Singers who drastically change their vocal approach over the years

tim buckley - his voice is unrecognizable from the first two albums (kinda boyish) to starsailor/lorca (lots of pyrotechnics, cues taken from nina simone and odetta) to his latest period (a weird jagger-ish falsetto)

julie driscoll/julie tippetts - she went from a bluesy alto to total abstractness over the course of a few years

stella vander - i love her quick ascent from ye-ye poster girl to operatic banshee

scott walker - i can't really stand scott's avant phase but the guy shifted gears big time in terms of vocals

i guess a bunch of hardcore/metal singers trading screaming or growling for clean vocals could fit in here as well

Leonard Cohen to an extent. His voice has gotten deeper and he practically speaks the words on the last couple of albums.

tom waits is the most obvious choice here, and bob dylan. nashville skyline era "crooning" bob is really interesting too. i love leonard's speak-singing on the new album.

nico's singing didn't really change too much, but her music changed to better match her deep, gothic, almost incantatory vocals. i kind of love the disconnect between that singing style and the chamber pop loveliness of earlier songs like "these days."

kind of love love as much as i love anything on earth

PJ Harvey - unusually, as a general rule her vocals have crept up the scale over time

not sure about tom waits. he always sang the same way to me. the music became more challenging around the 80s but his raspy/guttural tone is the only thing that remains unalterable through the years.

ian curtis. he didn't have that low, graveyard vice in the beginning when joy div were punk.

david sylvian sounds very un-sylvian in japan's first 2 records. him becoming a completely different singer after that is kinda amazing actually.

not sure about tom waits. he always sang the same way to me. the music became more challenging around the 80s but his raspy/guttural tone is the only thing that remains unalterable through the years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hbC-_79p7I

vs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9mhsW5aWJM

Mike Patton

Lil Wayne

Green gartside

Madonna, obv

no

Liz Fraser going from bog banshee to her high operatic phase.

Waits still seems like the most drastic example I can think of, although I don't know a few of these that well. I can believe that Walker might be similarly drastic. I'm not counting singers who use a wide range of vocal approaches as a fundamental part of their aesthetic, e.g. Sainkho Namtchylak. I interpret this thread to be about singers who strongly identify with a particular vocal approach at one point in time and then switch to a different vocal approach at a different stage in their career.

Liz, totally. also her early period as a Siouxsie dead ringer, kind of.

i was about to say nick cave from boys next door-era (lux interior wannabe) to bad seeds-era (post-apocalyptic crooner, whatev) but i'm not so sure.

i think his voice changed pretty significantly during the bad seeds era, but that was probably a natural evolution and not particularly forecasted. though obviously as the music got mellower, so did his delivery.

alex chilton

perry farrell trying to out-goth murphy/eldritch on psi com before switching to his characteristic high piched voice in jane's addiction.

michael stipe

michael gira

Chilton is a good one. I remember reading stories about people trying to get him to do the "Box Tops" voice long after the fact and he just couldn't muster the whatever to do it.

Marianne Faithfull. She's claimed that her Broken English-on voice was always more her natural register, and her 60s folkie chirp was pushing herself to try to match Joan Baez and the like.

Mark Lanegan. The gravel creeps in from record to record, but the pitch doesn't come right down till Sweet Oblivion, IIRC. If you came in cold and heard Other Worlds and Dirt in succession you'd scarcely believe it's the same singer.

Bruce Springsteen started doing this affected, Woody Guthrie-ish nasalised twang around the time of The Ghost of Tom Joad and has never really shaken it off since. Very noticeable when he does the slow songs live.

i want to bring joni mitchell to thread, but it feels like cheating in a way. i mean, she completely lose her higher register due to years of non stop smoking (same thing as marianne). that husky tone of hers is the one she's left with after years of abuse. idk, i don't get the feeling of vocal reinventions or stylistic changes of any kind in those cases.

Tom Waits didn't so much change as diversify. He started experimenting with falsettos and extremely deep/raspy voices in the mid-80s.

i want to bring joni mitchell to thread, but it feels like cheating in a way. i mean, she completely lose her higher register due to years of non stop smoking (same thing as marianne). that husky tone of hers is the one she's left with after years of abuse. idk, i don't get the feeling of vocal reinventions or stylistic changes of any kind in those cases.

Which rules out Dennis Wilson and Harry Nilsson too

don't know if drastically but Arthur Lee and Jeffrey Lee Pierce

Tom Waits didn't so much change as diversify. He started experimenting with falsettos and extremely deep/raspy voices in the mid-80s.

Really? When did he use the Heart of Saturday Night voice from the 80s onwards?

Sam Prekop changed a hell of a lot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCScGlX-ajg

I mean, please.

Roger Daltrey started out as an earnest faux-blues/soul shouter/snotty punk; moved quickly onto fey pop singer; then rocketed to full-throated belter/screamer.

Mark Kozelek. Approach changed a lot it seems and his voice sounds more "stuffy nose" even when he is talking (more noticeable when comparing RHP vs SKM)

Still always sounded like Roger Daltrey though, not drastic enough (xp). Also someone mentioned Arthur Lee and I don't see that at all.

I dunno, compare something like "Pictures of Lily" to "Won't Get Fooled Again." Or "I Don't Mind" to "Young Man Blues."

Joanna Newsom was much more affecting to my ears before she started aping Kate Bush.

I don't know, I prefer her not to squeak and squeal as much as she used to.

Anthony Gonzalez of M83 on his latest album

Oh good one. The whispered vocals were much more powerful than the immature angsty whine.

billy corgan, big time:

1993:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNi7im2i-Y0

2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJWVmtMDqPk

Paul Weller - though I think he may have reverted around the time of 'From The Floorboards Up'. Haven't cared enough to investigate.

I never realized that Tom Waits sounded so much like Mickey Newbury on his first few records.

There's one very obvious one no-one's mentioned yet, Barry Gibb.

... tho he reverted to non-falsetto eventually

Also Frankie Valli largely ditched his falsetto in the late 60s

Ray Charles.
His early stuff sounds like Nat King Cole......

Nick Cave is as identifiable as ever, but his voice started showing a much sweeter tone around Murder Ballads.

Marvin Gaye never lost his sweet tenor, but around the time he gained freedom from the Motown machine, developed both a deeper raspier tone (through conscience effort) and a higher falsetto.

Anton Newcombe stopped using a fake British accent on Strung out in Heaven. I haven't listened to any Brain Jonestown Massacre since then so I'm not sure if he's brought it back at this point or moved on to something else.

Many detractors would scoff at the suggestion he's ever sounded any different, but Morrissey lost the windiness in his voice around 1992 and became more of a 'proper' singer

Bruce Springsteen started doing this affected, Woody Guthrie-ish nasalised twang around the time of The Ghost of Tom Joad and has never really shaken it off since. Very noticeable when he does the slow songs live.

"Hungry Heart" has never sounded like a Bruce Springsteen song to me. It comes much closer to sounding like John Cougar than anything else by the Boss.

And early Conway Twitty cracks me the hell up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5BBySt3LTU

vs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LpnL-RLJrc

Yeah, even elsewhere on The River "Hungry Heart" seems to stand out.

Iggy Pop's voice changed with every album, until I quit paying attention sometime in the '80s.

p sure "Hungry Heart" is slightly sped up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGGYj1jWzEc

Musical content aside, I admire how Sting has adjusted to his dropping register over the years, relying more on timbre.

And Robert Plant solo to me was long struggling (and failing) to sing in his '70s voice — I find much of it hard to hear for the strain and pitchiness alone — but on Raising Sand he finds this sweet Roy Orbison/Chris Isaak croon I didn't know he had in him.

Madonna, obv

― sandra dayo connor (The Reverend), Tuesday, April 23, 2013 10:56 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no

― cock chirea, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 10:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except she hasn't done the chirpy, high-attack vocal style she started out with in decades?

LOU REED
Brian Wilson

I dunno how rappers fit in here but the D.O.C. (granted it was accident-related)

Many detractors would scoff at the suggestion he's ever sounded any different, but Morrissey lost the windiness in his voice around 1992 and became more of a 'proper' singer

His singing definitely improved as he went on: there's even a noticeable difference from early Smiths to late Smiths. However, I don't see it as a case of someone drastically changing his vocal approach (at all). I think it's more that he got better at doing the thing that he does.

did anyone say steven tyler

xpost: I think he underwent some kind of training in the early 90s though, he seemed to make the biggest progression then, to my ears.

Norman Blake between A Catholic Education and Bandwagonesque.

Which reminds me, Blake Schwarzenbach.

scott weiland

What happened to Harry Nilsson's voice upsets me greatly.

James Hetfield.

If we're accepting accidents, Sir Elton John.

Nick Cave was the first name that sprung to my mind, he seems to do a lotof falsetto ish stuff on the Hee Haw material which has significantly dropped now. Plus he seems to have started actually singing properly somewhere around Henry's Dream or maybe shortly after.
Did I read that he was actually in the school choir? Funny listening to him non-singing on early Bad Seeds lps

Kind of forgot what an R&B singer P!nk initially set out to be:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66LnhtnSoKc

versus her current brand of anguished goofball pop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjVNlG5cZyQ

her vocal style hasn't changed as much as the music behind her tho?

I don't really have the vocabulary to describe this - - - it's recognizably the same voice but there's a lot more R&B signifiers in the first song, especially in the second half (from the 'phone call' interlude forward) - it's not just the production that sounds like a Destiny's Child song, there's melisma all over the place, pain and anger conveyed by leaps from hushed to strident... whereas these days the affectation is I think supposed to be more "punk" or at least more LA, barking out brash sing-songy anthem type choruses and being brattishly atonal on, e.g. the "So What" verses.

This basically started already with the second album but those first few singles really could be a different artist. Basically I think she maintained her hair-color gimmick and pivoted everything around so that it evoked not Left-Eye but, I dunno, Joan Jett. I agree that the arrangements and songwriting have a ton to do with this, though!

the other singles from the first album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWJ_P-TdEJ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGfz0fv5wfQ

lol @ American Beauty scene

"Most Girls" is the song I still associate most w/Pink for some reason

one thing that doesn't really change is that she was always a mugging, hammy goofball, although in the early clips it only comes out around the edges. It's like seeing childhood photos of Hitler.

Indeed a couple of metal ones, Jonas Renske of Katatonia, Nick Holmes of Paradise Lost, Aaron Stainthorpe, Johan Edlund, Abbath, etc.

The difference in voice between Gil Scott Heron's stuff with Brian Jackson and that last album is shocking, but that's not a change in singing approach so much as horrifying self-abuse.

btw: S/D: Voice changes

Paris Sisters, 1956:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jshXcUpEYU

Paris Sisters, 1961:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldBm5ELs1I

they started out as husky-voiced, pre-rock stage performers in the mold of the McGuire Sisters, but Phil Spector coached them to sing more softly. you'd never guess that it was the same group.

("coached" = "I'll blow your fuckin head off if your voice rises above a whisper", no doubt)

no mention of Bowie? the high-pitched glam stuff vs. the low Scott Walker-y vocals have been pretty well documented but they ARE pretty damn different

Wow, those Paris Sisters ones are great. Good tracks too, though I'd vote for the pre-Spector one...

Johan Hegg of Amon Amarth switched from a higher-pitched, more black metal-ish screech to his current barrel-chested roar somewhere around their third album.

John Martyn

Cyndi Lauper

Dion DiMucci