{"id":251,"date":"2005-10-13T00:00:41","date_gmt":"2005-10-13T05:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=251"},"modified":"2026-01-01T20:35:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T02:35:43","slug":"entry-61","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"Favorite Music: Lead Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you\u2019re a long-time reader of Sliding Constant, then you might remember my last \u201cFavorite Music\u201d post<\/a>, which covered my love of vocal harmony. This one is about vocals as well, but this time I\u2019m going to share some of my favorite lead vocalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

First things first. If I know who you are, and you\u2019re interested in this post, then you need an email from me. Drop me a quick email referencing this post and let me know. Trust me. Just do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cresearch\u201d for this post ended up being a little bit harder than it was for the first one. There are lots of songs I like in my collection that have interesting<\/em> lead vocals. When I really started thinking, though, I realized a lot of them are favorites for some other reason, and the vocals are just kind of an interesting side note. I had a lot of \u201cfirst picks\u201d that I had to throw out because of that. I\u2019ll go ahead and warn you: unlike my vocal harmony post, I really don\u2019t expect anyone to be able to extrapolate much from these examples. Each one is so unique and distinct, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any real pattern to be deduced and learned from here. So, don\u2019t worry too much about figuring this set out. Just sit back and enjoy the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I might as well start with the one that will be the least surprising to friends. I know I\u2019ll take a ribbing for this one (hi, Stephen!), but I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention him. Dennis DeYoung<\/a> (formerly one of the lead voices for Styx) is a favorite from my \u201cformative\u201d years of music listening. For a pop music singer he has a fairly affected style, and he got slammed a lot for that. Basically, I think he always wanted to bring a piece of Broadway to their music. I\u2019m not a huge fan of musicals, but I always thought that he had a well-trained and expressive voice that fit especially well with the piano-driven ballads (a subject for another post) that he tended to write for Styx. Like him or not, you have to admit that his was a unique style (Lawrence Gowan<\/a> notwithstanding).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving on to another \u201cformative years\u201d artist, I have to throw in Stephen Tyler<\/a> for sheer whimsical value. Aerosmith holds a special place in my heart for many reasons, but the band just wouldn\u2019t be the same without Tyler\u2019s positively outrageous vocal style. I realize there are other names that come to mind for this same category (David Lee Roth, for instance), but for some reason I just get a smile listening to Tyler over-sell every syllable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I\u2019m going to talk about whimsical, how can I leave out Ric Ocasek<\/a>? The Cars<\/a> made an entire career out of how weird this guy looks and sounds. I wonder how many 80\u2019s fans can identify that voice in 2 notes just by hearing a sample of one of his \u201cuh oh\u2019s\u201d. Again, this is just feel-good music for me. I don\u2019t think I realized just home deeply Ocasek\u2019s voice was drilled into my brain until a friend had me listen to Eskimo<\/cite><\/a> by Corky and the Juice Pigs<\/a>. It has a quick style parody of Ocasek (and others). The recognition was instant, and I nearly split a seam laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving a bit more in the serious direction, the next artist on my list is notable for many reasons. I\u2019m actually coming to appreciate his songwriting quite a lot, but for now I\u2019m going to talk about his voice. Next up is former Eagles front man Don Henley<\/a>. I think I like Henley\u2019s voice so much partly because it just sounds so real<\/em> to me. It has an almost signature ragged edge that Henley uses to great effect. Now that I think about it, there are several names that I could slot in here for much the same reason (John Mellencamp comes immediately to mind). I think, though, that I like Henley because he manages to combine that \u201craw\u201d edge with quite a bit of musical precision. Raw though it is, it\u2019s a voice that\u2019s always under control. I think that particular combination has a lot of emotional power for me. For a really concrete example, that yen for some amount of precision is the biggest reason why I\u2019m not a Springsteen fan\u2026 why I go for Sammy instead of David Lee. *shrug*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next artist, Fleming Williams<\/a>, is a swift departure from the mainstream.  She and her husband (John Mark Painter) are the primary pieces of a group called, appropriately, Fleming and John. There is no way for me to pin a genre tag on this music. I may come back in a later post and talk about John\u2019s wide-ranging instrumental talents (there\u2019s a freaking theremin<\/strong><\/em><\/a> on the album). For now I\u2019m highlighting Fleming\u2019s impossible-to-ignore soprano voice. At times, she can sound as sweet as a little girl, but then she opens up those pipes full-blast for songs like The Pearl<\/cite><\/a> and comes close to sounding shrill. Coming back to what I said about Henley, though, she\u2019s never off-pitch. \u201cRaw, yet under control\u201d again? I\u2019m having a hard time verbalizing exactly what I like, but I just love listening to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heh. I\u2019m going to blow some minds with this next one (though, admittedly, he\u2019s on the extreme end of the spectrum for me): Robert Cummings, better known as Rob Zombie<\/a>. Why this guy and not some other metal vocalist out there? I dunno. He just strikes my fancy. This is why trying to pin down what I like is so frustrating. Just when I think I have a handle on it, I run into an outlier like this.  All I can say is that when I think about vocals in metal bands, his isn\u2019t the typical voice I imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up, we move away from the far edge and much closer to the mainstream. It\u2019s not all about extremes for me. I think this next artist is going to end up being part of another crossover point with a future list of favorites (working title so far: \u201cChicks With Attitude\u201d). Of that group, there is one in particular that I have especially enjoyed listening to specifically for her voice: Sarah McLachlan<\/a>. Part of it is almost certainly that intentional vocal \u201cbreak\u201d she uses so much. It reminds me a lot of trying to do a lip slur on the trumpet. The length of the instrument (controlled by the valve position) tries to constrain the lips to vibrate at only certain frequencies. As you vary the lip tension to change the pitch, there\u2019s a point where the sound \u201cjumps\u201d from one \u201callowed\u201d note to the next. There\u2019s almost a click when it happens, and that\u2019s what I hear in McLachlan\u2019s voice. I\u2019ve tried singing like that. It\u2019s not easy to control, but it\u2019s pretty fun to do. Anyway, in a sea of female artists who at the time were trying to sound like small children, McLachlan\u2019s voice stood out with this deep, rich tone. Very nice to listen to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Folks that read my\u00a0response to the “musical baton” meme<\/a>\u00a0should recognize the name\u00a0Vienna Teng<\/a>. Teng is a tiny woman with a really big voice. Amy introduced me to her music a few years ago. I fell completely in love with her second album, and I\u2019ve been about as close as I get to a slobbering fanboy ever since. Teng\u2019s parents emigrated from Taiwan, and one of my favorite of her songs is a love ballad that her mother sang to her in Chinese growing up. I have a feeling Teng massaged the music a bit to make it fit into western musical chord patterns, but the eastern influence shows in the melody pretty clearly. I\u2019m a sucker for a piano ballad anyway, but that combined with Teng\u2019s voice and the musical quality of the language itself (I wish I knew enough to discern which dialect it is) make that song a real treat. Beyond that, though, she has another one of those \u201creal but controlled\u201d voices that are turning into a theme for this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To wrap things up, I have to come back to the voice that connects this post back to my first \u201cFavorite Music\u201d post. In that post, I referenced a song by the group Acappella<\/a> called Rescue<\/cite><\/a>. In that post, I was making specific reference to the tight vocal harmony, but even then I had the full intention of coming back to it here. The man singing lead on that song is named Wayburn Dean. I so<\/strong> wish I could sing like this man. His range is just a bit higher than mine, so I can\u2019t really even keep up with all the notes. Even if I could, though, I couldn\u2019t match that rich tone of his. That doesn\u2019t stop me from singing along with him (on Rescue<\/cite> in particular).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wow. That took much longer than I hoped it would. No real surprise, though, I guess. I don\u2019t know when I\u2019ll get around to doing another one of these, but I do have a few ideas for topics. There\u2019s actually a short list of songs that get points for both music and lyrics. That\u2019s got to be a post (maybe call it \u201cMaster Songwriters\u201d). Another is the \u201cChicks With Attitude\u201d post I mentioned above. I\u2019ll probably be nice and spare my readers the experience of a post specifically about piano ballads.  I probably even have enough material to do a post about songs that connect strongly with memories (though I\u2019ve posted about that off-and-on before). If anyone has a preference, let me know. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a long-time reader of Sliding Constant, then you might remember my last \u201cFavorite Music\u201d post, which covered my love of vocal harmony. This one is about vocals as well, but this time I\u2019m going to share some of my favorite lead vocalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,5],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-favorite-music","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1784,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/1784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}