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Home » I like to look at singers while they sing

I like to look at singers while they sing

The New Neo Posted on by

I find that I like to be able to see singers when they sing. That means I prefer watching live performances of my favorites.

I wonder why. Maybe I like to see the physical effort. Also, the emotion on the face seems to matter to me. And, since most of the singers I like happen to be men, I can’t eliminate the element of sex appeal – which is not necessarily handsomeness in the conventional sense (although that certainly doesn’t hurt), but just some je ne sais quoi.

Singers reveal themselves when you watch them sing – tough or tender, cold or warm, schmaltzy or cool, tense or relaxed. The Gibb brothers and Mickey Thomas (in “Fooled Around and Fell in Love“, anyway) and the Beatles in their younger days seem to be having so much fun while singing. Joplin wore more than a piece of her heart on her sleeve. Dylan does little for me; he just seems so detached. Mark Knopler’s concentration is very deep and still and yet he moves me greatly, perhaps because his guitar expresses so much emotion. Leonard Cohen has a knowing air, sometimes sardonic. Richard Thompson is another favorite of mine who stands still in concert without seeming to emote very much, and yet his voice has that sob in it and there is always a bittersweet quality of experience.

Okay, so sue me – but I love love love Barry Gibb here. He was at the height of his looks and his voice, and strikes just the right regretful and poignant emotional tone (Streisand doesn’t quite do it for me emotionally, although her voice is lovely). Barry knows how to subordinate his voice when singing with someone else – after all, much of his career was based on singing with other people, in particular his brothers. And here he never loses focus on the interaction with Barbra and continues to face her for much of the song except the beginning part, when he hovers almost protectively over her. And no one – no one – can wear white like Barry:

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I like to look at singers while they sing — 64 Comments

  6. Cicero:

    I like Lightfoot okay, but just not all that much. There are many singers like that. Taste is very idiosyncratic. I wrote this when he died.

    I couldn’t care less whether he’s Canadian or not. Leonard Cohen is Canadian and I really really like him. Many of the singers I like best are British, though – Bee Gees and Richard Thompson. Don’t know if that has any significance.

  8. Even moreso seeing them live. I saw Joplin three times and you could almost feel the emotion she projected. Sly and the Family Stone made the whole place joyous.

    Zappa was a different bird. His shows were extremely controlled and precise. I saw him use his baton to tell one band member to wake the hell up the saxophone player because he was tripping out to the vibe during Billie the Mountain.

  9. As for singers of vocal quality: Meatloaf in the men, Linda Ronstadt in the women (although now I’m favoring Margo Timmins).

  10. (Streisand doesn’t quite do it for me emotionally, although her voice is lovely)

    I consider Streisand to be a voice, not a musician with a voice. (As opposed to, for example, Ella or Billie.)
    IMHO, she doesn’t have very good taste in terms of the songs she chooses to sing. Great voice carrying a mediocre song- that’s Barbra.

    Having heard many more recorded voices than voices in person, I am indifferent to a video or not of a singer versus a mere sound recording.

    I recall seeing a high school friend singing in a folk group at a local club. Very good voice. Her group was scheduled to sing at the Newport Folk Festival that year (1971). Unfortunately, the Newport Folk Festival and the remainder of the Newport Jazz Festival got cancelled that year when a bunch of doofuses outside the fence surrounding the paying customers tried to tear the fence down. I was one of the paying customers at that concert. Maybe $2 a ticket then.

  11. I’ve become rather enamored of the Korean singer Sohyang over the past few years. Here are a few of her notable performances:

    Covering Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” but using the Whitney Houston style/arrangement of it — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO845EqU3eE

    Covering Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO845EqU3eE

    Covering Adele’s “Easy on Me” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxaV21Si0s0

  12. Re: Bob Dylan

    A word or two of defense … I’d agree Dylan was never much of an emotive singer nor much of a musician either. His impact was in his lyrics and the phenomenal impact his songs had upon the world.

    He did adopt a sardonic, intellectual persona, which I believe came naturally to him. However, I would note that Dylan went in a few years from a hungry-to-make-it musician busking on street corners to one of the most important artists in 1960s America. Major media was interviewing him as though he were the Messiah, or at least the voice of his generation.

    It drove Dylan crazy. Sure, he wanted to be successful and he didn’t mind the pleasant parts of fame, but the rest was a horror to him.

    Maybe it was Dylan’s Minnesota upbringing, but unlike most 60s icons Dylan did not lose his commonsense and independence. Dylan knew he wasn’t an oracle and he didn’t want to be one.

    Many of his angry audience moves in the 60s and 70s were about his desire to say FU to those who wanted to contol him.

  13. huxley:

    I went to a Dylan concert in the 80s or 90s; I forget which. Never again. Never, never, never again. He wore a hat that covered some of his face, looked down at the floor, and mumbled tunelessly for the entire concert.

  16. I love good harmonies, but find duets to be cringe worthy. I’ve yet to see an exception, even with singers I like, but to each his (or her) own.

  17. Huxley, you made me think of this quote of Dylan: ““I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.”

  19. So you rehearse a song. HAVE to remember the words.
    Grace Slick said she was always scared of drawing a blank in a performance.
    You listen to your recording in he studio, making adjustments. Confer with side men.
    Finally think you got it right.
    Is there any real emotion left?

    Okay, maybe you think that, now you have the mechanics squared away, coming automatically, you can let it out.

    Or maybe it’s an act.

  20. When I performed at a few weddings in my youth, I was always terrified I’d forget lyrics or chords or that my voice would crack. It was exhilarating when I’d finish a song and none of those happened. Now almost 50 years later, I’ve been creating some youtube videos of me singing and playing guitar at home (yes, I’m an old boomer.) I can practice a song hundreds of times, but when I hit the record buttons on the software and the camera, I often can’t get through the first few chords the first time.

    What fascinates me about live performances is the vulnerability of the artists. I only have an inkling of what they might experience before an audience, but I sure appreciate it.

    I watched an interview with Ronnie Dunn (Brooks & Dunn) recently and was surprised when he said someone was reciting the lyrics to him through his in-ear monitors while performing. He said without that, he wouldn’t be able to remember the lyrics. I’m not sure why I found that a little disappointing.

  21. Re forgetting the lyrics: I have read that at times Ella Fitzgerald’s scat singing indicated that she had forgotten the lyrics.

  23. Dylan of course will be remembered much more for his songwriting than his singing. But it is always interesting to hear him do his own songs even when there is a superior cover, eg “All Along the Watchtower”. I can appreciate though that seeing him sing them live might be disappointing, he never embraced being an “entertainer”.

  24. FOAF:

    In person in concert, Dylan wasn’t just “disappointing.” It wasn’t just that he didn’t embrace being an entertainer. It’s that he had no business charging anyone money to see and hear him. It was, essentially, a scam. You couldn’t see his face. I had always liked his singing, right from the start, but in concert his singing voice was unlistenable, awful, a low tuneless nearly-wordless nothing. I’m not exaggerating. It was bad beyond description – and as a person who had previously liked Dylan, I felt it was an insult to the audience. The concert was expensive, too. It made me really dislike him.

  25. M J R:

    Beat ya to it. See this. I’ve always really liked Orbison. But I don’t think he’s any better (or worse) live than in the studio versions. He’s great, though, either way.

  27. Orbinson’s vocal control was immaculate but his songs were pretty tame sans the occasional very high hits he was known for.

    Unless you’re restricting yourself to singers with well known recordings I think the game of “who’s best” is kind of pointless.

    Point me to a well known (read popular) singer with more control than Laura. So far – to quote a vocal critic on YouTube – the only person to sing that portion “as written”.

  30. I saw Dylan around 1963 (I was a kid) when he was a new artist, and Blowin’ In the Wind by Peter, Paul and Mary was a hit. I thought his name was pronounced Dye-lin.

    It was the first time I heard Mr. Tambourine Man, which blew me away. He was personable and affable, and I dug his playing harmonica and guitar simultaneously. I admit his vocals are rough-sounding, but some are quite good, like Lady, Lady Lay.

    I empathize with Neo’s anger for seeing a show where the artist didn’t “put out.” Had that happen with Brian Wilson a couple years ago, but the band and music (other than him) was great, and I’m glad I saw The Legend!

  31. Jordan Rivers:

    It’s not that Dylan didn’t “put out.” It’s that he wasn’t even performing. He mumbled through tonelessly. It was a hostile act. He should not have been there at all if he was going to do that. I’ve been to disappointing concerts. This was far worse.

  34. The absolutely worst performance I’ve ever seen in my life that I paid for was Jimmy Spheeris at Starlight Theater in K.C. (on record, a truly mesmerizing voice). His lead in was Tony Basil which boded ill to begin with, as Spheeris is a balladeer.

    Spheeris came out so drunk he could hardly sit the stool and I’m not sure he finished one song, drifting off into incoherency part way through.

    Fully half the audience walked out.

  35. Fully half the audience walked out.
    ==
    Both Rosemary Clooney and the late career Judy Garland had the experience of being boo’d off the stage at least once.
    ==

  37. I wasn’t born when “Blowin’ in the Wind” came out, so I have no perspective on Dylan’s impact when he exploded onto the scene, but years later, when I discovered his music, I found it gosh awful. When I encountered the great, Mike Royko’s famous column on him https://flopajake.tumblr.com/post/122261091634/mike-royko-on-bob-dylan
    it was comforting. Dylan seemed so revered by everyone I thought I must be wrong, but Mike Royko’s opinion matched my impression precisely and it was comforting to know I wasn’t the only one who saw a poseur and fraud.

    Later I learned more about Dylan and the times he was a writin’ in, and I grew less critical. He garnered so much fame, so quickly, and millions viewed him like a prophet. That much fame and notoriety would be difficult to maneuver. When I had Sirius radio I would sometimes hear his show and I often enjoyed the songs he would choose to feature and what he would say about them. He chose weekly themes and songs by other artists that he liked. He had a good sense of humor, at least.

    So, I don’t know. I still don’t like his music, his lyrics, his voice or his guitar or harmonica playing, but he isn’t a bad disc jockey.

  38. neo,

    I had a similar experience with B.B. King, although it seemed like family and/or handlers abusing him to milk a few more dimes from his name before he died. He was unable to get through a song or anecdote. For most of the performance it seemed like he didn’t even understand where he was, or what he was expected to do.

    He died shortly after that “tour.” His loved ones should be ashamed for treating him that way at the end of his life.

  39. A band I’m in lost our singer a few years ago and my bandmates asked me if I’d give it a go. I have no desire to be center stage, singing, and I don’t think I have an exceptional voice, but they asked, I’m not tone deaf, so I gave it a go.

    It’s been quite an experience. Initially I was obsessed with not forgetting a lyric, and singing in key. After a bit I began to learn attitude and the image one projects is much more important (as long as one is not horribly off key). As Richard Aubrey suggests; it’s an act. You have to convince the crowd you’re having fun, or sad, or in love, or flying to the moon. A few weeks ago I sang in front of my largest audience yet, almost 600 people.

    I am still nervous before my numbers. I wander halls backstage between sets repeating lyrics and reminding myself of queues. But my stage presence has gotten much better. I still don’t feel like I’m “selling” the song, but I’m engaging more with the audience, even ad-libbing and joking between numbers.

    It’s tough stuff and I have tremendous respect for those who master it and make it look easy.

  40. Rufus T. Firefly:

    I first heard Dylan on the radio. There was a folk program I used to listen to, I think on Sunday nights. I’d never heard of him; he wasn’t so very famous and the year was 1963. The song they played that was my introduction was “Don’t Think Twice; It’s All Right.” It immediately caught my attention. His voice was different, very different, but I liked it and I especially liked that song. Still do. If it had been a different song, I wonder if I would have felt the same. But I still think that’s a brilliant song, especially the lyrics. I think they’re among his best lyrics. When he got more obscure I don’t think his lyrics were as good, and in fact I’m not a big fan except of certain songs. The songs are very specific and I don’t know what they have in common: “Don’t Think Twice,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “I Want You,” “Stuck Inside of Mobile,” “Lay Lady Lay,” “Girl From the North Country.” There are probably a few others – in fact, I’m pretty sure there are a few others – but those are the biggees for me. I think that it truly is hard to understand the impact of Dylan or the Beatles at the time if you weren’t around at the time. But although I liked the music of both Dylan and the Beatles at the time, they are not the ones I listen to again and again as time goes by.

    You already know who those ones are 🙂 .

  41. neo,

    The period you write about was so unique regarding youth culture and music I avoid forming strong opinions because I wasn’t there, or too young to understand what was happening.

    Off the top of my head, the only Dylan song I like is, “Clean Cut Kid.” I like some original folk recorded in the ’20s and ’30s, but the stuff in the ’60s annoys me. As Mike Royko wrote in his piece on Dylan; it’s middle-class suburban kids pretending to be rail-riding Okies.

    By the way, I agree with you regarding the Brothers’ Gibbs’ talent as songwriters, singers and performers.

  42. Art Deco:

    “Both Rosemary Clooney and the late career Judy Garland had the experience of being boo’d off the stage at least once.”

    Makes sense as both of them were drunkards too.

  43. Love ‘Don’t Think Twice’. IMO Dylan’s all round best.
    There’s a great cover by Wille Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
    Hard to go wrong with that song.
    I even like the Joan Baez version!

  44. Rufus:

    I actually grew up four blocks away from the stockyards and rail yards in K.C.

    Royko’s opinion is the same as mine. Same goes for Springstein.

    Neither of their songs struck me back then as descriptions of my experiences.

  45. neo:

    I had heard enough about Dylan’s obnoxious performances that I never took the chance on attending a Dylan concert.

    These days, or recently anyway, Dylan tours incessantly. I don’t know what those concerts are like. Maybe now that he is no longer BOB DYLAN, it’s what he wants to do with his life.

    I liked Leonard Cohen’s response, when an interviewer remarked on Cohen’s appreciation of his audience. Cohen said, as I recall, “I’m not a punk. These people pay their good money so I can create and send my children to good schools.”

    BTW, that’s a solid list of Dylan faves. I might throw in “Tangled Up in Blue” from “Blood on the Tracks.”

    I memorized “Don’t Think Twice” off a Peter, Paul and Mary Album.

  46. I must be the only one here that went to a good Dylan concert. ’74 ‘comeback’ tour. He hadn’t toured in years and needed money so maybe that’s why he put on a solid show.

  47. Makes sense as both of them were drunkards too.
    ==
    Their problem was prescription drugs. Clooney got off them and continued to perform for another 30-odd years; she died of lung cancer at age 74. Garland’s life was a slow-motion suicide and she died at age 47.

  48. Before video with telephoto lenses there was opera. Then, a singer had to project an image physically. Now a closeup from the farside of the hall can pickup any twitch or lip curl.

    Early Dylan came out of the Pete Seeger school of lefty agriprop so butthurt and victimized were the emotions to be presented.

  49. Early Dylan came out of the Pete Seeger school of lefty agriprop so butthurt and victimized were the emotions to be presented.
    ==
    Joan Baez told a tale about twenty years ago of being repeatedly asked at protests she attended ‘where is Bob?’. Her response, she said, was “He wouldn’t have been here then and he’s not here now”. It was never his practice to attend protests. We could take a census, but I don’t think if you did so you’d discover that Dylan’s oeuvre take as a whole is devoted to social protest to anywhere near the degree of other folk-acoustic luminaries. He’s always been idiosyncratic.

  50. As Mike Royko wrote in his piece on Dylan; it’s middle-class suburban kids pretending to be rail-riding Okies.
    ==
    Royko’s column is mostly a skewer of the journalists covering the pop music beat. He skewers Dylan himself as a poseur but leaves his admirers alone, for the most part (bar the implicit judgment that they’re marks).
    ==
    I can enjoy a Dylan tune and a couple of the women in my family can. None of us have had any particular identification with Okies. Music has an aesthetic quality apart from the semantic content of its lyrics (which are often ambiguous).
    ==
    Royko’s treatment of Dylan is rather more deft than Al Capp’s treatment of Joan Baez.

  51. Re Dylan performances: I’ve seen him…let’s see…four times, from ca 1990 to a couple of years ago. The first one was mediocre at best. The second was a tour he did with Paul Simon. That was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. Simon’s half of the concert maybe better, but Dylan’s was very good. The third was good. The last was pretty awful. He’s been through here again since then and it didn’t really even occur to me to go.

    Bias: I’m a Dylan fan but not fanatic. I think his work is wildly uneven. He’s put out some real garbage. Yet there is at least one track, “Crossing the Rubicon,” on his most recent studio album (2020) that ranks up there with his best work.

    Anecdotes give the impression that he is fairly often an absolute jerk.

  52. I think whatever underlies your affinity for dance and watching dance also underlies your enjoyment of watching singers perform their songs.

  53. I think his work is wildly uneven. He’s put out some real garbage.

    Molly Brown:

    True. He’s never been the perfectionist artist, who works and reworks a piece until it’s all smooth and just right. As Leonard Cohen said of Dylan — “He leaves the axe marks on the wood.”

    Even Dylan’s acknowledged masterpieces were not well-rehearsed, careful productions. Dylan just got a crew of musicians together and went with it. When it worked, it could be spectacular like “Highway 61 Revisited.”

    But it didn’t always work and Dylan’s inspiration became more and more checkered. I stopped buying his albums after “Desire” in 1976.

  54. Same goes for Springstein.
    ==
    Springsteen grew up in a superlatively ordinary wage-earner family in Monmouth County, NJ and sings about those sorts of people. He’s been fabulously wealthy for some time, of course. What’s he supposed to do, stop producing music or sing about skeevy record executives?

  55. Never got Dylan. Liked folk for the sound. The more “protest” a piece was, the less I cared for it. Same for performers….Baez for example. Liked PP&M because they were less of that and many of their songs were something else so you could listen to an album and not get 100% protests. Same for the Kingston Trio, Limeliters, various others including other soloists. Judy Collins, for example.
    But if it hurt my ears, I wasn’t going to give it a break for being a Sixties version of politically correct.
    It isn’t only faking rail-riding Okies to have good harmony, melodies, interesting subjects. KT. Alamo, Reuben James, Limeliters, various. Some were new takes on old hymns.

    Probably have something personal in this, but the more somebody listened to and talked about “protest”, the less likely he had bestirred himself in that regard in the actual, you know, world.

  56. I can often overlook an artist’s politics, but there is a line I can’t define and Springsteen crossed it.

    Nonetheless, I have noticed he can still write a good song without his rich man working-class politics. Here’s a lovely meditation on age and desire and being passed by.
    ________________________________

    Well the street lights shine
    Down on Blessing Avenue
    Lovers, they walk by
    Holding hands two by two
    A breeze crosses the porch
    Bicycle spokes spin ’round
    Jacket’s on, I’m out the door
    Tonight I’m going to burn this town down

    [Chorus]
    And the girls in their summer clothes
    In the cool of the evening light
    The girls in their summer clothes
    Pass me by

    –“Bruce Springsteen – Girls In Their Summer Clothes (Official HD Video)”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU1ylbJ-V7U
    ________________________________

    The song harkens back to his early, gonna-get-the-girl songs, but 30-40 years later.

  57. huxley:

    The lyrics of that Springsteen song are a clear cross between the title of the famous Irwin Shaw story “The Girls in their Summer Dresses” and the lyrics of “The Girl from Ipanema.”

  60. Never liked Springsteen either. Really liked his sax player, Clarence Clemmons and his drummer, Max Weinberg.

    To Springsteen’s credit, I’ve never heard of anyone being disappointed by one of his shows. He seems to take performing and giving a crowd their money’s worth seriously.

  61. neo:

    I hadn’t heard of the Irwin Shaw story. The NYT draws a link between the two:
    _______________________________________

    Ever since Irwin Shaw crafted his bittersweet story, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses,” and Bruce Springsteen gave the idea his own spin in “Girls in Their Summer Clothes”…

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/fashion/summer-dress-heat-wave.html
    _______________________________________

    Clearly the titles are almost identical. Springsteen frequently stole titles from other media, e.g. “Thunder Road” and “All That Heaven Will Allow.” Though I wouldn’t assume Springsteen actually read the story.

    The video emphasizes the winter/summer angst. In fact the sections of Springsteen singing were shot on a bleak winter day, while those of the young beauties are shot in summer.

    FWIW Springsteen is an emotive, dramatic singer.

  62. More song trivia.
    Read ‘The Girls In Their Summer Dresses’. Great portrait of a shallow man.

    Anyway, it brought to mind a verse from my favorite Bonnie Raitt song.

    ‘You Got To Be Ready For Love’

    ‘This woman don’t do no henpeckin’
    And I don’t think one look is a felony
    But I don’t appreciate no rubberneckin’ no
    About a man when he’s with me
    Out in the street
    You got to be ready for love
    If you want to be mine’

    Frances could sure use some Bonnie attitude. And a new husband.

  64. Aesop

    Loved that one.

    My ref about “…beautiful girls, walk….” was to make the point that there’s more than one lament in that area.

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