I can’t believe this thread has gone on for so long w/o anyone mentioning the rumors I had always heard:
Michael was the cutest and most popular member of the Jackson 5. As he grew older and puberty threatened–along with its expected voice changes–his father began administering estrogen to Michael in an effort to preserve his high voice.
So, Eve, the rumor (again, rumor) I had always heard was that MJ had taken female hormones while still young–i.e., not as a grown man, which you point out–and that interfered with the normal masculine development of his voice, keeping it higher-pitched than it might have been. Once he was on his own, he gave up the hormones, but the changes were already wrought.
Maybe he use to have a normal voice. There are people out there who start talking a certain way and they become use to it and it never changes back. For example people from other country’s who come to America as little children have accents but as they grow up they have a more Americanized way of speaking.
Once he gave up taking any estrogen, his larynx would have begun to develop from his existing testosterone, and his voice would have deepened. The only way for that to have worked is if he were castrated before puberty and given estrogen—but since he has fairly normal beard growth on what’s left of his skin, that’s out, too.
Jon Anderson of the rock group Yes. I’ve spent about 30-45 minutes sitting next to him, engaged in perfectly delightful conversation. ( Plus another 10-15 min backstage a few days later, after their show at The Beacon Theatre in NYC ).
His speaking and singing voice is incredibly high in the register. He exhibits the normal range of secondary sex characteristics. It’s not a put-on or an act. It’s simply how his vocal chords were post-puberty. In fact, his singing voice on average is MUCH higher than that of Mr. I Adore Small Boys And What’s It To You
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Presley explained: [Michael] was very real with me off the bat.
“He immediately went into this whole explanation of what he knew people thought of him and what the truth was.”
She continued: "I was always saying, 'People wouldn’t think I was so crazy if they saw who the hell you really are: that you sit around and you drink and you curse and you’re f*cking funny, and you have a bad mouth, and you don’t have that high voice all the time.
“It’s very strange,” she added. “There’s not a lot of people who he’ll allow to see who he really is - there’s probably only five or six people, not including kids, who have seen who he really is.”
Doesn’t he sound exactly like Janet to anybody else?! Seriously, they both have very high, very soft voices. I think if it’s just an act, he’s copying Janet.
Aaron Neville is a big, mean-looking dude with a really high-pitched voice. But don’t call his voice girly – call it “fearsomely soulful” like Rolling Stone does. No estrogen or affectation, here.
I can vouch for that (you know, in case anyone has the inclination to believe me over Toon). And Jon is quite delightful in person. But much, much littler than I expected.
Wasn’t there an audio clip floating around within the past year of Michael on satellite at (IIRC) an awards show, and he slipped out of character? You could clearly hear him say something like “Oh my god” and it was in a normal baritone register.
Maybe he’s got a small penis. Seriously. I know of no scientific data to back this up, but I recall in one of James Joyce’s novels, he describes a scene in a bar where folks are joking with a well-known baritone singer about a recent performance of his, and pointing out that because of his skin tight pants, you could tell that he was in possession of an exceedingly large member, and some of my gay male friends have informed me that men with high voices 99.999999999999% of the time have rather diminutive members.
Correlation is not causation. If this factoid is true, which I do not grant (he said, in his high-pitched voice), it probably points to an underlying cause for both conditions.
True, but saying his voice is high and squeaky because he’s got a tiny dink sounds better than saying that the genetic make up which causes a male to have a high pitched voice is also responsible for them having what some might consider to be a diminutive penis.
MJ can definitely summon a fairly low voice when the situation calls for it. Check out the song “2000 Watts” from Invincible. He uses a typical R&B-singin’-black-guy voice (much lower than we’ve ever heard him) and he doesn’t seem to be straining a bit.
Taking estrogen, even at an early age will not change a person’s voice. That’s why most transgendered people do voice-training.
A famous case in point is Harisu, a transgendered Korean pop-star. Although Harisu has been taking hormones since before purberty and looks /exactly/ like a female born that way, you can tell when she talks that she was born male.
This site details how most Transgendered people change their voice.
There are surgeries, but, as mentioned on the site, they don’t have very good sucess rates.
In Michael Jackson’s previous appearance in the Santa Barbara Superior Court last November, when a promoter was suing Jackson for backing out of a concert, he was as childish as ever on the witness stand, hooting and squeaking “eeeow!” several times into the microphone before his testimony, speaking softly during his testimony, folding his hands primly on his lap, and making funny faces for fans in the courtroom.
