The last thing pop stars need is singing ability

Taken from The Guardian: "The last thing pop stars need is singing ability"

"[H]asn't it always been the case that the last thing great singers need is actual singing ability? Yes, there is an elite of gifted singers - picking three at random, Jeff Buckley, Tony Bennett and Dionne Warwick - who have used their ability to quickstep up and down the scales in the service of genuine emotional potency. But, generally speaking, accomplished singers with amazing pipes ... make dull, pretty, emotionally lifeless music. They are capable technicians, but they have no verve or spirit. ...

"Give me a singer whose voice has character rather than one who can hold a note every time. Billie Holliday's tormented grasping after some elusive hurt; Robert Wyatt's cracked, broken teacup of a voice; Billy Bragg's open-hearted bellowing; Nico's exhausted dead-eyed delivery; Shaun Ryder's hard, guttural, raging-at-God pronunciation; Alexis Taylor's earnest marshalling of the little-boy-lost notes at his disposal; the range of Bjork's idiosyncratic theatrical delivery. These are the voices that I find exhilarating - those which sound not just novel but which achieve some emotional honesty.

"Indeed, there's something about these "singers" getting up on stage and letting rip, knowing full well that they're no Britney, never mind Whitney, which, of itself, is moving. They are naked. Vulnerable. Incapable of hiding behind vocal showboating, struggling, in many cases, to hold a tune. Yet they have to sing. They connect, in spite of their deficiencies."

Full article here: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/03/the_last_thing_pop_stars_need.html

I like this way of thinking! :D

Jersey Jack
(Naked and vulnerable, struggling to connect)