Tori Holub is a young singer who recently started making short videos, mostly for her own amusement, replicating the Carpenters’ vocal tracks with her singing all the vocal parts. Her voice is uncannily similar to Karen Carpenter. Check out this cover – rather, a full blown-recreation – of “We’ve Only Just Begun”.
Fil is quite impressed.
Indeed. Several Youtubers had the same reaction. Fil backed his up with Science.
Damn! As a long-time Karen Carpenter fan, I would be hard-pressed to tell you whether that was Karen or Tori singing. I’m going to have to check out the rest of her videos.
It’s not that impressive to imitate someone else’s voice, especially if your voice is already similar.
I guess there’s nothing wrong with copying how someone else sings, lots of people do it whether it comes naturally or not, but I think it’s creepy and off-putting, and I wouldn’t pay money to hear her mimic another singer in a concert. I wonder how the original Carpenters’ band members feel about it.
WOW. It’s so good that I was thinking she was doing a lip sync to the real KC.
Wow. I still suspect it might be a hoax. Color me skeptical.
She performs some songs on her channel that were not by the Carpenters, and her voice sounds similar in those. I mean, I suppose it could be a voice clone, but I doubt it, and it doesn’t seem worth the effort to suspect she might be lip syncing a track performed by some other person who happens to sound a fair bit like Karen Carpenter (at least not if you doubt the semblance could be so close)
anxiously awaiting for a link to your videos
A painter has to be technically skilled to create a convincing art forgery but that doesn’t mean it’s worthy of respect.
Elvis Presley impersonators come to mind.
Thanks for bringing this singer to my attention. She has a wonderful voice. I do believe that it requires considerable technique to be able to sing similarly to Karen Carpenter.
It is understandable that she uses the comparison to Karen Carpenter to draw in views and attention, but she appears to use this mainly as a stepping stone for getting new material out. It does look like she has a genuine love of the 60s-70s sound of The Carpenters, which suits my tastes just fine. Her social media show that she also sings The Beatles and Olivia Newton John, among others.
I don’t have any problem with efforts like this; in classical music it is perfectly fine to attempt to emulate past and present virtuosi in order to learn and improve technique, just as it is normal to perform older music.
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The “Hekking Mona Lisa” sold for 2.9 million euros ($3.4 million)
A short story (“fake documentary”-syle) by Jorge Luis Borges:
Nonsense. As I alluded to earlier, if it’s not impressive, let’s hear your version.
Karen Carpenter’s version is a second-hand cover, does that mean you are not impressed with her version either? It was first used in a bank commercial (Paul Williams singing - and co-wrote) then officially released as a single by Freddie Allen. Richard heard the commercial and asked Paul if The Carpenters could use it.
The Carpenters made the song their own and didn’t simply try to copy the original. Which is what distinguishes good covers from bad ones.
If I was going to invest a lot of time in developing an artistic talent it would be to produce something that is true to myself, not to do parlour tricks.
She’s great. She doesn’t have quite as rich a low register as Karen Carpenter, but it’s very close.
And props to her backing band. It is not easy to exactly match the mix and playing of an original song, but they nailed it.
Karen Carpenter wasn’t a songwriter, and she was just an average pro drummer. Her talent lay solely in her voice. So if another singer comes along who can match the quality of that voice, that’s great. I hope she has a long career.
If she really were the new Karen Carpenter she would also have to be a bad-ass drummer.
Agree. She’s young she will find her own style and voice in time. Many great singer got their start by imitating their heroes. Merle Haggard imitated Lefty Frizzell early on. Even the great Gorge Jones as ALLMUSIC writes:
“Early on in his career, Jones imitated the singing style of his idols, people like Williams and Lefty Frizzell, but he eventually made a conscious choice to forge his own signature vocal style.”
Tori Holub is a great singer and that is a fantastic cover.