Out shopping the other day, I heard a Cher song being played in a store, and then later heard another one I didn’t recognise but was fairly sure it was hers as well.
I remember thinking that it had to be Cher because she has this distinctive voice that is also rich and fruity, sort of roundy and deepish. Since I know little at all about music, I didn’t know the technical term for that sort of fruity vocal style / range / tone [?], but I would expect there is one.
And I’m also sure this is the right bunch of people to answer my question. Over to you.
In Opera, she would be described as a contralto; the deepest range for a female vocal role. I think that’s the extent of any formal description. Informally, adjectives like yours are as good as any others.
I hope this isn’t thread shitting, but I’ve always referred to it as “bleating goat”. I grew up idolizing Cher and watching her tv shows and movies so believe me, I love her. The thing I like about her least is her singing voice, though. Here’s Jack McFarland’s take on it
Common wisdom used to be that Cher had a great voice and Sonny did not. But you could play some songs like “I’ve Got You, Babe” and a lot of people couldn’t identify which voice belonged to who. I like Cher’s voice, but I think her greatest talent is choosing really catchy songs that are perfect for her vocal range.
I find it amazing that we can recognize and identify voices so well without seeing the person. That there’s so much variety and unique differences in vocal patterns and that we have evolved to detect and correlate them with other individuals. It’s just kind of mind-blowing.
I grew up with Sonny and Cher. I liked their songs, I watched the TV show every week, I loved her dry humor. I thought she was excellent in Moonstruck.
And I am here to tell you I will never forgive her for popularizing Autotune.
So much of human evolution took place before we had significant nighttime illumination, identifying friend or foe in the dark must have been a strong survival trait.
Well, I’m not sure since the entire question is about what are more conventional adjectives used to describe voices. It didn’t seem appropriate to use wine terms - the days of describing her as a cheeky and flavourful white are long gone.
I guess what I mean by “a lot of people” is me and my high school punk band. We were rehearsing a cover of “I Got You Babe” and when vocals were assigned the shorthand of Sonny or Cher verses it led to mayhem. I just checked out the video below. The bridge is easy to differentiate for me but the first two verses is a tossup to my ears.
I can appreciate her a bit more now, but as a child watching the Sonny & Cher Show, I never understood why they kept referring to them as singers. I seriously thought it was the joke that they weren’t singers. Even at 5 years old, I could tell what “off key” was.
Yeah, I would bet that a lot of autotuning done on Cher is just to keep her on pitch - she tended to sing a bit flat. And Sonny was not much of a singer.
