Bo Bice - man, I just think Bo kicks ass. He actually has the most limited voice in the group. No top, and his natural vocal register would be classified as baritone. That's cool - Elvis would have been considered a baritone, too. But what the dude does with what he has is very entertaining, and he makes up for not having the best vocal range, for already perhaps having a little wear and tear on his cords, by being totally invested in everything he sings. My stupid comparison from the part of the singing world I'm most familiar with, opera, is Placido Domingo. (Guarantee you that's the only time you'll see Domingo and Bo Bice mentioned in the same paragraph.) Domingo never had the clarion high notes of a Pavarotti... there were and are tenors out there who can out-sing Placido up in the stratosphere for days. But that didn't matter - he was Domingo. He used everything else he had; vocal quality, musicality, pitch, emotion, honesty. Bo Bice as a rock singer does the same thing; he doesn't try to be the next Robert Plant - he's Bo, and he puts his stamp on every song. He has a good ear for what fits him most of the time too. He will need to avoid the usual rock singer pitfalls if he wants to keep singing into his 40s - smoke, smoking, too much drinking, lack of rest, bad PA systems that don't give him proper monitors and force him to shout.
* Anthony Fedorov - remember something about Anthony, you Anthony-haters; he's only 19. This bears mentioning for many reasons. First - the high male voice, typically referred to as the tenor voice, matures the latest of all voice types. Anthony falls into this category. I realized tonight for the first time just how talented the kid is, even though he is unlikely to win this competition, and not the best singer in the competition. Anthony has a command over his upper register that is more impressive because of his age. He suffers the usual malady of tenor-type voices in the lower register, losing pitch integrity sometimes, and he seems to go out of tune when he is singing up the scale, switching what singers call 'registers.' Men basically have a chest and head register - the former being the part of the voice where the primary resonance is made in the chest, the latter being the primary resonance coming from the head. Anthony is often a little disconnected personally when he sings from the audience, and you can sometimes see his nerves at work. If he really learns to reach out to the audience and picks rep that allows him to not worry about what he's doing with his voice, he will take off. I have a feeling he will end up more popular in Europe than America, though...he's just got a Euro-pop vibe, Pennsylvania upbringing notwithstanding.* Scott Savol - Scotty, Scotty...bruh, you have to rest that voice. Scott has what we call a "beat" in his voice when he sustains a note. This causes him to go out of tune. It was obvious at the end of the selection he sang tonight, Luther Vandross's hit, "Dancing With My Father." You might think of it as almost a "wah-wah" kind of vibrato. This is usually caused by wear and damage on the vocal folds, the flesh surrounding the vocal cords. They get leathery through continued 'pushing' of the voice. Luther sounded a bit raspy in his last few years, but for most of his career his was a vibrant, clean sound, and if that's something like what Scott Savol is aiming at, he needs to go to a throat doctor soon and get himself a voice coach. Scott has potential to put his soul tenor to real work. If he were a religious man for sure - I don't know that his references to thanking God are a pose at the moment - Gospel music would probably love to have his rather big sound. I don't particularly respond to Scott, and agree with Simon Cowell that Scott should be packing his bags about now. I do think he'll have a career if he gets his vocal trouble in hand right now.
* Carrie Underwood - I like Carrie, I admit. She is alternately so good it's stirring to watch and hear, and then harsh on the ears at other times. She's taking her belt voice up too high on a regular basis, and though it won't show for a bit while she's young, it may later if she's not careful. For women in pop, country, or rock, that's just the way of things. To hear a woman sing mainly in her 'head' register - for female voices the chest and head registers are often less blended than they are in a male voice - says to most ears 'opera,' which is not kosher with the music we're dealing with here, obviously. But there are plenty of artists who made it work - if Carrie truly is a country singer at heart she is in better stead than if she were a wannabe rocker. Country is kinder to the voice, and full of good vocal role models - Patsy Cline, and currently, Martina McBride, Lee Ann Womack, and Jo Dee Messina. If Carrie models herself in technical approach after any of these singers, she will last. If not, the nodules - basically little calluses on the vocal cords - will set in, and that will be all she sang.
* Vonzell Solomon - Vonzell has already got it right; we saw tonight that she has a voice teacher. And it shows. Vonzell regularly takes on the hardest songs of any singer on the show, and sometimes she's even better than the original. I don't think she will win, but I think she's secured her place in pop stardom to some degree. She takes advantage of her head voice and can even muster some power in that part of her voice, giving herself more than an extra octave over a singer like Carrie. Vonzell needs to maintain whatever she's doing at the moment and she will probably last quite some time in her field. The danger for her will be in trying too often to blast up top like Whitney used to do, taking the chest to it's limit. If she does this she will end up sounding as worn and hoarse as Whitney Houston has in the last few years. Though Whitney admittedly was aided by her various chemical amusements - a problem the apparently squeaky-clean black-belt Vonzell doesn't seem to have - her balls-to-the-wall all the time singing style never helped her considerable voice when it came to the question of vocal longevity. All Vonzell needs to outlast perhaps all the other current Idol competitors is the discipline she's already learned as a martial artist. It is helpful to approach all singing with the same sort of judgement and care.
* Bo Bice - man, I just think Bo kicks ass. He actually has the most limited voice in the group. No top, and his natural vocal register would be classified as baritone. That's cool - Elvis would have been considered a baritone, too. But what the dude does with what he has is very entertaining, and he makes up for not having the best vocal range, for already perhaps having a little wear and tear on his cords, by being totally invested in everything he sings. My stupid comparison from the part of the singing world I'm most familiar with, opera, is Placido Domingo. (Guarantee you that's the only time you'll see Domingo and Bo Bice mentioned in the same paragraph.) Domingo never had the clarion high notes of a Pavarotti... there were and are tenors out there who can out-sing Placido up in the stratosphere for days. But that didn't matter - he was Domingo. He used everything else he had; vocal quality, musicality, pitch, emotion, honesty. Bo Bice as a rock singer does the same thing; he doesn't try to be the next Robert Plant - he's Bo, and he puts his stamp on every song. He has a good ear for what fits him most of the time too. He will need to avoid the usual rock singer pitfalls if he wants to keep singing into his 40s - smoke, smoking, too much drinking, lack of rest, bad PA systems that don't give him proper monitors and force him to shout. Bo is one singer who, while I don't think he sings correctly in the rock singer sense of the word, I would not want to do anything that changes his sound, which is a little Allman-esque in a good way. If anyone ever coaches him they need to figure out how to keep the core sound the same but give Bo the tools to keep going, otherwise the nodules will set in, if he hasn't had a case or two already. Laser surgery does miracles for vocal nodules now, and they aren't the kiss of death for popular singers like they would be for a classical vocalist, but for each case of nodes another few years of end-life are lopped off that singer's career. If I have a favorite, it's probably Bo - because he's a southern boy like me, in part, but also because he uses rock and roll to put his heart out there, and that's a damn fine trick.
* Constantine Maroulis - This is the guy I think can and perhaps will win this thing. Constantine has the upper register he needs to achieve some "wow" factor - his singing of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" a few shows back was remarkably good, showing just how much control he has over his sound. Tonight was unimpressive because he chose a song that has been recently stamped by its singer in a big way, Nickelback's Chad Kroeger. It's hard to hear "Are We Having Fun Yet" in anything but Kroeger's growly bellow and not wince. But Constantine can work the stage with more mastery than any Idol I've seen and his voice has that indefinable character that makes you remember it and sometimes want to hear more of it. He almost sounds trained, like he could segue into other music easily if he wished. I might not want to hear him do a Michael Bolton and do some kind of execrable opera album, but he could probably do at least a minimally better job than Bolton. Constantine tightens his throat a little on top, and if he learns to loosen up and free the high notes, not try to control them, the world of either pop or rock will be his oyster. If there's a great pop/rock voice he could look to for how to do it right, U2's Bono is the best example I can think of. Bono even considers himself a tenor, with reason, as he managed to take the classical tenor's way of almost "crying" into the top of the voice over into rock without ever sounding like a wannabe opera singer. If Constantine wins it will be on the strength of his recognizable voice and his charisma, which is considerable and almost transcends musical genres. I mean, if you really look at him, he's not a super-handsome guy; but onstage he might as well be the best-looking dude in the room. This is charisma at work, and the man has it. A loosening of the voice, more support and less tongue and throat tension will make him unstoppable in the vocal sense.
For the record, the overall best vocalist of Idol contestants past, to me? Clay Aiken, with Tamyra Gray a close second. Clay proved it to me when he took on Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water." I don't have a lot to say about Clay's overall image, but as a singer he knew what he was doing, and I liked the way he did it. Tamyra had a lot in common with Vonzell; good command of her instrument and lots of shades of color in her voice. I'm surprised I haven't heard more of her, but like I say, I might just not listen to the right radio stations.
That's a good point. No matter what song Bo sings, he's always "Bo". This helps him, I think. Everyone that has excelled in this competition has had their own identifiable style: Kelly, Clay, Ruben and (God bless her) Fantasia.
Carrie, though, hasn't been consistent with her style and it might keep her from winning.
Very interesting link...extremely well written.
I hope he's wrong about ConstantTongue.