Singers whose singing voice sounds nothing like their speaking voice

Cafe Society
1

Adam Levine
Bruce Springsteen

2

Jim Nabors

3

That’s the one that immediately springs to mind, although I assume that his normal speaking voice was a lot less extreme than his Gomer Pyle character.

4

Every death metal vocalist that has ever existed, of course.

5

Seems to me that “Lugs” in Stroker Ace is close to his normal speaking voice. I searching for that scene of him singing and Burt poking fun but couldn’t find it online.

6

Ozzy.

7

Sting.

8

Shirley Manson

9

I saw an interview with him where he said that although as as an actor he had trained himself to not sound southern, Gomer was just a slight exaggeration of his “normal” speaking voice.

10

Springsteen? I would have thought the topic was Singers whose singing voice sounds exactly the same as their speaking voice.

11

I am basing that on an interview I heard on NPR (Fresh Air) where I listened for at least five minutes before I realized who it was, out of context. If you hear him talk between songs at a concert (I have never seen him live) I suppose it sounds like his singing voice but in this interview, not at all.

I’m not going to put a line in the sand on this, I may be in the minority.

12

Tiny Tim

13

Frankie Valli singing and speaking

14

Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) - sings in a nasally, whiny tone. Actually has a fairly deep, more sedate speaking tone.

Slightly related: I always thought Steven Tyler from Aerosmith sounded COMPLETELY different in “Dream On” versus any other song I’ve heard from them. And it’s good, too!

15

Thanks for that link! Great tumble down memory lane!

16

Huh. I thought of him for a second, but I think his speaking voice is actually pretty close to his singing voice. There’s no “how does that guy make those sounds while singing” type of reaction from me.

The one that first comes to me, for whatever reason, is Steve Perry.

17

Dylan.

You listen to the Bootleg series and he speaks before the music starts and you go “Who’s that? The sound engineer?”

18

The Mongolian guy on The World’s Best.

19

Reaching back a bit, but the first person to come to my mind is Michel’le. Her big hit No More Lies from 1989 has both her speaking and singing voices on display.

20

Thanks for reminding me of that song :slight_smile:

My first thought, which has already been mentioned, is Jim Nabors. But, I think this guy probably qualifies.