Vocalists whose voices are your own personal nails on chalkboard.

Bad Religion Greg
They Might Be Giants (both guys)
Death Cab guy

avril

Bad Religion Greg

http://frontstreetny.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/sb2.jpg

They Might Be Giants (both guys)

Dead to me u r. ;_;

co-sign Avril
Jonathan Davis of Korn (Follow the Leader and after)
Billy Corgan
Attila from Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
dude from Blink 182

i think this is the worst sung song ive ever heard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NrrHTFp8z0

Thats it im throwing our yr postcards!

if that's the worst sung song you've ever heard, you've lived a charmed life

here's one far worse, for instance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob1HxFuq0yM

For many years my answer would have been Robert Plant but that changed a while back and now I can finally appreciate LZ.

know I'm gonna take flak for this but JOANNA MOTHERFUCKING NEWSOM

i agree with j.n. her voice is some affected betty boop cartoon shit.

also i would probably hate jeff mangum if i were hearing him for the first time now

(I hear that joanna's toned it down on her more recent stuff, but honestly I can't be arsed to give her another chance)

joanna otm, but I'm getting more tolerate of her.

Corin Tucker.

oh fuck how could I forget the dude from GHOST MICE, that shit is truly vile

Wayne Coyne can be at times, even tho I like the Lips

Warrel Dane has many of those moments too

btw, for those of you who have managed to remain blissfully ignorant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWfqNW2sYIQ

(anarchist kids love the shit outta this shit and i'm just like, smgdh)

ghost mice seems a little influenced by the mountain jorts

britney spears. she really cannot sing.

only vocalist I simply cannot stand is the dude from the Tiger Lillies

(xp) like no amount of processing can make britney sound even okay to me.

ghost mice seems a little influenced by the mountain jorts

― kurt schwitters, Sunday, March 20, 2011 11:14 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah, but without the songwriting chops or charisma — basically just earnestness and strained shouting

I agree on jnewsom, that kind of affected plum in mouth warbling really weirds me out.

Lucinda Williams & Tom Waites (though they both seem like cool dudes)

natalie merchant

victoria williams

JENNIFER LOPEZ

Leon Russell

corgan X 1000000000000000000000000

makes me want to die when i hear that voice

another cosign for joanna newsom

OTM with Tom Waites, I just don't get it.

i can deal with corgan's voice because i can deal with darby crash's voice and they're pretty similar.

Zooey Deschenall

Yeah Hennifer and Zooey D are pretty much it for me.

Antony
Britney (except on "Slave 4 U")
Andy McCluskey

Jenny Lewis

http://www.tvgasm.com/shows/images/dancingwiththestars/season5/10-23-07%20resized%20South%20Park%20J-Lo.jpg

most indie crap that sounds like frog eyes. that spazz voice. i actually wrote something about that voice once. or similar voices.

Britney (except on "Slave 4 U")
otm

Oh yeah Conor Oberst

drake

him from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

this thing. jeez i can't believe this was 8 years ago

Chuck Eddy:Master Editor!And/Or:1400 Words Split In Half Like A Baby In The Bible

So many...First three that come to mind are Melissa Etheridge, Gordon Gano, and (95% of the time) Robert Smith.

I remember writing a very long and passionate essay in seventh grade about how much I hated Frankie Valli's voice, but I am a fan of it now.
I guess my answer now is idk who sings in Of Montreal, but them. It sounds like they have anywhere from two to six vocalists who are all trying actively to hit different notes from one another.

different bad notes

Are we allowed to say "my own?" I hate listening to recordings of myself.

the fucking polyphonic spree asshole!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azhgpelu0vY

another variation for someone who appears in this thread often

uh-oh, a friend of mine was in A Minor Forest ... kinda scared to hear this awful British person

― sarahell, Tuesday, May 25, 2021 11:33 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Tell them good job with the band!

He's a rad dude ... for a while he had a band with his daughter (when she was a kid) ... I have a CD-R somewhere. I am fine with kids singing that sound like themselves.

lmfao CaAL

I like a lot of the singers people are hating in here

For me:

Wayne Coyne
La Roux
Andy Partridge
Billie EIlish
J Mascis
90% of hardcore vocalists who bellow instead of yell
100% of whisper-scream nu-emo vocalists
Metal vocalists who whine instead of scream (Deftones, unfortunately)

Oh, also, any time somebody sings with a fake accent, Kate Bush i.e. ("The Dreaming", "There Goes A Tenner"). Unlistenable I hate it

ugh j. mascis, there's a voice i never want to hear again tbr

Yes, fake accents are a dealbreaker, just unbearable.

'Extreme' metal vocals are all up my alley, but emo and/or screamo are a bridge too far.

xp

do people feel the same about mick jagger

Anyone outside North America who sings with an American accent is singing with a fake accent - that's a hell of a lot of singers.

It's fundamentally annoying unless the vocalist (e.g. Mick Jagger) is charming and/or talented enough to pull it off.

I mean, just forget about most British popular music in that case.

There's a sea of exceptions, thankfully.

Oh yeah I was gonna say Mick Jagger. Generally his vocals on "Exile..." are lousy to my ears, it's a weird thing that "Sweet Black Angel" is one of my favourite Stones songs despite the bullshit accent

A generalized "fake American accent done by non-Americans" isn't so bad, it's "fake Cockney" or "fake Southern American" or what have you

"Far Away Eyes" reminds me of Bowie's singing on "Teenage Wildlife": so cartoonishly contorted that it goes from camp to sincerity in 10 seconds flat.

Another one: Broadway/musicals of any kind. It may well be the type of music I loathe the most in the world, and the vocals are a big part of my seething hatred.

i try to forget about most british popular music myself, stuff that draws attention to its britishness is just as embarrassing most of the time

not much of a stones fan but jagger is more interesting because he does the pomo thing of drawing attention to his fakeness (unless he's just bad and critics have projected all of that onto him?) i'm way more bothered by the ones who try to sound "real" like say clapton

Another one: Broadway/musicals of any kind. It may well be the type of music I loathe the most in the world, and the vocals are a big part of my seething hatred.

Love Van Halen, not a particular fan of David Lee Roth, although he is a good frontman.

The Eternal Return is beyond my control. I, too, am sorry.

xp

Thing about Broadway is that, if you study voice, that is the standard by which singers are messured in competition, or at keast it's what too many white people think a good singer out to sound like.

I got so much shit when singing for not having "the Broadway voice", whereas I've always gotten many compliments on it and I'm happy with it.

Think it's covertly sexist and racist and intensely annoying. There are other asoects to singing besides the gymnastics.

i'm way more bothered by the ones who try to sound "real" like say clapton

Is George Michael trying to sound real? For example.

i guess? it's a similar kind of appropriation. i'm a hypocrite because it doesn't bother me as much- he's a better singer, i like his style more, and also he's not a fascist. we always bring a lot of baggage to how we hear someone

do people feel the same about mick jagger

Mick Jagger, Fake Blues Singer: two thumbs up
Mick Jagger, Fake Country Singer: burn the world down

The most blackfacey singer in all of British rock? Steve Marriott from Humble Pie. The Fucking Worst.

What about black British singers singing in American accents?

What about Roland Gift, a singer who doesn't sound like a human being?

What about Green Gartside, "real" post-punk singer and "fake" pop singer?

he found a new hermaneutic, a new paradigm

ooh green gartside, that's one for me.

Mick Jagger, Fake Blues Singer: two thumbs up
Mick Jagger, Fake Country Singer: burn the world down

wrong way round

I hate most country music so much that you'd think someone blatantly sneering at it would meet with my approval, but no.

Is there a term for the Roland Gift / Mark Morrison 'singing from the back of the throat like a ventriloquist' technique?

"fake Cockney"

Always the worst bits on early Genesis albums

...and "Benny the Bouncer" by ELP.

fake cockney is acceptable from people who already have estuary-ish accents but not from poshos. it's also acceptable from americans - the worse the better imo

Broadway/Musicals is way too broad - I will specify instead the aw-shucks-fellas western gal musical voice, as demonstrated here by Celeste Holm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZLad-t6GBc

Joan Baez

― Tom D (Tom D.), Monday, March 21, 2011 10:10 AM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Seconded. Death by vibrato. Though I do like Joan Didion's essay on her.

For me it's the fake olde worlde folk accent buskers like to do

What like Dave Swarbrick?

Unless it's literally Linda Thompson or Sandy Danny doing it, that is

Not Dave then!

I don't know much about him but yes the British Folk Rock accent, which I guess was okay at the time but just seems a bit silly when everyone does it as soon as they get a bit folky

xxp what about buffy sainte marie?

xp I just grew up with folk and feel like him taking over vocal duties in Fairport is where that kind of olde world folky voice really takes hold of the genre, love it when he's doing it but I will admit that it is an acquired taste and really not something everyone can pull off well.

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

He's not really doing it too much there, thankfully

Another one: Broadway/musicals of any kind. It may well be the type of music I loathe the most in the world, and the vocals are a big part of my seething hatred.

Quite the opposite! Part of the point is to people in Row Q or whatever can hear.

to=so

What like Dave Swarbrick?

I think that was kind of his accent? I thought he was a Brummie but he lived in quite a few places. Anyway, I'm all in favour of that English (rather than British) folk accent.