That's from "The Sweet Sounds Of Really Bad Singing" by Kelefa Sanneh, published in the NYT on January 18, 2004. That was 4 days after this blog began, but somehow I didn't catch it and blog it at the time. I'm reading it today because it's linked in what is — I'm sad to say — an obituary: "Biz Markie, Hip-Hop’s ‘Just a Friend’ Clown Prince, Dies at 57/An innovative yet proudly goofy rapper, he had an unlikely crossover hit with a tune that led one critic to call him (favorably) 'the father of modern bad singing'" (NYT).
This is a wonderfully catchy song, and the terrible singing is part of what make it catchy and fun. If you watched MTV back in 1989 — as I did — this will surely resonate. Skip ahead to 1:33 to get right to the singing, but start at the beginning for spoken-word cheesy comedy and a story told in slow-paced rap:
From the obituary:
Biz Markie has said he was never supposed to be the vocalist handling those notes. “I asked people to sing the part, and nobody showed up at the studio,” he explained later, “so I did it myself.”
Perfect! How beautiful when things go wrong and the end result is far superior than if everything had worked out as planned.
Posts
8 comments:
Joe writes:
"There's bad singing because the singer can't carry a tune, and there's bad singing like Dylan and Louis Armstrong who can carry a tune but just have unusual (and, as it turns out) iconic voices. You could put Rod Stewart in this category as well. He's a very good bad singer...probably the best of the others mentioned."
I say:
There are other ways to be bad:
1. Can't hit the high/low notes
2. Bad phrasing/not carrying the meaning of the words
3. Rhythm...
4. Articulation of the words
That's something Dylan was very good at. In the days when we didn't have the lyrics available to read, you could understand every word, including many surprising and strange words. It was mesmerizing.
Wilbur writes:
"I enjoyed Dylan's singing, at least in his pre-electric stage. His early albums remain classics to me.
"The king of the bad, yet effective, singers was Ernest Tubb. From ET's Wikipedia article: "Tubb was not known to possess the most adept voice: he always sang flat, and actually mocked his own singing. He told an interviewer that 95% of the men in bars would hear his music on the juke box and say to their girlfriends, "I can sing better than him," and Tubb added they would be right. In fact, he noticeably missed some notes on some recordings. When Tubb was recording "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry" in 1949 and tried to hit a low note, Red Foley, his duet partner at the time, was sitting in the booth when somebody said, "I bet you wish you could hit that low note." Foley replied, "I bet Ernest wishes he could hit that note.""
R.T. O'Dactyl writes:
"> How beautiful when things go wrong and the end result is far superior than if everything had worked out as planned.
"A classic example of this is the recording of "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie#The_Kingsmen
"Everything went wrong, and yet their version is the one people remember."
Gerda writes:
"To your list of great bad singers, you might want to add Lou Reed in his heyday, especially on Street Hassle. In Lou's case the badness of his singing seems to be mostly intentional."
Ted writes:
"One of the pleasures of Dylan's "unusual" voice is that we get to enjoy his beautifully written songs in at least two different ways. First, in his original versions, laden with meaning and mystery, but with melodies we partly have to guess at. And then again, in a huge variety of cover versions that burst them open musically, making us hear something utterly new: "All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix; "Blowin' in the Wind" by Peter, Paul & Mary; "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds; "Maggie's Farm" by Solomon Burke; "Mighty Quinn" by Manfred Mann; "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Guns N' Roses; "Masters of War" by Eddie Vedder; "Make You Feel My Love" by Adele; and several thousand other examples.
"Meanwhile, Biz Markie's tossed-off singing on "Just a Friend" is perfect exactly as it is -- you'd never want to hear that song any other way."
@Ted
I often prefer Bob's version
Ed writes:
"Among your attributes of voice, I agree with the importance of phrasing and breath. Back in the mid-70's I was listening to one of the Texaco operas and at an intermission they interviewed the eminent baritone (whose identity escapes me now). They asked him who among singers he admired the most. He answered, Sinatra. Sinatra's breathing, and hence his dramatic control of the lyrics, was better than that of any other singer he knew.
"Also, one might contrast cool perfection in the arts to the sort of imperfection that doesn't break the spell but draws one in. Among classical musicians, Glen Gould with his strange little hums comes to mind. Listening to his first and his last published Goldberg Variations seems to me to yield the virtues of each, - the early trip-hammer accuracy, and the touching late farewell."
Post a Comment