Vocal Style Quotes

I don't have a rock voice. I have to force it. I am like an opera singer.

I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice.

I think I copied my style from Louis Armstrong. Because I used to like the big volume and the big sound that Bessie Smith got when she sang ... So I liked the feeling that Louis got and I wanted the big volume that Bessie Smith got. But I found that it didn't work with me, because I didn't have a big voice. So anyway between the two of them I sorta got Billie Holiday.

By the time Sonic Youth formed in 1981, my musical tastes had left the Dead behind, but I was always very proud of the fact that we had three different singers singing individually from different points of view, like the Dead.

Well, obviously I wanted it to sound as original as possible. I suppose the influences that we had were probably from the actual power point of view we wanted to be like the Who. Vocally we wanted to be like the Beach Boys, whatever was good at the time.

I'd be worried if I was put in the same category as Michael Bubl I'm trying to sound like a young man, for starters.

When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to.

I don't think I sound like Janis Joplin. I'm a woman with a raspy voice.

If we all could sound like we wanted to, we'd all sound like George Jones.

I often talked to Bing Crosby, and while I liked him, I never understood why he was so popular. To me his voice was just a gimmick.

I never get tired of exploring Americana or country music, and I always have a little bit of a crooner in me that never seems to go away.

I'm a rapper-singer, or singer-rapper - it's not one before the other. I do both.

Amy Winehouse: Did she invent white soul? Wearing a beehive? No. But she did something brand new and fresh, altogether as a package, and you see who's in her wake, from the Duffys to the Lana Del Reys. Adele selling 20 million records? That would not have happened if Amy Winehouse was alive.

I listened to a lot of Amy Winehouse: her albums 'Frank' and 'Back to Black'. She was such an incredible artist. She was just so raw and had her unique sound; she paired jazz with pop and was so soulful at the same time. So I pulled from her a lot in the beginning.

Opera: I like it, except for all those howling sopranos and caterwauling tenors. (Why can't tenors sing like men?)

I have no desire to become a crossover artiste, singing with microphones. I believe in opera; that it is something that young people would love if they had a chance to hear it.

I definitely grew up to Nina Simone and a lot of Ella Fitzgerald. And I loved Amy Winehouse. I loved that sort of soulful singer.

I think my style as far as vocal delivery and even down to the pronunciation of certain words is so deliberate.

My inspiration is R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Prince - for the vocals, anyway.

I was constantly being pushed toward a European ideal of what it means to be a classical or opera singer, let's say in the Renata Tebaldi mode. I reject that.

I have my own thing that I do really well, but it's not singing. It's more of a screaming-type thing.

Tinashe doing 'I Wanna Get Better' - it's a really personal song, and it was hard for me to imagine anyone else doing it, but stylistically her and I are so incredibly different that I was fascinated to hear what she'd do with it, and I completely loved it. It just felt like the different expression of a song that, to me, was so stamped in one way.

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.

What always attracted me to [Bob] Dylan, and what has sustained me as a Dylan listener, or has always continued to surprise me, is his voice, the way he sings, the way he wraps his voice around certain words, the way he backs off from melodic moments, the way he moves forward to grab something in a song that, were anybody else performing it, they would have no idea it was even there.

My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.