Vocal Persuasiveness: A Survey

One trait of great pop vocalists (this, to me, is in fact their one true measure of greatness) is the ability to convince their audience that they have actually experienced what they sing about. This is often termed 'sincerity', 'soulfulness', and the like (though these terms somehow don't seem adequate). And though it does often happen that great singers "live the songs that they sing", many mediocre vocalists also have eventful personal lives, frustrating any correlation between life and art. To make matters even more confusing, the physical virtuosity of a singer's voice may distract from an inauthentic performance; by the same token, the inability to hit certain notes or to maintain a pitch is not always the sign of authenticity that it is on occasion claimed to be.

Since it is probably impossible to pinpoint what goes into making emotionally authentic vocal talent, it would be difficult to explain the common artistic traits of Hank Williams and George Jones, Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding, and others like them. What I will suggest is that the main problem that faces pop singers (apart from the physical challenges that singing inherently poses) is not so much one of vocalizing, but of acting. Great pop singers are gifted naturalistic actors, at least in musical performance terms. They create a vocal persona that is unmistakable (this persona may have common traits with the private personality of the singer, but is not interchangeable with it). They have a point of view that one would have difficulty describing in words, yet is fully elaborated and ever-present. For example, Sinatra could consistently portray a sense of personal failure and an inescapable feeling of apartness. He accomplished this (as do all great singers I can think of) by doing less with his voice, not more. When, in his later work, he began to lose his sense of restraint, his performances became less authentic. The genius of country singer George Jones lay in his ability to admit, as it were, to an inability to control events. At the height of his powers, he conveyed a dignified sense of injury as well as any other American singer, in any style of music.

The work of Sinatra and George Jones endures, in part, because in real life, one can not abide apartness, failure, and powerlessness. The accomplishment of these two singers was to have what amounted (in my opinion) to the artistic courage to embrace these experiences, so unwanted in day-to-day life, and yet omnipresent. In their artistic personae, they did not shy away from commonplace or otherwise undesirable experience, and we can't help but be arrested by that tendency.

To my mind, the self-abnegating tendencies evident in so many great pop vocal performances are much harder to find nowadays than formerly. The reasons for this are cultural, in my opinion. Self-abnegation is itself a notion that is completely alien to our contemporary mindset. As a corollary, true emotional vulnerability in pop vocal performance is also absent, again, for cultural reasons. What we value now is virtuosity and professionalism in pop singers.

But if singers are more consistently able than they have ever been, I think we have nonetheless lost out. To listen to radio stations such as WFUV in New York, and WPKN, based out of Philadelphia, is to expose oneself to a string of technically very competent performers who, for all that, are completely lacking in a distinguishing vocal personality. We once had singers who could live up to the well-worn phrase 'larger than life'. Many of our singers of today, at least on record or in live performance, seem a good deal smaller than it.

One does not wish to single out any individual singers, in light of what I have said above. However, some examples may prove illustrative.

As a physical instrument, Elvis Costello's voice is unequalled in contemporary popular music. Yet, I wish Lucinda Williams had chosen a duet partner other than him on her most recent album, on the song 'Jailhouse Tears'. The words in his part of the duet were simply not credible. Apart from the mannered quality of his singing, his musical point of view was that of someone who merely would wish to be the character in the song, rather than fully embodying that character. His part stands in somewhat awkward contrast to Lucinda Williams' performance, which in contrast to Elvis Costello's, was effortlessly convincing.

A few years back, a collection of duets with bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley was released under the title "Clinch Mountain Country". Instrumentally, the album is impossible to fault (as is so often the case with bluegrass on record). But it becomes a bit off-putting after a while to hear singer after singer strain for the authenticity that in Ralph Stanley is inborn. Dwight Yoakum, for example, is a very fine singer, with an obvious love of country music history. But his duet on this album he tried much harder than he had to; the twang comes off as a bit precious, however well-intentioned. So many roots-music singers seem to feel they must do what they feel is expected of them, rather than obey their own inner voice, if they are in possession of one.

You turn on the radio and tune it in to WFUV. The announcer states that Singer X has just released her 6th studio album. Though the previous five albums had gone unnoticed, as far as you were concerned, you lend your ear to the piece from Singer X's album that is about to be played.

When the piece comes on, you concede at the outset that Singer X has a voice that you would have to be quite churlish to show any objection to. It is polished, with the requisite bluesy inflections that are the sine qua non of the family of performers Singer X exemplifies. It does not come as a surprise that the underlying theme of the song is difficulty sustaining a satisfying romantic relationship. You notice that the melodic and harmonic sensibility, as well as the instrumental backing of Singer X bear a great deal of similarity to Singer W and Singer Y, whose songs you heard the day before, also while listening to WFUV.

While acknowledging that Singer X must have had a great deal of ambition and conviction in order to get to the point in her career where WFUV would make it a priority to broadcast her music, you nonetheless find it a bit hard to focus your full attention to her song, having been so much exposed to other singers with a nearly identical approach to lyric writing and musical composition. And though you feel ungenerous to harbor such thoughts, you must concede that though the song's subject is an intensely personal experience, the voice itself is, strangely, lacking in feeling. Finally, you acknowledge that while Singer X is, without question, quite talented, you will not feel inclined to explore her recorded output any further.

In our society, we have become far too intrusive ever to allow talent to develop by chance. In the case of popular music singers and musicians of all kinds (and possibly in the other arts as well), we have sought to take command of talent, develop and train it, set it on a course for success. The notion that talent might develop on its own, and might, through isolation, take on a supremely interesting form is one that is alien to contemporary thinking. As a result, we have a popular music culture that, however active it may be, is lacking in the vibrancy that it had formerly.