What Makes a Good Singer? I Don’t Know And Neither Do You
What Makes a Good Singer? I Don’t Know And Neither Do You
- What makes a good singer? How about a good writer or a good person?
As people, we naturally enjoy categorizing and analyzing things. Oftentimes this is very productive, as it allows to understand the world around us, and create things that our instincts alone wouldn’t allow. However, like with anything, there are limits and times where analysis and strict definition are counterproductive.
So what is in a definition? And does it help us define what makes a good singer? In a famous obscenity case, Supreme Court Judge Potter Stewart tried defining sexually explicit material by saying “I know it when I see it.” It is imprecise, but has its merits. Similarly, in the field of philosophy of language, Gottlob Frege, defined the “meaning” of a word considered by many in the field to this day as imprecise and vague, but which remains a dominant definition to this day. Frege came up not with a complex, ultraspecific definition for the meaning of a word, but merely that it was defined by two elements, of a sense and reference. All this to say that oftentimes, in many fields, people are frustrated by the limits of analysis, and how despite our best attempts at formulating perfect and precise definitions, we end up with imperfect and vague ones. The same goes for what makes a “good” singer.
The truth is, analysis can only get us so far and at some point we have to accept the uncertain.
- Detail can get in the way
As someone who grew up with crippling social anxiety, my experience has been that obsession with detail can get in the way of the big picture, and that applies to determining what makes a good singer too. At its worst, my anxiety entailed nerves that tightened in public, thoughts that rambled like adrenaline shot stallions, and most importantly, a laser focus onto picking the exact perfect response to every word thrown my way.
The mind, and it’s ability to analyze, is a great tool, but for ones with an anxious, obsessive mind, it can get in the way of a big picture gut instinct that often outperforms analysis.
In my early songs, written from the mind and not from the muses, individual letters may have held more water but the entire songs stood like dry wells, to which no traveler much enjoyed returning to. On the other hand, songs written purely from pain prior to the development of experience and skill delivered emotion but with less precision and sophistication than possible.
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Obsession with Simple Formulas like Technique Can Get in the Way
Bob Dylan and Kurt Cobain are bad singers according to some, and yet their voices stand the test of time. By detail, the nasal tones and their limited vocal ranges suggest that they shouldn’t be appreciated as much as they are, but they are. I suspect we, again, miss the forest for the trees when we purely judge a voice by technique. Honesty and vulnerability are hard to quantify, and it’s precisely a mixture of variables that makes it hard to emulate the legendary quality of these voices. It’s a secret blend of pressure, softness, vulnerability and invulnerability, etc. almost a Golden mean of sorts.
Sometimes you just go by what you feel, and you do it enough and you stumble into something that works. If it was just about sitting and thinking about it, everyone could take lessons and do it. And many do, or try, but they reach a ceiling and find that no matter how much money they spend they can only get so far. Until they step back from mere technique and experience the deepest depths of suffering and develop a sense of self that allows them the confidence to expose that region of their soul, will they be able to truly convince an audience of multiple generations that they are a “good” singer.
If Bob Dylan are Kurt Cobain are bad singers, then so are John Lennon and Janis Joplin. And Hemingway in that case is a bad writer, and Frege a bad philosopher of language. And you might be right – but only if you’re judging with your mind and not your soul.
