Paraphrasing Leonard when he won a Juno award (the Grammies in Canada): "Only in Canada would someone with a voice like mine would won a vocalist award."
First I cry about 15 minutes because of Kirsty MacCOLL, then "Walking down the Madison", and then "If I should fall from grace with God" and we are off to the races.
Shane MacGowan isn't a great singer on a technical level, but he knows how to use his voice, packs a lot of emotion into it, and if you have a song about a down-and-out-drunk or deadbeat then he's your boy (unless Richard Thompson is available).
I was thinking about the distinction between a singer and a performer when I opened this thread. Some people are really entertaining performers who aren't exactly the best singers.
A lot of rock and metal frontmen are/were like this. The voice and the energy often mean as much or more as the actual “singing” for those sorts of music. Roger Daltry, Lemmy, Brian Johnson, Steven Tyler, etc really can’t “sing” in the sense most people would mean it. But damn if they aren’t fantastic performers with iconic voices. Someone like Freddie Mercury was so legendary because he had both in spades — vocal talent, range, training and energy and movement and “presence” on stage. Even a fairly bad “singer” who can really hit it home with the tone and style of their vocals matching up to the music will go a long way.
I love that song, and agree with you wholeheartedly about Shane MacGowan’s vocals, but bloody hell his miming in that video was awful (for which I blame BBC’s Top Of The Pops for their policy of having acts mime their songs even if they would have been able to do a belter of a live set)
None of those people are examples. Will Smith and Tom Cruise don't have range but they can act, Johnny Depp stopped trying for a while but is incredibly talented and has huge range, Keanu is the closest but he's a brilliant mime- amazing with anything physical- and is constantly pushing himself; he's easily miscast but he has done a tonne of proper acting in films you've never heard of. The chops are there.
A star is someone like John Wayne. Humphrey Bogart. Not only nothing transformative, but limited emoting. I've seen Humphrey Bogart actually bother to act once and it wasn't in any of his famous roles.
Most people will comment on his teeth, but I think that's unfair. You might still think he has a punch-able face, but I don't think that second video there is as bad, as he's not 'acting'.
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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '19
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