Explain Why You Like Vocalists Who Sound Like They Are Weeping As They Sing

I've simply acquited a taste for it in certain forms (the usual candidates of Arabic and Latin music, although moreso the first category), but that's not a very helpful answer.

I think I prefer it when it gets pushed to the point of being so extreme that it becomes ecstatic, anyway, when the pain is transformed aesthetically into pleasure. (La Lupe "Amor Gitano," Oum Kalthoum "Ana Fe Entazarek," Farid. . . I have trouble remembering his song titles.)

I think I usually only like it when it's combined with some sort of vocal virtuosity.

Sorry in advance if you only meant to discuss pop/rock examples closer to home.

Also, I remember a funny comment in an article somewhere or other by someone who grew up with it who expressed his bafflement as a youth at older Egyptians' enthusiasm for staying up all night listening to songs about unrequited love.)

Question: are these people singing this way because they think it's a good style, or is the only way they know how to sing?

There you go. I don't think anyone falls for these voices, they like the songs, you just happen to not like the songs.

I don't think these things can be easily distinguished or separated.

Johnnie Ray, "The Prince of Wails"

with fans on online polls, I should say. obv it wasn't a big hit or anything.

I'm pretty sure that "Nightswimming" was the second most popular request.

Both are pretty emotional songs, but they are hardly histrionic!

well, okay, I don't esp. like GG Allin's singing, per se.

But when you're talking about people like that guy from The Arcade Fire, Conor Oberst, Adam Duritz, I don't think of crying -- I think of pained, constipated whining. They are all annoying.

I'm so worried about what's happening today,
In the Middle East, you know.
And I'm so worried about the baggage retrieval
System they've got at Heathrow.
I'm so worried about the fashoins today,
I don't think they're good for your feet.
And I'm so worried about the shows on TV
That sometimes they want to repeat.
I'm so worried about what's happening today,
In the Middle East, you know.
And I'm so worried about the baggage retrieval
System they've got at Heathrow.
I'm so worried about my hair falling out,
And the state of the world today.
And I'm so worried about being so full of doubt
About everything anyway.
I'm so worried about modern technology,
I'm so worried about all the things
That they dump in the sea.
I'm so worried about it, worried about it,
Worried, worried, worried.
I'm so worried about everything that can go wrong.
I'm so worried about whether people like this song.
I'm so worried about this very next verse,
It isn't the best that I've got.
And I'm so worried about whether I should go on
Or whether I shouldn't just stop.
I'm so worried about whether I ought to have stopped.
And I'm so worried because it's the sort of thing I ought to know.
And I'm so worried about the baggage retrieval
System they've got at Heathrow.
I'm so worried about whether I should have stopped then,
I'm so worried that I'm driving everyone round the bend.
And I'm so worried about the baggage retrieval
System they've got at Heathrow.

bullshit. IT'S CRAAAZZZY WHAAAAT YOUU COOOULLLLD HAVE HAAAAAADDD....

OTM. It's probably less a question of liking vs. not liking as much as minding vs. not minding.

Oberst's weepy voice is part of the reason I like Bright Eyes' stuff (and don't like Deseparecidos as much, where his voice is less egregiously sobby): it's so histrionic and over-the-top and male-hysteric absurd that it carries the song. It might be meant to express sincerity and that - it's certainly at a sort of emotional breaking point, but sometimes it breaks into sheer stupidity and sometimes into crying-on-the-train-for-no-reason misery.

Avril Lavigne also does the weepy-voice thing, though she tends to sound more like a hiccuping seagull (he was e-verything! ev-erything! that I wanted!) and less a bleating poor wee lamb. I think Cat Power does it a bit too, sometimes.

Ha ha, damn that syncopated reverb!

What drives me nuts about sob-singers is that some of them, including Smith, have a great low voice that they almost never use. Check out Bowie's nice proto-Stipean baritone on an early version of "Panic in Detroit."

I was going to phrase this thread as "the yelp voice in rock" but I found this thread in the archive & guess it's better to re-make/re-model than start anew.

What do I mean by "the yelp voice in rock"? I'm listening to the first few U2 albums this morning so that's an obvious touchpoint. And obv. the Cure is another. But I think there are earlier precedents in punk: Patti Smith, Richard Hell, & Tom Verlaine for instance. Are there earlier examples than those? It doesn't seem like a 60s thing: can't think of any 60s examples at least. Is Bowie the wellspring for this? But Bowie's not really a yelper; so maybe copyists of Bowie w/o his pipes get yelpy? So many questions! I think there are lots of other punk/new wave examples: David Sylvian & Mark Hollis come close, but I think there are better examples than those.

Do you consider this voice "a thing"? like, did people start singing this way more commonly because it was already an acceptable rock voice by 1977? if so, what made it acceptable? I guess the answer could just be: that's how Robert Smith sings! But all singing is at least partly affect, right? Why *this* particular affect, & why then & not earlier?

oh & obv. I was making a Bryan Ferry reference in the first line; but how influential a "singer" was he? & was his influence on "this" style of singing (if it's a style of singing at all)?

I dunno about the 70s, 80s or 90s but I turned on one of the contemporary rock stations in the car a couple days ago and I mimiced the terrible singing voice I heard. My little sister said I was closed minded. I told her that I don't mind screaming in a few songs but the dude in whatever song I was listening to was downright whining.

I listen and enjoy lots of bittersweet and melodramtic vocals; and I even like some angsty vocals (all pre 00s now that I think of it). But there has been a terrible influx of whiners in the Top 100 Rock over the past decade. I cannot stand these vocals... I could check a station log and try to find songs that I'm talking about but I rather not.

There's lots of hillybilly and rockbilly singers who had that nasal quality, but without the weepiness. I think of that real fractured, ponderous yelp emerging with Hell and David Byrne and Lydon in PiL and Mick Jones' on "Train in Vain". It really started spreading as the Cure, Smiths and U2 broke through. It's always struck me as a conscious contrast to the girlyman wailing and manlyman growling of AOR rock. It conveys scrawniness. Does in rockabilly, too, as I think about it.

Ferry is a known influence on U2 and the Cure, but his version of the squawk, like Bowie's, usually seems croon-like in comparison.

imo Ray Davies is if not a yelper per se then definitely a significant precursor to a certain strain of indie vocals

Anita Baker.