Chrissie Hynde, Stevie Nicks, Aimee Mann
I’ve never quite understand the high esteem that a soprano voice is held in, to the detriment of lower female voices. Is it just because sopranos are rarer and harder to maintain? I hope I’m not offending anyone, but I much prefer to listen to female singers with low voices because I can understand what they’re singing–female singers singing soprano sometimes sound like screeching cats.
Lower than just about any female singer I know, and one of the only female singers I know who could be named in this thread AND a “Female singers with very high voices” thread:
Happy Rhodes
Exclusively low song:
Beat It Out
Very low and very high song:
'Til the Dawn Breaks
Several others, all showing her range:
Happy Rhodes song samples
(She knows I share her music, and is ok with it. I’ve been doing it since 1988.)
Your opinion is actually shared by many. A lot of people prefer voices that are closer to the normal speaking range of frequencies. I know a lot of people who even prefer musical arrangements that consist of instruments that also fall within the regular human vocal range (like a viola sounds “friendlier than a violin,” cellos are “sexy” because they are in the lower range).
Joss Stone
I’m surprised noone has yet mentioned Joan Armatrading.
Diamanda Galas will scare your voice into submission.
**Marian Anderson **was arguably the world’s greatest contralto.
Alison Moyet.
The late, great Nina Simone.
Nina Hagen.
She does both growling low and screeching highs, and has a very distinctive style and voice.
Isabel Sanford.
Surely she’s sung something in her life.
hangs head in shame…
Oh… Oh…, please, please don’t tell Sniffs_Markers! She has been a Joan Armatrading fan for years and years. Armatrading is one of Markers’s greater musical influences.
Don’t tell Markers I didn’t even think of Armatrading. She’ll beat me with a guitar string!
k.os – Hagen can do some astonishing things with her voice! Her mom was an opera singer and Nina got lotsa classical training too. The stuff she can do is truly amazing.
Otep, though she screams a bit more than she sings.
Joan Osborne.
Cassandra Wilson. Man, what an amazing voice. Nina Simone as well, of course. And Liz Phair, but she sort of talks more than she sings, or at least she used to.
I’m not sure why soprano is the most desired female range, but I know that I wanted to be one when I was younger. It took a long time for me to get comfortable singing in my regular voice, which is a fairly low contralto. Even then, my voice teacher was always pressuring me to sing up in soprano range. I think it’s just because low voices are not seen as being feminine.
I will say, though, that I don’t think sopranos are rarer than altos. I think the ability to sing at the extreme end of the vocal range, be it low or high, is rare.
Earl Jean McCree of the Cookies. Sang background for Little Eva-“The Locomotion”- & on Turkey Trot(1962) sang BASS. Deepest female voice I ever heard. BTW, the Cookies did the original “Chains”-done later by the Beatles. The Cookies made the Beatles sound like rank amateurs.
That’s the first person I thought of. She defines “low female voice”.
Mercedes Sosa has a huge, beautiful voice.
Nina Simone’s “I Put A Spell On You,” is a great example.
And no one’s mentioned Judy Henske? “'Til The Real Thing Comes Along,” really moves MY lower register, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
I would characterize Ferron’s voice as gravelly and quiet more than “low”, but I agree completely about Ain’t Life a Brook. I think I like the second version on Still Riot more than the original, even though it’s not quite as gut-wrenchingly depressing.
Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star has a quiet, sultry voice.
Lisa Germano has a deeper, occasionally more unearthly voice.
Both great.