I like some Top 40 pop, but there is a particular style of singing that grates on my nerves and I want to know if there’s a name for singing too far above one’s speaking register. 80’s band The Outfield Your Love, Fall Out Boy’s Sugar We’re Goin Down, Susanna Hoffs Eternal Flame all sound (to my untrained ears) as though the singer is in pain and straining to reach an octave that is just beyond his/her natural range. What is this called and do you trained singers enjoy this technique?
It’s not falsetto, is it? Because Timberlake’s and Michael Jackson’s voices don’t crackle or sound pained when they hit higher ranges.
I can’t get the audio for those right now, but I know what you mean. I hear singers trying to take their chest voice too high instead of transitioning to head voice, plus simply having way too much tension.
To me it sounds like bad karaoke or maybe that no one told the singer how strained and awful it sounds. But these songs and others like it are Top Ten and Number One songs on the charts, so I’m obviously not getting it. So are these singers on key? If yes, why do I wince when I hear them? Eternal Flame’s double whammy of Hoffs vocal fry and strained high notes make me angry, but the general public loves that song. So what’s wrong with my ears?
It sounds like it isn’t a question of whether something is “on key” or not for you, but rather the timbre of a person’s voice. It’s for a similar reason that I can’t listen to trumpet-heavy jazz–regardless of its performance quality or being perfectly on pitch or key, the sound of a trumpet is nails-on-chalkboard to me.
I also don’t like Eternal Flame, but to defend Hoffs a bit, her voice has mellowed and matured nicely with age.
Ah, that’s the word I needed. Hoping some singers will post and explain why someone would choose to “reach” for an entire song rather than using his natural range or saving the theatrics for emphasis or the chorus.
And I get your discomfort with trumpets, their gratuitous use reminds me of people who overuse exclamation points when writing. We get it, horn section, you’re excited about punctuation, but you don’t have to shout all the way through the song!!!
There is a link to an article/blog entry by an opera coach evaluating different metal vocalists - she discusses proper and improper ways to color your voice at high ends of one’s range…