The vocalist for GROUPLOVE - wow, does he suck!

Cafe Society
1

A few weeks ago, the local “alternative rock” station played a song in which the vocals were so horrible, we had to start changing the station every time the song came on. The lead singer just cannot sing.

The song in question is “Itchin On a Photograph” by GROUPLOVE. The lead singer on this song (almost everybody in the band is listed as a vocalist) is Christian Zucconi.

Here’s another song with him on lead vocals. It’s not quite as grating.

Their best known song is Tongue Tied. It’s actually OK - mostly because he is not doing the vocals by himself.

There are definitely “interesting” sounding vocalists that I like - such as Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse. But Zucconi just annoys me.

What do you all think? Am I just getting too old to listen to this stuff, or does he sound like nails on a chalkboard?

2

Never heard of them before. . . but I didn’t find his vocals to be that bad on the first link. But, I haven’t heard them play live, obviously. But, these days, the only real way to determine if someone can sing or not is to see them live. . . and even then it’s not exactly a given.

3

They’ve had 3 hit singles on my local alternative radio station. I think the most recent is the worst for the reasons you stated. I don’t know that his vocals were any better on their first song that got a lot of play- “Colors” I think it was called, but they were less noticeably annoying.

4

he can sing way better than I can. honestly it sounds more like the vocal melody he/they chose is one that’s hard to pull off cleanly.

5

Doesn’t bother me. I can see why it could, but it doesn’t.

6

Funny, Grouplove reminds me of a Modest Mouse ripoff.

7

Sounds like a dozen other singers. Nothing distinctive – good or bad – about his voice at all.

8

They remind me more of Passion Pit (or, at least, “Tongue Tied” does).

9

He’s my husband’s cousin.

I don’t know if he would sound good singing ballads or something, but I like Colours and Tongue Tied and the way he sounds in them. Their concert was the best-attended of our free summer concert series here in Providence.

10

I can see how some people would find his voice grating, but I think it’s alright. It seems to work well for more expressive parts of the song.

11

Our local radio station KDWB has played Tongue Tied a few times, but not recently. You might recognize it from last year’s Apple iPod commercial (see iPod Commercial ).

12

This is what I thought as well.

In regards to the OP, in that first song linked, the singer sounds a little off-key to me. That could be intentional, though, as part of his whinny style.

13

It’s definitely stylistic, but I can’t tell if it’s his style or a stylistic choice in pitch correction. He doesn’t stay out of tune on any long notes, and goes out of tune on certain words. The slide is just so noticeable that there’s no way it’s not intentional.

He’s pulling off something I wish I could pull off, actually. I love going a little out of tune on blues notes, to add flavor. But I always just sound like I’m going out of tune. I kinda hope it is an editing thing.

On Tongue tied, they’re using that 60s effect that always sounds out of tune (and makes it hard for me to listen to anything in that time period.) It’s this fake stereo effect that creates this phasing effect that sounds very similar to when a unison is out of tune. You know, like those beats you hear when you are tuning a guitar and it’s still just a little bit off.