Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen & Bono: great singing is about more than the notes

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Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen & Bono: great singing is about more than the notes

By Neil McCormick Music Last updated: June 30th, 2009

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A great frontman from the get go: Bono of U2

What makes a great singer? Whatever else is said about Michael Jackson, there seems to be universal agreement that he was one of the greatest modern popular voices. His style was original and utterly distinctive, from his almost ethereal falsetto to his soft, sweet mid-tones; his fluid, seamless control of often very fast moving series of notes; his percussive yet still melodic outbursts, ululations and interjections (from those spooky "tee-hee-hees" to grunts and wails). Unusually for someone coming from a black American soul tradition, he did not often sing straight, unadorned ballads, though when he did (from 'Ben' to 'She's Out Of My Life') the effect was of a powerful simplicity and truth. Jackson was a dancer at heart, and his vocal prowess expressed itself playfully within and around the the rhythm. He liked to multi-track himself (though the effect was never over-bearing) so that he was spinning off his own vocal, providing his own calls and response. I often think that it is one of those voices that would stand out in any context, which you cannot say of many pop songers, hitting a space that is emotionally right on the button but is almost more than human, transcending all divides in the way that, sometimes, a great world singer can (from Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn to Youssou N'Dour and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu), moving beyond language into pure music.

I'm not sure Bruce Springsteen would have the same effect if you couldn't understand the lyrics or the musical context. Tune into him as the leader of an afrobeat band on some third world radio station, you'd put him down as a gruff shouter, always in tune but missing a lot of notes in the scale. If he even tried a falsetto, all you would get is silence. Yet when I watched him play last weekend, I was amongst tens of thousands of people held spellbound by his performance. He sings with an emotional truth that resonates through his very being, and is squeezed out in the potent, careful lyrics of his songs, so that his melancholic, introspective version of Racing In The Street reduced a massive Hyde Park crowd to a state of hushed awe. Rock has a very different tradition to soul music, where the expression of inner truth is more important than the purity of the notes, and Springsteen, for all his vocal limitations, is one of the greatest rock singers of all time.

It reminds me that, by any objective standards, many of my favourite singers can't really sing very well at all: Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Johnny Cash, Nick Cave – to name a few who would never make it past round one of the X Factor. Elvis Costello has long been a hero of mine, yet for all his technical ability there is a wracked ugliness to his snarling tone. And then, of course, there's Bono.

I am writing this on my way to see the opening night of U2's world tour in Barcelona, and boy am I looking forward to it. Some think Bono is the greatest rock singer of the modern age, which I think would have come as a big surprise to Bono himself, back when he started out. He was a great frontman from the get go, but in the early days, his tone was so thin, his voice so stretched, that it was usually buried in the mix, with all the focus on The Edge's guitar work. But he kind of sneaked up on us, improving through will, application, imagination and the increase of muscle and tone that came through relentless touring, until by the time of 'The Joshua Tree' his voice was just busting out through all those guitars, demanding to be heard and desperate to be believed. He found his way to the truth of the songs, and that's what I think marks him out as a great singer. His flexibility and tone have hugely improved, but he is never going to win a vocal pyrotechnical showdown with Celine Dion … or Susan Boyle for that matter. But such is his immersion in the music, he can stand up and trade vocal blows with soul singers like Mary J Blige (on her version of 'One') and hold the emotional centre of the song.

Yet in a recent Word magazine article (part of their Bono On Trial cover story) he was accused by one journalist of being just about the worst rock singer of all time (which must have comes as a relief to Jonathan Richman and Pete Doherty). It struck me that, with any of these singers, if you don't actually buy into the music and believe in the authenticity of the artist, all you can hear are the notes, and you miss the experience. Writing in one of our rival periodicals (ok, it was the Guardian) Jim Kerr recently gave his opinion why Bono is the greatest rock singer of all, and it is worth quoting:

"He's a brilliant rock singer, emotionally and technically; he's got a fantastic soul voice; he has highs, lows, drama – he makes lesser songs seem better than they are. He's better than Dylan, Lennon or Bruce – better than anyone. They made their limitations work and in doing so became iconic, absolute greats, Zen masters; Dylan's a method singer like Brando was a method actor. But Bono is better. He has no limitations. He hasn't always been this good, he just developed at a pace that no one else did. If you go back to that Band Aid single, everyone's on there – but when he goes to the mic, the drama and tunefulness and pain and sweetness he brings to it, he's on a different planet to everyone else, and that's when he started to take off. U2 without him would be inconceivable. Bono's drama, the attack, coincides with the violence the Edge brings… but it's the force behind the music that gives them that extra turbo-charge. Bono carries all of his extracurricular activities into his performances. He can be operatic, he can be angry, he can do pop. He brings so many colours to the palette."

In essence, he brings himself, as all great singers do. Some, like Michael Jackson, bring great virtuosity to the task. Others, with lesser technical skills, have to find ways to open themselves up, so there is no separation between the singer and the song. They believe, and if you start to listen, you find yourself believing too.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/cultur...o-great-singing-is-about-more-than-the-notes/