritone, Bryn Terfel: https://youtu.be/j615j-OKQNg?t=39
I don’t have very many chances to listen to current singers either. Basically I hear two songs by one artist most weeks when I watch Saturday Night Live (and I am only occasionally impressed by them), and sometimes YouTube will show me an interesting singer (and I don’t subscribe to anyone’s channel but just let YouTube show me things based on what I’ve watched before). That’s how I learned of Eva Cassidy and Allie Sherman. Another singer I think is now great is Connie Talbot. I heard her performance of ‘Over the Rainbow’ which was done when she was 6 years old on Britain’s Got Talent. Yeah, she was not yet a great singer at that point, of course. On the other hand, I found myself thinking, if Judy Garland did a very good version of it and died when she was 47, and Israel Kamakawiwoʻole did an even better version of it and died when he was 38, and Eva Cassidy did a brilliant version of it and died when she was 33, what’s going to happen to Connie Talbot? If she continues to improve, at some point she will do an even better version of “Over the Rainbow” and promptly keel over dead on the spot.
Another example of how there are great singers who almost didn’t get discovered at all is Susan Boyle. She was sort of the opposite of Connie Talbot. She was just short of 48 when she sang ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ on Britain’s Got Talent. The judges and everyone in the audience were stunned at how good she was. They all thought something like “How has she gone so long without being discovered?”.
Repeating myself a bit, but the thread about Great Covers of a Song has a -lot- of hits for this thread, including Josh Groban, Pentatonix, and a bunch of quality, but sometimes only “internet famous” artists.
My wife drug me to a Michael Buble concert last year. Not a fan of his music but he has to be one of the best crooners out there today. He is pretty funny too.
This thread makes me realize I have not been to the opera for a while. Who is today’s Pavarotti?
She should have gone to rehab. Great song, though.
The truth is, great vocal ability isn’t rare. My kid took vocal lessons, and at his class concert there were several singers who could have held their own on American Idol, just from one class in one school. I saw a cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Great Gig in the Sky’, a couole of years ago and a local singer just blew the roof off the place, easily matching the original vocals which were amazing.
The popular singers that ‘make it’ need something else. On American Idol it’s often a sob story or some oher uniqueness factor. Women often also have to be attractive to get noticed. Songwriting ability helps, as does connections to famous people or money. There’s also a luck factor, and an ‘it’ factor which can be hard to define. Charisma, star appeal, a certain look, whatever.
This is why there are so many ‘engineered’ pop stars It’s easy to find people with a good voice, then you can mold the other stuff around them, get Max Martin to write them a hit, dress them in sexy but ‘empowering’ clothes, yada yada.
Yeah, great singer, great song, true story. Unfortunately.
j