Singers Who've Lost Their Voice

Thread title Should be “...Voices” no?

It’s actually kinda crazy to me how affecting I find ferry’s fucked old guy voice

Lucinda Williams. She's always had that drawl/slur thing going on to some extent, but over the past four or five albums it's increased to the point where I can hardly stand to listen to her any more. A couple of years ago she re-recorded Sweet Old World and the difference in her singing from the original album is excruciating.

Waits is the rare performer who "found" the voice they're most commonly associated with well into their recording career.

Post-2005 Tori Amos.

Being a huge Echo & the Bunnymen fan, I've seen loads of discussions around Ian McCulloch's voice, and obviously I have to admit that he doesn't sing like he did in the 80's - up to and including his first solo album Candleland.
But his voice is still unlike any others and he changed his style to match it, he still does amazing things with it and, while it's not what you hear on those classic records, he's a treat to hear live.

Paul Banks

A notorious one : Maria Callas

Waits is cool because he spent most of his career trying to sound like a wise, bitter old hobo and now his voice fits the persona he was working on all these decades, so the older he gets, the - i don’t know if better, but - more organic his older material sounds when he performs it.

Thom Yorke has sadly lost much of his higher tones and he sounds like he’s whining more often than not when he attempts it. Vocals break constantly live when he has to go there.

The more he losses his voice the more he likes to use it as a texture or loops inside songs and it makes for a frustrating listen to me. There’s way too much whining and mumbling that wasn’t there or at least not as noticeable in his younger years.

He’s still a pretty great vocalist but I wouldn’t mind if he toned down the high notes and the mumbling.

Two singers who literally lost their voices:

Linda Thompson (though she eventually got it back)
Sheila Chandra

Sheila Chandra's story is rather grim, apparently the burning mouth syndrome means she can't even speak, let alone sing?

A rapper example (which is rare !) : the D.O.C.
It doesn't really fit the thread premise though since he didn't sustain his success afterward...

Shirley Collins too

xxp

DMC also lost-lost his voice (the D.O.C. in a car crash, DMC damaging his through shouting and alcohol), with Run forbidding him from performing on their last record & him switching to croaky blues gasping as a solo artist

Milli Vanilli

A sad case of someone whose voice is only a shadow of what it used to be, without finding a new style to match it (like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits): Stephen Stills.

Andy Bell from Erasure

Boy George

It’s actually kinda crazy to me how affecting I find ferry’s fucked old guy voice

― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Thursday, 4 July 2019 4:12 AM (fifteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah that cover of Johnny and Mary where he sounds frail and ancient is really special, def my favorite late-career Ferry thing.

I haven’t heard Boy George since Somebody To Love Me (nine years ago!), but he still sounded wonderful there, if deeper & not as liquid as his 1985 self

Xp In fact generally like rock voices cracked with age, my favourite parts of seeing Paul McCartney recently were the bits where he sounded like an old man. I like the honest sound of this pop cultural moment heading into its dotage.

Oh and Perry Farrell was the one that came to mind for me. Last time i saw Jane's he was doing a really good sleight of hand job but it was clearly not really there. He made up for it with showmanship and somehow suggesting his old voice and I think as an audience you sort of fill in the gaps. Occasionally he would really go for a crucial note. It must be super hard to no longer be able to do the thing that defines you, and i did feel for him a little having to put in such effort to even approximate his old performance.

Re : Ferry, yeah I love his jazz/big band stuff. arguably one of the peaks of his career imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2hzLpZftLQ

George Clinton!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQVaRudcClc

Compare and contrast :(( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCpWh8Yi9Uc

OMG

Ian Anderson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QeDpONKs0U

Walter White's flute skills have improved though

Johnny Cash might be considered in the same group as Waits and Cohen.

Life has been not surprisingly pretty rough on many of the old 80s metal singers voices.

Stephen Pearcy
Vince Neil
David Coverdale
Chris DeGarmo
David Lee Roth

Thing with some is that they get them healed or fixed and they do improve some times. Axl Rose voice was completely blown on some of those faux-GNR live stuff, worst I can remember was that clip of them playing one of those Bridge benefit concerts. Axl and Phil Lewis (of LA Guns) both seemed to have lost their voice and a few years later sound much better.

as much as I hate to admit it, kate bush (although it does give some of the director's cut covers an eerie feel)

I actually really like Kate's huskier vocal style from DC and 50 Words for Snow. Her voice has definitely changed, and she's adapted/developed her singing style, but I wouldn't say she's "lost" it. I also thought she sounded good (if a bit safe) on the live recording from Before the Dawn.

Morrissey. He made it work on Vauxhaul And I but when the songwriting went downhill there was not much to work with.

Comus is kind of interesting because Roger's voice changed completely, a different singer almost, not actually bad but most probably prefer his older voice. But Bobbie sounds exactly the same!
Please make more music!

Joni Mitchell makes a compelling case for losing your voice.

Morrissey. He made it work on Vauxhaul And I but when the songwriting went downhill there was not much to work with.

if only he lost his voice, maybe then he'd stop doing interviews

I thought the story with Joni was that she smoked like crazy specifically to *change* her voice on purpose.

Michael Stipe seems to have lost most of his once-wide vocal range by 2007 (when R.E.M.'s Accelerate album was recorded).

Geddy Lee’s voice has slowly deteriorated over the years and he became unable to reach the high notes of the earliest Rush albums. But then watch the concert video of the Clockwork Angels tour and he is visibly struggling to reach even the pitched-down versions of songs. It actually hurts to watch.

Hmmm. 2008:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0wsEzK-yJA

Pitch-y at first but he seems to settle into it

Those are pretty high notes. E5, F5?

Stipe sounds pretty bad in that 2008 clip and the RRHOF induction from the previous year, IMO

Andy Bell from Erasure

Man this makes me sad. I heard only a little bit of the latest album but it was autotuned to oblivion and I figured it was probably the case that his voice is gone

Chris Conley from Saves the Day was one of these, I think.

Re: Andy Bell. It’s not just the autotuning, it’s the way that he actually sings now - seems like something changed in his technique when he did the Pop Star to Opera Star TV show. Does make me a little sad to listen back to the earlier Erasure records and hear how good a voice he had.

I think Stipe's hitting an e4/f4 on "air". He struggles on the scale around A-C before getting back to being comfortable. Which feels like he's not getting a chance to breathe. One could say he's trying not to breathe.

literally!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioQLg5Aodjw

I looked at the source video expecting it to be some negligible thing that stupid youtube channel blew up into a thing but nah, he legit was nowhere near the mic and his voice came in at same volume. also I know what he sounded like 4 years before that clip was recorded and it...wasn't that good.

linda ronstadt, to degenerative palsy.