Maybe so, but do you think Bob or Rod’s parents would have had their kid sing the national anthem before a big crowd at the age of 11? And would they have done their kid any favors if they had?
I have no desire to insult a (probably) nice little girl, so I won’t. But if my son were comparably talented, I would not encourage him to do public appearances yet, if ever.
Wow. That is beyond impressive.
Why is Rod Stewart being cited as a bad singer? Dylan and Weir have their issues, but Stewart is fine. His cords must be aligned funky for him to have that rasp, but otherwise he’s fine…
Everyone has their dream. If she’s willing to put herself out there and take that blowback to chase her dream, it’s her call. If she’s being pushed, it’s tragic…
Beat me to it - Rod Stewart’s a great singer, with a raspy tone. And still going strong well into his sixties.
This is right on, as long as it’s tempered with a healthy dose of reality. You may want to be the world’s fastest person, but if you don’t have the tools to get there, it’s a good thing to realize that as soon as possible.
If you go to her website and listen to some of the songs there, she’s not untalented…she’s just gotten HORRIBLE advice from a musical training perspective. As in, I can guarantee she’s never had voice lessons. When she sings normally, she actually has a very nice sound. It’s when she tries to embellish that she goes horribly off key and sounds like she’s being stepped on. Her national anthem was horrible because it was ALL embellishment. Get that girl some voice lessons and stop singing crappy pop and learn to sing properly, and she’d actually probably be fairly decent. Not great, mind you, but she’d sound pleasant.
True that. Here’s her audition video for Idol. It is not bad.
Her dad said she was confused by the echoes in the stadium.
Now,this girlmay not be blond and pretty, but OHMYGOD can she sing.
When my daughter was younger, I was so worried she’d want to try out for xFactor or something and I’d be forced to admit she couldn’t sing…but she’s had the same guitar/voice teacher for the last 6 or 7 years and you know, that girl can sing now. She’s not a powerhouse like Whitney, more of a folk style voice like Tracey Chapman but she more than holds her own on Showcase night at school.
If in the end she REALLY can’t sing, she could still be a wicked guitar player or something
I realize now that in my caffeine-deprived state this morning, I misread the Dylan/Stewart post as being a slam on them and their kids, not about them and their parents. I know of Jakob Dylan and just figured Stewart had a kid in the music business. :smack:
Indeed it is, although IMO the girl in that link is possibly abusing her voice worse than the subject of the OP is.
An 11-year-old girl should not “belt” her chest voice in order to mimic the sound of an adult woman, whether she sounds good or bad doing it. It’s bad for the larynx.
A prepubescent girl’s voice is supposed to sound high and sweet: if she sounds like a grown-up, she’s probably misusing her instrument, and that can cause serious damage.
Yep, and she’s also an adult with a college degree, so she should sing like a grownup.
If you gave that song 90 seconds of your life, that’s more than a fair shake.
I agree that the Star Spangled Banner is hard to sing. But the requirements to being a good singer are to sing well, not sing better than your dad.
There is a difference between encouraging and plastering their failure on the internet for the whole world to see. You should always try to encourage your kid to do better, there is nothing wrong with that. This is more like public shaming.
I agree with pretty much all of this. I don’t get the sense that she’s utterly devoid of talent. That arrangement of the anthem would be displeasing to me under the best circumstances. That, and her professional website lead me to wonder if she’s being pushed into the limelight too soon. Or demanding to be let into it. Based on no real information, just my gut reaction I feel like her “I want to be a star” quotient is just as high or higher than her “I love to sing” quotient.
Why does an 11 year old need to be professional at anything? I watch America’s Got Talent, X-Factor, and The Voice. There always seem to be a lot of very young people auditioning. My very favorite response from the judges is “Please keep at it and come back in two or three years. You obviously have a gift. Go nurture it.”
So my answer to the title question is, No, it isn’t inherently bad to encourage a child to develop a talent that’s not presenting fully yet. From a parental point of view I feel like someone should have gotten in between her and that particular performance - another arrangement might have been perfectly fine.
As many know, I shoot video of the performances by the School of Rock and put selected songs up on my YouTube channel. Everyone in the Performance program gets to participate in the concert. Fortunately, I’ve only encountered two genuinely bad singers among the five School locations I shoot. I tend to avoid putting up mediocre singing - although the parents of one of the mediocre singers are among my best customers. They get their DVD with all the songs to watch in the privacy of their own home.
To their credit, the School tries to find things the mediocre sings can sing.
Where did I say that she had reached her goal of becoming a good singer? :dubious:
And yeah, the real horror show here is that she’s already playing dates at 11. If you’re not some sort of prodigy, there’s no reason to do that. Lessons and recitals are where she belongs at this stage.
Big crowd? It was a soccer game. 
I watched one and she’s not a bad 11-yr-old piano player. And give her another eleven years and she’ll be very pretty. Enough Autotune and over dubbing and she could be another __________. (Name left blank because I pay so little attention to current pop music that I don’t know which of them got big because of her looks and not her talent–I think it’s all of them. 
Let’s go with “the next Shelley Fabares.”)
Hey, I’ve played plenty of shows where I’d have been deeeeeeee-lighted to have a soccer game-sized crowd listening.
That may be true, but I don’t know much about the physical demands of that type of singing for an 11-year-old. I’m just speaking as a listener. A voice coach (perhaps you are one) would be better able to ascertain if she’s really straining her instrument or not.
Or the next Mrs Miller.
This.
It’s one thing to encourage a kid to learn to sing.
It’s another to focus on doing music for a living before acquiring enough skills to not embarrass herself as an amateur. Just another symptom of buy-now-pay-later America.
The media and the music industry have made so much money off the cruel myth that anyone can get ‘discovered’ overnight, even if no one who’s heard you so far thinks you’re any good.
And if this girl’s parents aren’t preparing her for a non-music career by making her keep her grades up, they’re doing even more damage.