It sometimes feels as if Britney fandom is a kind of global religion, with all its different faiths, beliefs, forms of worship, orthodoxies, sects and cults. One of the strangest and most impenetrable sects is the bunch of people whose mantra is that “Britney has a deep voice”.
This would be no more than a highly questionable observation were it not for the conclusions they draw from it. Basically, if you hear a high voice on a Britney song, it’s not Britney. It can’t be, because she has a deep voice.
And so you find a whole bedroom industry dedicated to the familar sport of trying to take away from Britney any credit that might be due. We discover attempts to prove that somebody else sang most of the song in question; attempts that are almost always fatally flawed by the assumption that Britney’s lead vocal is always at center and if you take the center channel out you’re left with the proportion of the song that’s supposedly sung by somebody else.
The determination of these supersleuths to find derelictions in Britney’s studio performances blinds them to something that’s incredibly obvious when you listen on headphones - the lead vocal isn’t always at center! On some tracks almost all of the lead vocal is divided between the left and right channels! Sometimes it's multi-tracked! And, unless you’re dedicated to undermining Britney, it’s beyond question that the voice is her own.
However, over at my own site, www.newbritneyology.com, as well as in comments here at PoorBritney, I’m regularly informed of some amazing discoveries: Keri Hilson sang most of “Gimme More” and of “Break The Ice”! Kara DioGuardi sang most of “Ooh Ooh Baby”! Nicole Morier sang most of “Heaven on Earth”! And so on. I’ve even been informed that “Toxic” was actually an unacknowledged duet between Britney and Cathy Dennis. Somebody had to sing the high bits after all....
There is actually no auditory reason to believe such claims. Most of “Toxic” is so obviously Britney that nobody disputes it. But what about those high parts? That can’t be Britney, right? She has a deep voice! So it must be.... who else was on the track...... Cathy Dennis by elimination! But her voice isn’t especially high, and it doesn’t sound like her at all. Similarly with the claims that Ina Wroldsen sang the chorus on “He About To Lose Me”. It sounds a lot more like Britney on the chorus of "You Oughta Know" than it sounds like Ina.
The claim that “Britney has a deep voice” flies in the face of the evidence anyway. Her lengthy recording history shows her singing in a variety of registers, including a high one, and using falsetto quite freely too. Away back on “OIDIA”, most of the tracks towards the end of the album are sung in a much higher voice than those at the start. Who do the doubters think sang “You Got It All”, “Heart” and especially “Dear Diary”?
On “Britney” there are also several high-voiced tracks, such as “Anticipating”, “Cinderella”, and especially “When I Found You” to contrast with the deeper-voiced tracks like “Let Me Be” or “Overprotected”. On “In The Zone” you have songs like “Breathe on Me”, “Touch of my Hand”, “Don’t Hang Up” and “Everytime”. On “Circus” you have “Mannequin”, “Rock Me In” and especially “My Baby”. Is anyone disputing that Britney’s singing them?
Yes, actually. Some people are. Despite the very clear statement by an eminent record producer that “you can’t manufacture tone”, there are those among the more conspiriatorially inclined portion of the fanbase who think you can. All you do is take all the recognisable characteristics of Britney’s voice (“How?” one might gently enquire) and “blend” them with a high-voiced singer and Bob's your Auntie.
If this procedure was as readily achieved as some people think, it would be of great interest to the criminal fraternity. To me it seems beyond laughable, and you can Google from now till this time next year and you won’t find a single article on the professional studio websites and online magazines confirming that it can be done or explaining how. Yet certain individuals regularly assure me that it’s standard practice and everybody does it. Complete delusion, but they’d sooner believe that than accept that Britney can sing in anything other than a deep voice. That’s their faith and their religion.
Showing posts with label vocals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vocals. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Britney Spears and that Strange Sense of Longing
This is probably the weirdest article ever written about Britney, but I’m going ahead with it anyway. I know some readers will be saying “What was she smokin’ that day?!” but I think it was worthwhile to write it in the hope of reaching out to a few fans who will know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. I’m going to talk about a phenomenon that is almost inexplicable, yet is experienced in some way by many people. I want to see if any readers agree with me that Britney’s singing evokes this experience.
I’ll begin with a sidestep. One afternoon a few weeks ago, while I was working, I began to think about a certain song. And even thinking about it made me cry. Not just once - seven times in the same afternoon. I just couldn’t think about this song without being taken over by some strange emotions that I couldn’t quite identify. In my mind I kept being transported towards a different place and time, with its own emotional atmosphere. It felt important and significant that I could almost glimpse this place and time, yet if I tried to focus directly on it or analyse it, the feelings began to disappear.
The song was “The Folks Who Live On The Hill” as sung by Peggy Lee. She was a gentle, sweet, sensitive singer and she chose to sing this song in the softest voice imaginable. No belting, no histrionics, no show-off climaxes. The song was originally from a stage musical and wasn’t sentimental - it was actually quite humorous, in its own subtle way, poking fun at some “white picket fences” folksy imaginings. The way Peggy Lee sang it seemed so straight and simple, yet for many listeners it taps directly into a deep emotional well and is more profound than funny.
In my recent review of “Unusual You” I referred briefly to the experience of “Sehnsucht”, and this, I believe, is what surrounds Peggy Lee’s “The Folks Who Live On the Hill”. “Sehnsucht” is a German word that, in its most literal sense, means “longing”, but the experience is a lot more complex and intangible than that. The great Irish-born writer C.S. Lewis, in attempting to explain it, admits that “I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism... the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something which has never actually appeared in our experience.”
He continues: “[The poet] Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
Wikipedia makes a gallant effort at a slightly more prosaic account: “It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify... At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be. Indeed, the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for. Yet though one may not be able to identify just what it is, the experience is one of such significance that ordinary reality may pale in comparison...”
Triggers for these experiences vary widely from individual to individual. C.S. Lewis gives his as “the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.” The Transition Gallery’s JT 09 project refers to “images of intense urban wilderness... washed out beautiful boys... fragile Northern landscapes”.
For me, it’s the image of Baby and Joe in Peggy Lee’s song (even typing those words makes me cry), some Grant Wood paintings, the song "Wonderful, wonderful" by Johnny Mathis, the low, pink afternoon winter sun in a suburban street, overhead power lines, street life (hearing “Summertime” by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince actually makes me feel faint) and.... Britney Spears’ voice. The songs that hit me hardest are a random enough selection, but here are a few examples: “Anticipating”, “Radar”, “Unusual You”, “Tell me what ya sippin’ on”, “State of Grace”, “Sugarfall” and “Why Should I Be Sad”. Some of these songs should be superficial and jolly, but Britney transforms them into something almost mystical. They all make me experience Sehnsucht. The words don’t matter. I barely hear them.The sound of Britney’s voice transports me to the edge of that elusive, mysterious place.
Is it because Britney’s soft, sweet voice has the same direct entree to the emotions as Peggy Lee’s? Do her off-stage whispers touch us on a subconscious level? Is it that the impression she gives of innocence and naivety makes us long for things we didn't understand as children? Is it because she ends words and phrases with a gentle, fading cadence instead of a sharp, snappy assertiveness? Is it because she always chooses quietness and stillness over loudness and drama? Is it because her unusual phrasing, steering away from conventional singers’ mannerisms, sounds so honest and heartfelt? Is it the way she sometimes holds back a fraction from the beat and seems to make time slow down? Is it because it sounds as if SHE is always searching for that longed-for thing that she can almost glimpse out of the corner of her eye but never quite grasp? This is a woman who has been on a long spiritual journey.
I threw out a lot of options there, and I’m not going to vote for any of them. I don’t want to influence you in any direction because this whole thing is very personal. I know it’s a very different thing to analyse how she creates the experience of Sehnsucht than to analyse the experience of Sehnsucht she creates, but each of you is probably hearing different things, and responding to different songs in different ways. Even if a lot of us agree that she calls up strange and elusive feelings with her singing, we may not be in agreement about exactly how she does it. I'd love to hear what you think, because I want to develop this subject further.
I have to finish on an anxious but hopeful note. The “Blackout” era was particularly rich in these strangely evocative vocals, and “Circus” has its moments, although far fewer of them. “Femme Fatale” hasn’t any, in my opinion - but that is ONLY my opinion. As she approaches her 30s, Britney seems to be leaving that searching phase of her life and moving into a more settled one, and its possible that this might be reflected in her singing. “Femme Fatale” seems less subtle, less sensitive, more assertive, more functional. Yet somehow I believe in that dear, sweet soul of hers, that big heart, that modesty, that lack of confidence, that awkwardness, that other-worldliness. I think she’ll continue to touch our deepest, most unfathomable emotions. I hope and pray that she does, because artists like this may only come along once in a lifetime.
I’ll begin with a sidestep. One afternoon a few weeks ago, while I was working, I began to think about a certain song. And even thinking about it made me cry. Not just once - seven times in the same afternoon. I just couldn’t think about this song without being taken over by some strange emotions that I couldn’t quite identify. In my mind I kept being transported towards a different place and time, with its own emotional atmosphere. It felt important and significant that I could almost glimpse this place and time, yet if I tried to focus directly on it or analyse it, the feelings began to disappear.
The song was “The Folks Who Live On The Hill” as sung by Peggy Lee. She was a gentle, sweet, sensitive singer and she chose to sing this song in the softest voice imaginable. No belting, no histrionics, no show-off climaxes. The song was originally from a stage musical and wasn’t sentimental - it was actually quite humorous, in its own subtle way, poking fun at some “white picket fences” folksy imaginings. The way Peggy Lee sang it seemed so straight and simple, yet for many listeners it taps directly into a deep emotional well and is more profound than funny.
In my recent review of “Unusual You” I referred briefly to the experience of “Sehnsucht”, and this, I believe, is what surrounds Peggy Lee’s “The Folks Who Live On the Hill”. “Sehnsucht” is a German word that, in its most literal sense, means “longing”, but the experience is a lot more complex and intangible than that. The great Irish-born writer C.S. Lewis, in attempting to explain it, admits that “I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism... the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something which has never actually appeared in our experience.”
He continues: “[The poet] Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
Wikipedia makes a gallant effort at a slightly more prosaic account: “It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify... At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be. Indeed, the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for. Yet though one may not be able to identify just what it is, the experience is one of such significance that ordinary reality may pale in comparison...”
Triggers for these experiences vary widely from individual to individual. C.S. Lewis gives his as “the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.” The Transition Gallery’s JT 09 project refers to “images of intense urban wilderness... washed out beautiful boys... fragile Northern landscapes”.
For me, it’s the image of Baby and Joe in Peggy Lee’s song (even typing those words makes me cry), some Grant Wood paintings, the song "Wonderful, wonderful" by Johnny Mathis, the low, pink afternoon winter sun in a suburban street, overhead power lines, street life (hearing “Summertime” by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince actually makes me feel faint) and.... Britney Spears’ voice. The songs that hit me hardest are a random enough selection, but here are a few examples: “Anticipating”, “Radar”, “Unusual You”, “Tell me what ya sippin’ on”, “State of Grace”, “Sugarfall” and “Why Should I Be Sad”. Some of these songs should be superficial and jolly, but Britney transforms them into something almost mystical. They all make me experience Sehnsucht. The words don’t matter. I barely hear them.The sound of Britney’s voice transports me to the edge of that elusive, mysterious place.
Is it because Britney’s soft, sweet voice has the same direct entree to the emotions as Peggy Lee’s? Do her off-stage whispers touch us on a subconscious level? Is it that the impression she gives of innocence and naivety makes us long for things we didn't understand as children? Is it because she ends words and phrases with a gentle, fading cadence instead of a sharp, snappy assertiveness? Is it because she always chooses quietness and stillness over loudness and drama? Is it because her unusual phrasing, steering away from conventional singers’ mannerisms, sounds so honest and heartfelt? Is it the way she sometimes holds back a fraction from the beat and seems to make time slow down? Is it because it sounds as if SHE is always searching for that longed-for thing that she can almost glimpse out of the corner of her eye but never quite grasp? This is a woman who has been on a long spiritual journey.
I threw out a lot of options there, and I’m not going to vote for any of them. I don’t want to influence you in any direction because this whole thing is very personal. I know it’s a very different thing to analyse how she creates the experience of Sehnsucht than to analyse the experience of Sehnsucht she creates, but each of you is probably hearing different things, and responding to different songs in different ways. Even if a lot of us agree that she calls up strange and elusive feelings with her singing, we may not be in agreement about exactly how she does it. I'd love to hear what you think, because I want to develop this subject further.
I have to finish on an anxious but hopeful note. The “Blackout” era was particularly rich in these strangely evocative vocals, and “Circus” has its moments, although far fewer of them. “Femme Fatale” hasn’t any, in my opinion - but that is ONLY my opinion. As she approaches her 30s, Britney seems to be leaving that searching phase of her life and moving into a more settled one, and its possible that this might be reflected in her singing. “Femme Fatale” seems less subtle, less sensitive, more assertive, more functional. Yet somehow I believe in that dear, sweet soul of hers, that big heart, that modesty, that lack of confidence, that awkwardness, that other-worldliness. I think she’ll continue to touch our deepest, most unfathomable emotions. I hope and pray that she does, because artists like this may only come along once in a lifetime.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Britney on Headphones! Part 3
In this series of articles, I’ve been discussing how listening with good headphones (preferably with a good CD player) enables us to separate Britney’s voice from the surrounding complexities of production and subject it to a less prejudiced yet more detailed scrutiny. With many singers, listening on headphones doesn’t tell you anything you don’t know from listening on speakers or in-ear phones. Why is it important to listen to Britney so carefully? Well, to appreciate her subtle skills. And to become aware of how persistently and how unfairly she has been misrepresented.
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be brainwashed into the Pop Idol or X Factor mindset of thinking that only loud, declamatory, bombastic belting can be considered a good and credible form of singing. Headphone listening enables you to enjoy what is good about the softer, gentler kinds of singing and appreciate them for what they are instead of lambasting them for what they are not. In this final instalment of the Britney On Headphones series, I will concentrate on the positive rather than defending against the negative.
Our Britney Headphone Tour has arrived at “In The Zone”. By 2003, Britney had been the biggest thing in pop for 5 years and many critics wanted her time to be up. Throughout 2003, hoping for wish fulfilment, they had written article after article predicting the imminent end of her career. They claimed she was too old for her teenybopper clientele now. The teenyboppers had moved on to new teeny idols.
By the time ITZ was launched, these critics had already put themselves in a sneering, dismissive mindset. Pundits were openly discussing how her career in music was over, at the very moment that the album was No.1 in America. As a result, few reviewers took ITZ seriously enough to give it a thorough listen and try to figure out what it was all about, and why. She seemed to have a soft, whispery voice - but what the hell, she was only a teeny-pleaser, and nobody expects them to be talented singers.
What they didn’t seem to grasp was that, while their backs were turned, Britney had transitioned into an adult artist and, rather than try to appeal to a new bunch of 12-year-olds, had brought her existing audience with her. And they were now young adults. A market survey discovered that her typical demographic was 16-26. This is an age range that finds people in the full flowering of their sexual awareness, and Britney expressed her own adulthood by giving them a thoroughly sexual album.
It would be fair to say that most of the songs on ITZ are the sound of sex and seduction in one form or another. When we listen to ITZ we enter a special, precious little world where lives an artist so engrossed in her art that her interpretations differentiate songs OF seduction from songs ABOUT seduction. And she differentiates all of those from songs that are simply about... well.... sex. The voices she chooses are not loud and in-your-face. Superficially it may seem that all of them are similar, but some are firmer, some are dreamier, some are sweeter... Listening on headphones helps you to detect fine distinctions in softness and attack.
And quite apart from analysing her technique, listening to ITZ on headphones is a rewarding experience because Britney Spears does this kind of thing better than anyone in the history of pop. On ITZ there are songs that you really can’t imagine being sung convincingly by anyone else.
Towards the end of the album there are three songs that express a great deal of emotion in an extremely understated way. No shrieking melodrama here. “Everytime” is sung in a very controlled way. Listen to the care with which she sings the ENDS of words like “here” and “clear”. Yet here and there are sad, broken-hearted little sighs. The Scumfrog remix picks up on these and fashions a devastating drama from them.
“The Answer” contains vocals of wonderful tenderness and love. By the way, you can’t give the credit for this to a backing singer because Britney did all the vocals herself. The chorus is as smooth, liquid and soft as you can imagine, and near the end, at 3:05, she begins to sing, simultaneously with the chorus, “Who can hold me.... wipe the tears away... who can give me love....?” and I doubt that any words have ever been sung to a lover more sweetly than here.
And finally, “Don’t Hang Up”. The song is simply about phone sex, but the yearning and empathy she conveys bring some of us to tears. I’ve never seen anyone give her credit for the astonishing way in which she sustains notes invested with all the softness, warmth and sweetness in the world while barely breathing them. (Try it yourself if you think it’s easy. Yet everyone takes it for granted.) And there’s my favorite Britney moment of all time: “Tell me, tell me what you see....feel me, feel me underneath” The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as her words drift out of the headphones like the voice of an angel. Oh.my.God.
Now “Blackout”. This has to be a case of everyone hearing what they expected to hear, which was a basket case, heavily medicated and probably either bald-headed or with a pink wig, being propped up in a studio for as long as it took to get some phrases that could be stitched together into a few vocal fragments. These were then skillfully interwoven with the voices of backing singers to create studio fabrications with a Britney Spears flavor. Nobody seemed to notice that the album was recorded entirely BEFORE her breakdown problems, or that she was Executive Producer!
How carefully were people listening to Britney at that time? Well, one critic wrote about her notorious 2007 VMA performance “the song appeared to consist entirely of the words ‘gimme gimme’” - thus turning the meaning of the song through 180 degrees. It would be fair to say that even a proportion of fans simpy accepted that her singing on “Blackout” was minimal and weak. Yet a listen on headphones shows that this is not so. Not on ANY track.
On “Gimme More” her lead vocal BURSTS forth, full of edge and attitude. There’s nothing whispery about “Piece of Me” and nothing weak about her work on the choruses of “Radar” and “Perfect Lover”. On “Ooh Ooh Baby” her voice fills your ears, and on “Why should I be sad?” you can hear the resilience in her tone.
If we decide to be charitable to the lazy, ignorant listeners who sympathised with the NME in its decision to make “Blackout” their Worst Album of the Year (a decision that is looking increasingly perverse and discreditable with the benefit of hindsight) we might say that the album contained so many spectacularly brilliant productions that people were dazzled by the wall of sound and forgot to listen to Britney. Given the spurious “back story” about her mental state during the time of the recording sessions, they then decided that this must have been because she was scarcely present.
When we enter the “Circus” era, the atmosphere is very different, because this was her supposed “comeback” - not from her previous album, which had been released only a year earlier, but from her personal, apparently mental problems that had seen her hospitalized. It was good that the critics were disposed to hear better singing from her this time around, which meant that they at least listened with a vaguely optimistic mindset.
If we listen to “Circus” on good headphones, it feels as if a window opens and we can hear with great clarity. And what we hear is that the character of her singing has undergone a change. Here, the edginess and attitude in her voice that characterized “Blackout” have gone, and she seems more at peace with herself, more relaxed and confident. There is nothing breathy or whispery at all, she sings mostly in her mid-register and her vocal technique seems smooth and effortless. Check out her confident work on “Blur” and “Lace and Leather”.
Even in “Unusual You”, where previously she would have used her high, breathy voice, she’s mid-range and solid. Where she uses falsetto, as in “Out From Under” and “Mannequin” for example, it’s perfectly integrated and the transition is seamless. And it’s interesting to hear the teasing sex-kitten voice, used widely on “Femme Fatale”, get some early exercise in the verses of “If U Seek Amy” and “Mmm Papi” (she never uses it in choruses). “My Baby” is sung extremely sweetly, in a high register, but without a hint of breathiness.
“My Baby”, incidentally, is a track that, heard on good headphones, sounds much more engaging than you would ever have imagined, BECAUSE the qualities you can hear in Britney’s voice make it sound so sincere. On speakers, it tends to sound sugary and twee. Some other tracks that gain stature on headphones are “Shattered Glass” with its odd bass bumps and subsonic rumbling, “Circus” with its crystal-clear vocal production at center and striking double-tracked fill-ins from Britney at left and right, and “Phonography” which comes over as much more subtle and complex. For a real oddity, listen to Britney’s opening lines in “Mannequin”. What do you hear?
And finally (did someone say “Thank God”?!) we get to “Femme Fatale”. What you discover on headphones here is that you don’t feel as “close” to Britney’s vocals. They seem more impersonal. The electronic effects that make the album sound so exciting have the effect of seeming to distance Britney from us and occasionally you may wish you could simply hear HER. On this outing, she’s different again. Not breathy as on ITZ, not attitudinal as on “Blackout” and not smooth and effortless as on “Circus”, this time she sings a little higher and a lot more forcefully, and on headphones you can appreciate how much her vocals dominate every mix - something that isn’t nearly as obvious on speakers.
Things to listen for on your headphones: On “Till The World Ends”, a much more detailed and focused “wall of sound” reveals itself. “Hold It Against Me” is an overwhelming experience, a real aural assault, recorded very loud and with Britney’s insistent vocals coming at you from all directions. On “How I Roll”, at the start of the verse, it sounds like two different takes of Britney’s lead vocal competing with each other. On “Big Fat Bass”, note the very particular qualities of the bass track as each incident arrives (including the famous kick-drum).
“Criminal” is particularly interesting. The mix leaves a very audible gap at the beginning, just to left of center, which is filled at 0:34 by a guitar. And it’s fascinating to analyse exactly how the intensity is built from 2:28 to the end. It’s a lovely mix. On “Up and Down”, at 1:18, listen to the very subtle harmonies from the backing singers. And on “He About To Lose Me”, notice how Britney’s vocals in the chorus start wide and double-tracked but gradually narrow until they’re a solo at center.
And that’s it! We’re done!
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be brainwashed into the Pop Idol or X Factor mindset of thinking that only loud, declamatory, bombastic belting can be considered a good and credible form of singing. Headphone listening enables you to enjoy what is good about the softer, gentler kinds of singing and appreciate them for what they are instead of lambasting them for what they are not. In this final instalment of the Britney On Headphones series, I will concentrate on the positive rather than defending against the negative.
Our Britney Headphone Tour has arrived at “In The Zone”. By 2003, Britney had been the biggest thing in pop for 5 years and many critics wanted her time to be up. Throughout 2003, hoping for wish fulfilment, they had written article after article predicting the imminent end of her career. They claimed she was too old for her teenybopper clientele now. The teenyboppers had moved on to new teeny idols.
By the time ITZ was launched, these critics had already put themselves in a sneering, dismissive mindset. Pundits were openly discussing how her career in music was over, at the very moment that the album was No.1 in America. As a result, few reviewers took ITZ seriously enough to give it a thorough listen and try to figure out what it was all about, and why. She seemed to have a soft, whispery voice - but what the hell, she was only a teeny-pleaser, and nobody expects them to be talented singers.
What they didn’t seem to grasp was that, while their backs were turned, Britney had transitioned into an adult artist and, rather than try to appeal to a new bunch of 12-year-olds, had brought her existing audience with her. And they were now young adults. A market survey discovered that her typical demographic was 16-26. This is an age range that finds people in the full flowering of their sexual awareness, and Britney expressed her own adulthood by giving them a thoroughly sexual album.
It would be fair to say that most of the songs on ITZ are the sound of sex and seduction in one form or another. When we listen to ITZ we enter a special, precious little world where lives an artist so engrossed in her art that her interpretations differentiate songs OF seduction from songs ABOUT seduction. And she differentiates all of those from songs that are simply about... well.... sex. The voices she chooses are not loud and in-your-face. Superficially it may seem that all of them are similar, but some are firmer, some are dreamier, some are sweeter... Listening on headphones helps you to detect fine distinctions in softness and attack.
And quite apart from analysing her technique, listening to ITZ on headphones is a rewarding experience because Britney Spears does this kind of thing better than anyone in the history of pop. On ITZ there are songs that you really can’t imagine being sung convincingly by anyone else.
Towards the end of the album there are three songs that express a great deal of emotion in an extremely understated way. No shrieking melodrama here. “Everytime” is sung in a very controlled way. Listen to the care with which she sings the ENDS of words like “here” and “clear”. Yet here and there are sad, broken-hearted little sighs. The Scumfrog remix picks up on these and fashions a devastating drama from them.
“The Answer” contains vocals of wonderful tenderness and love. By the way, you can’t give the credit for this to a backing singer because Britney did all the vocals herself. The chorus is as smooth, liquid and soft as you can imagine, and near the end, at 3:05, she begins to sing, simultaneously with the chorus, “Who can hold me.... wipe the tears away... who can give me love....?” and I doubt that any words have ever been sung to a lover more sweetly than here.
And finally, “Don’t Hang Up”. The song is simply about phone sex, but the yearning and empathy she conveys bring some of us to tears. I’ve never seen anyone give her credit for the astonishing way in which she sustains notes invested with all the softness, warmth and sweetness in the world while barely breathing them. (Try it yourself if you think it’s easy. Yet everyone takes it for granted.) And there’s my favorite Britney moment of all time: “Tell me, tell me what you see....feel me, feel me underneath” The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as her words drift out of the headphones like the voice of an angel. Oh.my.God.
Now “Blackout”. This has to be a case of everyone hearing what they expected to hear, which was a basket case, heavily medicated and probably either bald-headed or with a pink wig, being propped up in a studio for as long as it took to get some phrases that could be stitched together into a few vocal fragments. These were then skillfully interwoven with the voices of backing singers to create studio fabrications with a Britney Spears flavor. Nobody seemed to notice that the album was recorded entirely BEFORE her breakdown problems, or that she was Executive Producer!
How carefully were people listening to Britney at that time? Well, one critic wrote about her notorious 2007 VMA performance “the song appeared to consist entirely of the words ‘gimme gimme’” - thus turning the meaning of the song through 180 degrees. It would be fair to say that even a proportion of fans simpy accepted that her singing on “Blackout” was minimal and weak. Yet a listen on headphones shows that this is not so. Not on ANY track.
On “Gimme More” her lead vocal BURSTS forth, full of edge and attitude. There’s nothing whispery about “Piece of Me” and nothing weak about her work on the choruses of “Radar” and “Perfect Lover”. On “Ooh Ooh Baby” her voice fills your ears, and on “Why should I be sad?” you can hear the resilience in her tone.
If we decide to be charitable to the lazy, ignorant listeners who sympathised with the NME in its decision to make “Blackout” their Worst Album of the Year (a decision that is looking increasingly perverse and discreditable with the benefit of hindsight) we might say that the album contained so many spectacularly brilliant productions that people were dazzled by the wall of sound and forgot to listen to Britney. Given the spurious “back story” about her mental state during the time of the recording sessions, they then decided that this must have been because she was scarcely present.
When we enter the “Circus” era, the atmosphere is very different, because this was her supposed “comeback” - not from her previous album, which had been released only a year earlier, but from her personal, apparently mental problems that had seen her hospitalized. It was good that the critics were disposed to hear better singing from her this time around, which meant that they at least listened with a vaguely optimistic mindset.
If we listen to “Circus” on good headphones, it feels as if a window opens and we can hear with great clarity. And what we hear is that the character of her singing has undergone a change. Here, the edginess and attitude in her voice that characterized “Blackout” have gone, and she seems more at peace with herself, more relaxed and confident. There is nothing breathy or whispery at all, she sings mostly in her mid-register and her vocal technique seems smooth and effortless. Check out her confident work on “Blur” and “Lace and Leather”.
Even in “Unusual You”, where previously she would have used her high, breathy voice, she’s mid-range and solid. Where she uses falsetto, as in “Out From Under” and “Mannequin” for example, it’s perfectly integrated and the transition is seamless. And it’s interesting to hear the teasing sex-kitten voice, used widely on “Femme Fatale”, get some early exercise in the verses of “If U Seek Amy” and “Mmm Papi” (she never uses it in choruses). “My Baby” is sung extremely sweetly, in a high register, but without a hint of breathiness.
“My Baby”, incidentally, is a track that, heard on good headphones, sounds much more engaging than you would ever have imagined, BECAUSE the qualities you can hear in Britney’s voice make it sound so sincere. On speakers, it tends to sound sugary and twee. Some other tracks that gain stature on headphones are “Shattered Glass” with its odd bass bumps and subsonic rumbling, “Circus” with its crystal-clear vocal production at center and striking double-tracked fill-ins from Britney at left and right, and “Phonography” which comes over as much more subtle and complex. For a real oddity, listen to Britney’s opening lines in “Mannequin”. What do you hear?
And finally (did someone say “Thank God”?!) we get to “Femme Fatale”. What you discover on headphones here is that you don’t feel as “close” to Britney’s vocals. They seem more impersonal. The electronic effects that make the album sound so exciting have the effect of seeming to distance Britney from us and occasionally you may wish you could simply hear HER. On this outing, she’s different again. Not breathy as on ITZ, not attitudinal as on “Blackout” and not smooth and effortless as on “Circus”, this time she sings a little higher and a lot more forcefully, and on headphones you can appreciate how much her vocals dominate every mix - something that isn’t nearly as obvious on speakers.
Things to listen for on your headphones: On “Till The World Ends”, a much more detailed and focused “wall of sound” reveals itself. “Hold It Against Me” is an overwhelming experience, a real aural assault, recorded very loud and with Britney’s insistent vocals coming at you from all directions. On “How I Roll”, at the start of the verse, it sounds like two different takes of Britney’s lead vocal competing with each other. On “Big Fat Bass”, note the very particular qualities of the bass track as each incident arrives (including the famous kick-drum).
“Criminal” is particularly interesting. The mix leaves a very audible gap at the beginning, just to left of center, which is filled at 0:34 by a guitar. And it’s fascinating to analyse exactly how the intensity is built from 2:28 to the end. It’s a lovely mix. On “Up and Down”, at 1:18, listen to the very subtle harmonies from the backing singers. And on “He About To Lose Me”, notice how Britney’s vocals in the chorus start wide and double-tracked but gradually narrow until they’re a solo at center.
And that’s it! We’re done!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Britney on Headphones! Part 2
I sometimes think I need to update my database of Britney Spears vocal conspiracy theories like Symantec updates its antivirus protection. Something new arrives every day. The latest was mentioned in the comments on my last article, and was an allegation that Britney doesn’t sing the chorus on “He about to lose me”. All I want to say about that is.... if people listened to music using CDs and good headphones, these theories would never arise, and if they did, nobody would believe in them.
My Sennheiser HD580 headphones and Sony XA20ES audiophile CD player make all the details transparent, and I am happy to confirm that there’s no reason to believe that Britney doesn’t sing the chorus. Throughout most of the song, the chorus is divided into a stereo pair of Britneys as is customary these days, but at the beginning of the final repeats, it shifts to the center “channel” for about 10 seconds, and during that brief period you can hear a deeper voice, also in the center, behind Britney’s. If that’s of any interest to you! The "three dimensional" capabilities of headphones allow the elements of a recording to be isolated and identified much more easily.
When CDs are converted to compressed media such as MP3, much of the detail in the sound is stripped out to save on storage space, but the detail removed can make fine distinctions hard to detect. And once the detail has been removed, the remaining sounds are packed together and large areas of similar sounds are “averaged” to compress and reduce file size even further, resulting in even more sound loss. The biggest loss is in harmonic frequencies, which are essential in giving a sound, such as a human voice, its unique and identifiable character. To listen to this degraded standard of sound on the usual little in-ear phones is to degrade the listening experience even further. As one specialist audio blogger puts it, “most people aren’t enjoying their music at its best, and don’t know what they’re missing out on.”
There are distinctions between backing vocals, background vocals and “additional background vocals”, which are all terms you will find in the credits on Britney’s albums. Once you’re in a position - using your good-quality headphones - to identify the different “threads” in a mix, you will often find that Britney is singing most of her own backing vocals, even when she’s not credited - but it may be difficult in a complex mix to separate them from a multi-tracked lead vocal. The “background” or “additional background” vocals lie even deeper in the layers of what you’re normally hearing. On Britney’s recordings they are often extremely subtle in effect.
In case you may ever think that you’re getting confused and imagining her voice in places where it isn’t actually present, there are some “control” experiments available. On the “Oops I Did It Again” album, there are several tracks (such as “Satisfaction” and “What U See Is What U Get”) where Britney’s voice only appears on the center “channel” and all vocals to right and left of center are clearly not hers. On some tracks there are “fanchoirs” in addition to the backing vocals, and you can easily tell their sound apart from Britney’s. Once your ears become accustomed to the harmonics of different voices, you can always keep track of hers.
Aside from the truth about conspiracy theories, what else do we discover as we roam around Britneyland with our headphones? Something I find fascinating is the different ways her voice has been presented since the beginning of her career. On the “Baby One More Time” album, it seemed like a straightforward feature showcase for a new, young, talented singer. On every track, her voice was planted at center, right in front of the listener, in plenty of space, in a natural acoustic. She sang in a middle register that seemed natural for her. There wasn’t a synthesized or vocoderized “effect” in sight. But you can detect an effort to give her voice an added physical impact in “Deep in my heart” by placing a percussive bass guitar apparently right in front of her, and in “The Beat Goes On” her voice has extra reverb to blend with the initial retro-style context. It’s interesting to hear how, even at that early age, she adapts to different songs. In “E-mail my heart” you can hear a greater warmth, tenderness and smoothness than you ever detect on speakers, and on “I will be there” a much harder edge.
Another reason to listen on headphones is to pick up some of the subtleties of production, and there are plenty of them here. For example, the blend of elements makes “Baby One More Time” seem pretty funky - almost gritty - on speakers, but on headphones you discover a surprising degree of refinement and a much cleaner mix than you might have suspected. You can also strand out the different layers of sound, and isolate some strange little details, like the panting sound to right of center at the start of Verse 1 that changes to a keyboard chord in Verse 2, or the very deep bass notes at 1:55. Note how Max Martin was doing the same thing with choruses in 1998 as Darkchild was doing in 2010.
“Soda Pop” turns out to be surprisingly interesting, although most people don’t rate it as a song. Britney has three quite separate vocal lines, at left, right and center, and there’s also a voice that chimes in JUST off-center at left and right at 1:45. But, although her voice is present in all directions, she isn’t involved in any of the harmonies. Eric Foster White was the producer, and he uses exactly the same techniques in “I will still love you”.
Moving on to the “Oops I Did It Again” album, you can hear that the overall A&R and production philosophy hasn’t changed much. It’s still a showcase for a featured artist, but this time there is greater disparity in the styles of the productions. Some are more expensive and elaborate, with real string sections featuring on “When your eyes say it”, “Dear Diary”, “Heart” and “Girl in the mirror”. “Don’t go knocking on my door” has an identical acoustic to most of the BOMT album - a much smaller, more intimate setting than Max Martin’s “Oops I Did It Again” (the song) which is sonically fuller, with an over-arching synth and big chords and a more reverberating, less intimate ambiance that also encompasses Britney’s voice.
Max still makes tracks to this formula, but it has never been something he’s stuck with. For example, on “Where are you now” the production is simple, acoustic, with all the necessary stillness and calm, and the elements placed carefully to leave space for a fine vocal performance. This album finds Britney extending the scope of her vocal performance from the straightforward strength and power of “You got it all” and “Girl in the mirror” through to the high, sweet, girlish voice of “Dear Diary” and the soft, breathy, sweet, affectionate treatment of “When your eyes say it”. If Britney had a serious talent deficit, it would have been exposed on “Where are you now?”, but her vocal is simply beautiful - smoother and better integrated than anything on her first album.
Any odd details to be observed in passing on our headphone tour? Once you’ve noticed them on headphones you can often hear them on speakers too. For instance, in “Stronger” did you notice what sounds like a very deep synthesized male voice going “oh-oh-oh” in the first few bars of the verse? It sounds even more like that in the second verse. There’s a lot more reverb than usual around Britney’s voice, and almost subsonic sounds like distant thunder here and there. On “One kiss from you” there’s a strange metallic noise that stands out sharply at left and right during the verse, and an extremely spatially focused bassline. On “When your eyes say it” the string and choral sounds swell impressively across the virtual “soundstage”.
And now, the “Britney” album before our tour takes a break. There’s a long and dishonorable tradition of making disparaging remarks about Britney’s singing, and much of it dates back to this era. The novelty of “Britney Spears the pop phenomenon” was wearing off and the media decided it was time to take her down a peg or two. It was all too easy to take cheap shots based on ignorance and prejudice and it’s sad to reflect on how many people, even within her fanbase, accepted the generic criticisms without question. She sang a couple of songs in an innocent, childlike voice so that meant her voice wasn’t what it had been; was weak, whispery or whatever. No matter that she sang other songs with plenty of power and edge.
It was an unhappy coincidence that this was the era when Britney, with typical modesty about her own status and enthusiasm for the talents of others, began to make the song the star, instead of herself. While just about every other singer was adapting songs to fit the characteristics of their voices, Britney was doing the exact opposite. On “Britney” she delivers her interpretations of the needs of each individual song, using a wider and more diverse range of styles than on any of her other albums. With a good sound source and good headphones you can get involved in her characterizations, enjoy her variety and subtlety, and come to a better understanding of what she’s trying to do.
You hear her conscious use of a higher register and a more urgent timbre to her voice in some of the songs, deploying more enhancements, sounding less warm, comfortable and natural than before, and you may wonder if Britney, or her A&R team, had decided that the time for showcasing her as a new teenage sweetheart, with material to match, was over and it was time to appeal to a maturing fanbase with tougher material and more imaginative mixes. You may observe that, on some tracks, the double-tracked stereo pair to left and right are louder than the center channel, and her voice appears to be more a flavor in the mix than the center of attention. But it’s not like that all over the album, and with headphones you can appreciate those songs where an unobtrusive acoustic is giving her voice its rightful place, and space to shine.
Finally, this album is famous for its “noises offstage”, random sound effects, overlapping lyrics, whispered asides, giggling and laughter, and with good headphones you can hear all of this far more clearly, and in three dimensions. It’s like being transported into the middle of a small group of people listening to music, getting in the groove and having a lot of fun. It’s something I would hate to miss out on!
Next time: ITZ, Blackout, Circus and Femme Fatale.
My Sennheiser HD580 headphones and Sony XA20ES audiophile CD player make all the details transparent, and I am happy to confirm that there’s no reason to believe that Britney doesn’t sing the chorus. Throughout most of the song, the chorus is divided into a stereo pair of Britneys as is customary these days, but at the beginning of the final repeats, it shifts to the center “channel” for about 10 seconds, and during that brief period you can hear a deeper voice, also in the center, behind Britney’s. If that’s of any interest to you! The "three dimensional" capabilities of headphones allow the elements of a recording to be isolated and identified much more easily.
When CDs are converted to compressed media such as MP3, much of the detail in the sound is stripped out to save on storage space, but the detail removed can make fine distinctions hard to detect. And once the detail has been removed, the remaining sounds are packed together and large areas of similar sounds are “averaged” to compress and reduce file size even further, resulting in even more sound loss. The biggest loss is in harmonic frequencies, which are essential in giving a sound, such as a human voice, its unique and identifiable character. To listen to this degraded standard of sound on the usual little in-ear phones is to degrade the listening experience even further. As one specialist audio blogger puts it, “most people aren’t enjoying their music at its best, and don’t know what they’re missing out on.”
There are distinctions between backing vocals, background vocals and “additional background vocals”, which are all terms you will find in the credits on Britney’s albums. Once you’re in a position - using your good-quality headphones - to identify the different “threads” in a mix, you will often find that Britney is singing most of her own backing vocals, even when she’s not credited - but it may be difficult in a complex mix to separate them from a multi-tracked lead vocal. The “background” or “additional background” vocals lie even deeper in the layers of what you’re normally hearing. On Britney’s recordings they are often extremely subtle in effect.
In case you may ever think that you’re getting confused and imagining her voice in places where it isn’t actually present, there are some “control” experiments available. On the “Oops I Did It Again” album, there are several tracks (such as “Satisfaction” and “What U See Is What U Get”) where Britney’s voice only appears on the center “channel” and all vocals to right and left of center are clearly not hers. On some tracks there are “fanchoirs” in addition to the backing vocals, and you can easily tell their sound apart from Britney’s. Once your ears become accustomed to the harmonics of different voices, you can always keep track of hers.
Aside from the truth about conspiracy theories, what else do we discover as we roam around Britneyland with our headphones? Something I find fascinating is the different ways her voice has been presented since the beginning of her career. On the “Baby One More Time” album, it seemed like a straightforward feature showcase for a new, young, talented singer. On every track, her voice was planted at center, right in front of the listener, in plenty of space, in a natural acoustic. She sang in a middle register that seemed natural for her. There wasn’t a synthesized or vocoderized “effect” in sight. But you can detect an effort to give her voice an added physical impact in “Deep in my heart” by placing a percussive bass guitar apparently right in front of her, and in “The Beat Goes On” her voice has extra reverb to blend with the initial retro-style context. It’s interesting to hear how, even at that early age, she adapts to different songs. In “E-mail my heart” you can hear a greater warmth, tenderness and smoothness than you ever detect on speakers, and on “I will be there” a much harder edge.
Another reason to listen on headphones is to pick up some of the subtleties of production, and there are plenty of them here. For example, the blend of elements makes “Baby One More Time” seem pretty funky - almost gritty - on speakers, but on headphones you discover a surprising degree of refinement and a much cleaner mix than you might have suspected. You can also strand out the different layers of sound, and isolate some strange little details, like the panting sound to right of center at the start of Verse 1 that changes to a keyboard chord in Verse 2, or the very deep bass notes at 1:55. Note how Max Martin was doing the same thing with choruses in 1998 as Darkchild was doing in 2010.
“Soda Pop” turns out to be surprisingly interesting, although most people don’t rate it as a song. Britney has three quite separate vocal lines, at left, right and center, and there’s also a voice that chimes in JUST off-center at left and right at 1:45. But, although her voice is present in all directions, she isn’t involved in any of the harmonies. Eric Foster White was the producer, and he uses exactly the same techniques in “I will still love you”.
Moving on to the “Oops I Did It Again” album, you can hear that the overall A&R and production philosophy hasn’t changed much. It’s still a showcase for a featured artist, but this time there is greater disparity in the styles of the productions. Some are more expensive and elaborate, with real string sections featuring on “When your eyes say it”, “Dear Diary”, “Heart” and “Girl in the mirror”. “Don’t go knocking on my door” has an identical acoustic to most of the BOMT album - a much smaller, more intimate setting than Max Martin’s “Oops I Did It Again” (the song) which is sonically fuller, with an over-arching synth and big chords and a more reverberating, less intimate ambiance that also encompasses Britney’s voice.
Max still makes tracks to this formula, but it has never been something he’s stuck with. For example, on “Where are you now” the production is simple, acoustic, with all the necessary stillness and calm, and the elements placed carefully to leave space for a fine vocal performance. This album finds Britney extending the scope of her vocal performance from the straightforward strength and power of “You got it all” and “Girl in the mirror” through to the high, sweet, girlish voice of “Dear Diary” and the soft, breathy, sweet, affectionate treatment of “When your eyes say it”. If Britney had a serious talent deficit, it would have been exposed on “Where are you now?”, but her vocal is simply beautiful - smoother and better integrated than anything on her first album.
Any odd details to be observed in passing on our headphone tour? Once you’ve noticed them on headphones you can often hear them on speakers too. For instance, in “Stronger” did you notice what sounds like a very deep synthesized male voice going “oh-oh-oh” in the first few bars of the verse? It sounds even more like that in the second verse. There’s a lot more reverb than usual around Britney’s voice, and almost subsonic sounds like distant thunder here and there. On “One kiss from you” there’s a strange metallic noise that stands out sharply at left and right during the verse, and an extremely spatially focused bassline. On “When your eyes say it” the string and choral sounds swell impressively across the virtual “soundstage”.
And now, the “Britney” album before our tour takes a break. There’s a long and dishonorable tradition of making disparaging remarks about Britney’s singing, and much of it dates back to this era. The novelty of “Britney Spears the pop phenomenon” was wearing off and the media decided it was time to take her down a peg or two. It was all too easy to take cheap shots based on ignorance and prejudice and it’s sad to reflect on how many people, even within her fanbase, accepted the generic criticisms without question. She sang a couple of songs in an innocent, childlike voice so that meant her voice wasn’t what it had been; was weak, whispery or whatever. No matter that she sang other songs with plenty of power and edge.
It was an unhappy coincidence that this was the era when Britney, with typical modesty about her own status and enthusiasm for the talents of others, began to make the song the star, instead of herself. While just about every other singer was adapting songs to fit the characteristics of their voices, Britney was doing the exact opposite. On “Britney” she delivers her interpretations of the needs of each individual song, using a wider and more diverse range of styles than on any of her other albums. With a good sound source and good headphones you can get involved in her characterizations, enjoy her variety and subtlety, and come to a better understanding of what she’s trying to do.
You hear her conscious use of a higher register and a more urgent timbre to her voice in some of the songs, deploying more enhancements, sounding less warm, comfortable and natural than before, and you may wonder if Britney, or her A&R team, had decided that the time for showcasing her as a new teenage sweetheart, with material to match, was over and it was time to appeal to a maturing fanbase with tougher material and more imaginative mixes. You may observe that, on some tracks, the double-tracked stereo pair to left and right are louder than the center channel, and her voice appears to be more a flavor in the mix than the center of attention. But it’s not like that all over the album, and with headphones you can appreciate those songs where an unobtrusive acoustic is giving her voice its rightful place, and space to shine.
Finally, this album is famous for its “noises offstage”, random sound effects, overlapping lyrics, whispered asides, giggling and laughter, and with good headphones you can hear all of this far more clearly, and in three dimensions. It’s like being transported into the middle of a small group of people listening to music, getting in the groove and having a lot of fun. It’s something I would hate to miss out on!
Next time: ITZ, Blackout, Circus and Femme Fatale.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Listening to Britney on Headphones! Part 1.
Anyone who’s been reading my stuff for the last 7 years will know that I constantly bang on about listening to Britney with good quality headphones. A reference to them is an essential part of every “In-Depth” review at NewBritneyology.com. I know some people think this is hilarious, but I can’t legislate for those who are determined to embrace their own ignorance. My enthusiasm for headphones isn’t some kind of weird, perverted fetish - you really do miss a lot if you never use them.
Obviously I don’t expect people to go rushing around on buses, trains and bicycles with massive “cans” clamped to their heads. Perhaps I should clarify that by “headphones” I mean the things that surround your ears rather than going inside them. For listening on the move, there’s no realistic alternative to those horrible little in-ear things known as earphones. But if you want to pass judgment on Britney’s singing ability (and let’s face it, who doesn’t ?) you should be prepared to take the trouble to be properly informed, and to get some proper headphones for home use.
I’m not saying you should get rid of your speakers. Goodness knows, I’d be the worst hypocrite if I said that - my home set-up involves a 300-watt amplifier and 150-watt subwoofer. A good thing my nearest neigbor lives 150 yards away. But speakers give you a very different listening experience to headphones. Music fills the room and the big fat bass (or maybe the kick drum) makes the windows rattle. But it’s not an analytical approach. It's a wall of sound. I would never write a review of a Britney album based on hearing it on speakers.
But why headphones? Aren’t earphones pretty much the same thing and just as good? The simple answer is - no, they’re not. I’m not going to bore you with a lot of technical stuff, but the way the sound waves communicate with your ears is totally different, and with earphones there are too many factors that compromise what you’re hearing. You may think you’re hearing everything that’s on the record, but you aren’t.
In my Britney reviews I always talk about the virtual “soundstage” inside your head, and where the various components of the track are located. With earphones, you get a more constricted, compressed “soundstage” and it can be difficult to separate the components. As someone recently told me, “With earphones the music plays "inside" your head rather than coming at you from the outside, to left and right.” In my experience earphones also fail to give you any sense of depth to front and back. On headphones, when you listen to “The Answer”, P. Diddy’s words “Talk to me” seem to come from behind your left shoulder. So do Britney’s words “Don’t hang up” in the eponymous song. On earphones, everything is placed in a 45-degree “V” around front-center.
Earphones fail to reveal many subtleties. For example, on “Shadow”, the swirling atmospherics can’t be “placed” at all whereas with good headphones you can detect their circular motion between the center and right “channels”. Headphones also reveal that, during the chorus, the effect has been created of Britney standing front center, with a group of backing singers arranged in a semi-circle behind her. In the last 2 lines of each verse and during the middle-eight, three Britneys sing in harmony, one left, one right, one center. But with earphones, as with speakers, these individual elements simply merge together.
On “Piece of Me”, the majority of people are convinced that Britney’s voice has been electronically altered. Wikipedia, for example, comments “Spears's voice is heavily synthesized”, But this is untrue. With the benefit of good-quality headphones you can distinguish the vocals from the effects and it turns out that a few words, and ONLY a few words, in the song are overlaid with a kind of muted electronic fuzz. It’s like seeing something behind net curtains. But with earphones this effect cannot be isolated from an overall impression of fuzz.
Reviewing “Blackout”, Kelefa Sanneh says “Even when not buried in electronics, her distinctive singing voice sounds unusually vague, and sometimes it’s hard to be sure it’s hers. It isn’t always. On this album, unlike on previous ones, Ms. Spears isn’t credited with doing any of her own backing vocals.” From those remarks it’s clear that Sanneh wasn’t listening with a decent set of headphones, because if you do, you’re never in any doubt that it’s Britney, AND that she’s singing almost all of the vocals herself.
It’s almost universally accepted that Britney hardly sings a natural note on “Femme Fatale”. The mind-numbing cliche is that her voice is “heavily autotuned”. She herself remarked in an interview that she’d decided to use more electronics this time. But with good headphones, what do you actually hear? In fact, her lead vocal is natural on about 90 percent of the album! There are maybe two or three songs where her voice is electronically altered in the verse, here and there a few words are blatantly synthesized for dramatic effect, and one track a synthesizer is mixed in with her vocal on the center channel, but that’s all! I won’t spoil your fun by saying where these things happen - you’ll have to buy some headphones...
But which headphones? They don’t have to be crazily expensive. One of my dad’s friends had Stax electrostatic ‘phones that were too pricey for us, even though we all were mightily impressed by hearing Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” seemingly circling our heads like an angry hornet. My own headphones are Sennheiser HD580s, which were five-star rated and said to be studio quality in their day but are no longer available. I would recommend that you buy something in the same category. Don’t spend less than about $200. If that seems a lot, consider that custom-fitted in-ear phones can cost over $500!
Finally, I should say that the analytical quality of your ‘phones will be somewhat nullified if the music source is a compressed sound file like an MP3 or an AAC, which will have a high level of distortion, and severely limited frequency and dynamic ranges. It would be best to listen to Britney on CD. Yes, in physical form!! And if you do.... I can guarantee a revelation! It will be like hearing these albums again for the first time, but in high-definition and 3D! You’ll be amazed at how good they are, and probably surprised to find that most of the shade thrown at Britney’s voice is based on misinformation and prejudice.
In Part Two of this article, next week, I’ll take you on a guided headphone tour of Britney’s albums.
Obviously I don’t expect people to go rushing around on buses, trains and bicycles with massive “cans” clamped to their heads. Perhaps I should clarify that by “headphones” I mean the things that surround your ears rather than going inside them. For listening on the move, there’s no realistic alternative to those horrible little in-ear things known as earphones. But if you want to pass judgment on Britney’s singing ability (and let’s face it, who doesn’t ?) you should be prepared to take the trouble to be properly informed, and to get some proper headphones for home use.
I’m not saying you should get rid of your speakers. Goodness knows, I’d be the worst hypocrite if I said that - my home set-up involves a 300-watt amplifier and 150-watt subwoofer. A good thing my nearest neigbor lives 150 yards away. But speakers give you a very different listening experience to headphones. Music fills the room and the big fat bass (or maybe the kick drum) makes the windows rattle. But it’s not an analytical approach. It's a wall of sound. I would never write a review of a Britney album based on hearing it on speakers.
But why headphones? Aren’t earphones pretty much the same thing and just as good? The simple answer is - no, they’re not. I’m not going to bore you with a lot of technical stuff, but the way the sound waves communicate with your ears is totally different, and with earphones there are too many factors that compromise what you’re hearing. You may think you’re hearing everything that’s on the record, but you aren’t.
In my Britney reviews I always talk about the virtual “soundstage” inside your head, and where the various components of the track are located. With earphones, you get a more constricted, compressed “soundstage” and it can be difficult to separate the components. As someone recently told me, “With earphones the music plays "inside" your head rather than coming at you from the outside, to left and right.” In my experience earphones also fail to give you any sense of depth to front and back. On headphones, when you listen to “The Answer”, P. Diddy’s words “Talk to me” seem to come from behind your left shoulder. So do Britney’s words “Don’t hang up” in the eponymous song. On earphones, everything is placed in a 45-degree “V” around front-center.
Earphones fail to reveal many subtleties. For example, on “Shadow”, the swirling atmospherics can’t be “placed” at all whereas with good headphones you can detect their circular motion between the center and right “channels”. Headphones also reveal that, during the chorus, the effect has been created of Britney standing front center, with a group of backing singers arranged in a semi-circle behind her. In the last 2 lines of each verse and during the middle-eight, three Britneys sing in harmony, one left, one right, one center. But with earphones, as with speakers, these individual elements simply merge together.
On “Piece of Me”, the majority of people are convinced that Britney’s voice has been electronically altered. Wikipedia, for example, comments “Spears's voice is heavily synthesized”, But this is untrue. With the benefit of good-quality headphones you can distinguish the vocals from the effects and it turns out that a few words, and ONLY a few words, in the song are overlaid with a kind of muted electronic fuzz. It’s like seeing something behind net curtains. But with earphones this effect cannot be isolated from an overall impression of fuzz.
Reviewing “Blackout”, Kelefa Sanneh says “Even when not buried in electronics, her distinctive singing voice sounds unusually vague, and sometimes it’s hard to be sure it’s hers. It isn’t always. On this album, unlike on previous ones, Ms. Spears isn’t credited with doing any of her own backing vocals.” From those remarks it’s clear that Sanneh wasn’t listening with a decent set of headphones, because if you do, you’re never in any doubt that it’s Britney, AND that she’s singing almost all of the vocals herself.
It’s almost universally accepted that Britney hardly sings a natural note on “Femme Fatale”. The mind-numbing cliche is that her voice is “heavily autotuned”. She herself remarked in an interview that she’d decided to use more electronics this time. But with good headphones, what do you actually hear? In fact, her lead vocal is natural on about 90 percent of the album! There are maybe two or three songs where her voice is electronically altered in the verse, here and there a few words are blatantly synthesized for dramatic effect, and one track a synthesizer is mixed in with her vocal on the center channel, but that’s all! I won’t spoil your fun by saying where these things happen - you’ll have to buy some headphones...
But which headphones? They don’t have to be crazily expensive. One of my dad’s friends had Stax electrostatic ‘phones that were too pricey for us, even though we all were mightily impressed by hearing Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” seemingly circling our heads like an angry hornet. My own headphones are Sennheiser HD580s, which were five-star rated and said to be studio quality in their day but are no longer available. I would recommend that you buy something in the same category. Don’t spend less than about $200. If that seems a lot, consider that custom-fitted in-ear phones can cost over $500!
Finally, I should say that the analytical quality of your ‘phones will be somewhat nullified if the music source is a compressed sound file like an MP3 or an AAC, which will have a high level of distortion, and severely limited frequency and dynamic ranges. It would be best to listen to Britney on CD. Yes, in physical form!! And if you do.... I can guarantee a revelation! It will be like hearing these albums again for the first time, but in high-definition and 3D! You’ll be amazed at how good they are, and probably surprised to find that most of the shade thrown at Britney’s voice is based on misinformation and prejudice.
In Part Two of this article, next week, I’ll take you on a guided headphone tour of Britney’s albums.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
The Great Britney Vocals Conspiracy Theories!
They say seeing is believing, and it certainly does seem that Britney Spears’ unwillingness to be witnessed singing live on stage has spawned a fascinating industry of conspiracy theories. I won’t say she has an “inability” to be witnessed singing live, because the theory that she basically can’t sing is itself the fundamental theory that all of the others are designed to prove.
No matter that there are actually quite a few videos on YouTube of Britney singing live. We’ve seen them here at PoorBritney. Conspiracy theorists prefer conspiracies and theories to facts, and, although they believe their cynical and suspicious attitude is proof of superior intelligence, they actually tend to be pretty gullible. You only have to examine what they believe for proof of that.
But anyway, who are the conspirators? Well, obviously there’s Britney herself, her past and present management team, her A&R managers and various others at Jive Records. You’d expect them to be loyal.... I guess.... but what about her embittered ex-security staff, and the ever-floating multitude of hangers-on and freeloaders, including ex-boyfriends? What about Sam Lutfi? Why would you expect any of them to keep quiet on Britney’s behalf?
What I think is more sinister than any of these is the grand conspiracy involving all of the record producers, vocal producers, studio musicians and their teams who have worked with her since 1998. When you consider that she’s worked with more than 40 production teams in her career so far, it’s pretty amazing that nobody has approached the News Of The World or The Sun with the terrible secret. Amazing too that so many of them have deliberately gone on record to lie about how good she is in the studio when they didn’t have to.
I can’t claim that my list of deceptions and malfaisance is exhaustive, because every time I write about Britney’s voice, somebody comes up with a new conspiracy theory. And the gullible people suck up every word of it. I also don’t expect the conspiracy theorists to have their minds changed by anything I say. I have no doubt that, if there are any comments, they’ll show that some people didn’t even consider the observations, analysis and facts I’m about to lay before them.
“Britney - her real voice! What she really sounds like!”
Yes, I can hear you sigh. You’d think anyone with half a brain would see the fallacy in putting forward, as evidence that she can’t sing, a few seconds of a video where, breathless and dancing hard, and thinking her mic is switched off, she emits a few tuneless grunts. She wasn’t trying to sing and probably wasn’t even aware that she was making any noise at all. All of this is glaringly obvious. Yet this video is trotted out again and again on website after website, followed by the usual bleating of the conspiracy sheep “That proves it! I always knew she couldn’t sing. Thank you for posting this!” Sometimes a Britney loyalist will respond with a shoal of videos showing her actually singing live, but nobody seems to care. I shall pause here for some eye-rolling.
“She doesn’t sing on her own records!”
I guess you could say this about anybody. No doubt there are Beyonce and GaGa soundalikes who could be deployed in the studio in the event that the stars had something better to do that day. But history suggests that this kind of skulduggery can’t be kept secret for very long. It didn’t take the public long to find out that Loleatta Holloway was the real singer on Black Box’s “Ride on Time”, that Manuella Kamossi really sang Technotronic’s “Pump up the jam”, that Audrey Hepburn was overdubbed by Marni Nixon (in “My Fair Lady”) and Juanita Hall by Muriel Smith (in “South Pacific”). The tabloids, with their suspicious minds, quickly discovered that Milli Vanilli weren’t singers at all. Strange, then, that in 12 years they haven’t managed to prove the same about Britney.
“There’s a Britney-button!”
According to this interesting theory, some producers are able to press a “Britney-button” on one of their obscure but impressive machines, and it makes any vocals by demo singers sound exactly like her. There’s an obvious weakness here, in that there would have to be a “her” for them to sound like, and “she” would have had to sing quite a few vocals to provide for the comprehensive programming that is evoked by the Britney-button.
Another problem is that we know the “Britney-button” isn’t a standard Pro-Tools plug-in, or an unofficial one that’s been circulating around the studios, because that’s something that would have leaked on the professional audio websites. So it would have to be a custom feature that each producer programs for himself. And if there is no “her” for the soundalike to sound alike with, how come every one of her 40 producers has managed to come up with the same vocal signatures and tone? Coincidence? Producer David Foster recently remarked that he loved Britney’s voice for her tone, adding “You cannot manufacture tone”. He hasn’t worked with Britney so he has no reason to lie.
“Her vocals are all stuck together from a few small good bits!”
At the extreme end of the spectrum, this theory holds that Britney phones in a few words and phrases to the studio, maybe just a few vowels and consonants, and the all-knowing, all-powerful producer programs them into his computer, shuffles them around a bit and out they come in the right order as a finished vocal track. As against this, we have actually seen many paparazzi pictures of Britney going into and coming out of recording studios, so we may suspect that at least part of this isn’t true!
But what does she do in there? Sing a few random words and phrases then go home? For a producer to create acceptable vocal tracks from them would be a task of unimaginable complexity and take forever. In fact, it would be a lot simpler and quicker from the producer’s point of view if Britney would just sing the complete song right through, however badly. This would be a gigantic shortcut to getting all the words and phrases required, and in the right order, for any amount of diabolical processing to take place. Goodness knows, if she goes off-key a few times, there’s always the Almighty Autotune to put things right. Right?
“Her vocals are blended with other singers!”
According to this theory, Britney has a deep voice and if you hear anything else on her records, that’s someone else’s voice “blended” with hers. Exhibit “A” is a home-edited version of “Gimme More” with the center channel taken out. It is then assumed that Britney’s vocal only appears on the center channel and nowhere else. Everything else that you hear, which is about 90% of the track, is claimed to be Keri Hilson. But. There’s always a “but”, isn’t there? Britney’s lead vocal is only placed on the center channel in the first part of the verse. In the second part, “working it down, etc”, and in the chorus, her voice is split between left and right channels. It’s blatantly obvious, if you listen using a pair of good headphones. And it’s also obvious what Keri contributes, which is a couple of “Aaaah” sounds during the first part of the verse.
The same thory is applied to “Piece of Me”, but here the “real” singer is claimed to be Robyn Carlsson. However, on good headphones, you can detect quite easily how much is really Robyn. It’s the part of the vocals that sounds especially heavily synthesized - the “You want a piece, piece of me….” section at 2.22. She also sings “You want a piece of me” at the end of each verse and alternately in the chorus. And that is all.
But why are we giving the “blending” theory any credibility when it’s pure bullcrap anyway? You can’t blend two different voices together without it sounding like a duet. It would always be audible. And it isn’t. The alternative is that one of the “blended” voices would have to completely dominate the other to the point that it is inaudible. In which case it isn’t really a “blended” vocal at all. As for the idea that deep voice A could be blended with high voice B so that you ended up with the tone of A and the register of B - it is, frankly, ludicrous. You can see why I say that conspiracy theorists are gullible.
“An older black woman....!”
A lot of excitement was generated among Britney-haters and conspiracy theorists in 2008 when musician, writer and broadcaster Henry Rollins said this: "They have the black chick come in and sing, and Britney sings over it, and they mix them together. Britney gets her phrasing basically from this older R&B woman. I found that out talking to an engineer. Britney apparently isn't actually the worst singer, she just has no feel. So they bring in this older black woman who sings the song, then Britney sings to it, and they kind of make a mix of the two voices, and that's what you hear on the records."
Part of this has a limited degree of credibility. It is a widely-used studio practice for a producer to provide guide vocals to show a featured artist the kind of thing he’s looking for, especially when the star hasn’t written the song him/herself. It’s harder to see how an “older r&b woman” would have more “feel” than Britney does for her dancey electro-pop, or more experience in performing it. It also seems less than credible that all 40 producers, in studios across the USA and in Sweden, would use the same older black r&b woman. It has been alleged that Henry Rollins has an agenda though - which is his belief in the superiority of black over white musicians, so go figure.
It may be credible that Britney’s producers would sometimes use guide vocals, but what isn’t credible is that they would “make a mix of the two voices”. I spoke about this ridiculous suggestion in the previous section above. Either you can hear the guide vocal or you can’t. And with Britney you can’t. Which is just as well, because producers go to great lengths to make sure you can’t. This is because it’s not unknown for the anonymous and uncredited singers of guide vocals to CLAIM that their voices are audible and therefore they should get a share of the royalties. This happened to Paula Abdul in a celebrated case, which Abdul successfully defended. The court agreed that only her voice was audible.
“Heavily Autotuned!”
If people want to claim that her voice is usually or always put through some kind of synthesizer then I would have to disagree. On most of her albums, her voice is rarely, if ever, electronically altered. Listening on good headphones shows this to be true. She does use a robotic, metallic kind of voice sometimes, and it sounds electronic or artificial, but that is an effect SHE creates. In a few places, the producer or mixer adds a kind of thin electronic fuzz on top of her vocal line.
“Femme Fatale” is different from her previous albums because it does feature more use of electronic processing of her voice, but these are effects customized to each track and not just a load of generic distortion such as you get by misuse of the notorious Autotune.
The “Autotune” conspiracy argument, however, makes a different claim - which is that Britney is such a bad singer, and requires so much Autotuning to bring her into key, that Autotune is forced into distortion. But, as I said, what you hear on “Femme Fatale” isn’t the Autotune distortion sound, and at least 90% of her vocals, even on “Femme Fatale”, aren’t distorted anyway! Again I say “Listen with good headphones!” I could call upon any number of producers ready to testify that she can sing perfectly well in the studio and needs no more Autotuning than anybody else, but the conspiracy theorists say they’re all lying, so I won’t bother.
“Copy and paste!”
When I argued last week that Britney’s professional qualities as a singer were exemplified by her consistency, in other words that she could sing a phrase identically several times, a number of those who made comments said that this was achieved by copying and pasting. OK, I agree that this may be true. At the vocal comps stage, the producer and artist may agree that a certain “take” of a certain phrase was the best, and it would then be used for as many repeats as possible. All of this is true.
But what I wanted to argue was that Britney isn’t the kind of artist who needs dozens of takes before there are enough good parts for the comps to be of any use. Quite a few producers down the years have commented that she’s really fast and professional in the studio, and doesn’t require many takes. She is said to have laid down the lead vocals for “Till The World Ends” in about 15 minutes, so that seems to confirm it. And here’s a small section of Jenny Eliscu’s 2001 “Observer” article about Britney. She’s with Britney in the studio during a comps session: “Britney's sultry vocals sound near perfect in every version played, and her voice is stronger and more confident than you might expect. 'It's so hard to do vocal comps with Britney,' BT says with a laugh. 'Every take is so good. It's easier to do this with a bad singer.' There we have an independent witness from the press to testify that BT wasn’t lying.
But anyway. The “Femme Fatale” album is full of repeated phrases that show her consistency. My argument is perhaps better made by referring to an instance where they couldn’t be copied and pasted. Try, for example, “Shame on me/To need release/Uncontrollably” in “I wanna go”. Or “Diamond, diamond, shinin’ shinin’, oh boy you’re so fine/Gotta be the finest thing that I seen in my life/I will pay whatever just to get a better view/And yeah, your body looks so sick I think I caught the flu” from “(Drop Dead) Beautiful”. Different phrases, but sung identically. Yes, they may be the best versions of each phrase, comped from 6 different takes, but at least it shows her excellent consistency across the different takes - which is all I wanted to demonstrate and is good enough for me!
No matter that there are actually quite a few videos on YouTube of Britney singing live. We’ve seen them here at PoorBritney. Conspiracy theorists prefer conspiracies and theories to facts, and, although they believe their cynical and suspicious attitude is proof of superior intelligence, they actually tend to be pretty gullible. You only have to examine what they believe for proof of that.
But anyway, who are the conspirators? Well, obviously there’s Britney herself, her past and present management team, her A&R managers and various others at Jive Records. You’d expect them to be loyal.... I guess.... but what about her embittered ex-security staff, and the ever-floating multitude of hangers-on and freeloaders, including ex-boyfriends? What about Sam Lutfi? Why would you expect any of them to keep quiet on Britney’s behalf?
What I think is more sinister than any of these is the grand conspiracy involving all of the record producers, vocal producers, studio musicians and their teams who have worked with her since 1998. When you consider that she’s worked with more than 40 production teams in her career so far, it’s pretty amazing that nobody has approached the News Of The World or The Sun with the terrible secret. Amazing too that so many of them have deliberately gone on record to lie about how good she is in the studio when they didn’t have to.
I can’t claim that my list of deceptions and malfaisance is exhaustive, because every time I write about Britney’s voice, somebody comes up with a new conspiracy theory. And the gullible people suck up every word of it. I also don’t expect the conspiracy theorists to have their minds changed by anything I say. I have no doubt that, if there are any comments, they’ll show that some people didn’t even consider the observations, analysis and facts I’m about to lay before them.
“Britney - her real voice! What she really sounds like!”
Yes, I can hear you sigh. You’d think anyone with half a brain would see the fallacy in putting forward, as evidence that she can’t sing, a few seconds of a video where, breathless and dancing hard, and thinking her mic is switched off, she emits a few tuneless grunts. She wasn’t trying to sing and probably wasn’t even aware that she was making any noise at all. All of this is glaringly obvious. Yet this video is trotted out again and again on website after website, followed by the usual bleating of the conspiracy sheep “That proves it! I always knew she couldn’t sing. Thank you for posting this!” Sometimes a Britney loyalist will respond with a shoal of videos showing her actually singing live, but nobody seems to care. I shall pause here for some eye-rolling.
“She doesn’t sing on her own records!”
I guess you could say this about anybody. No doubt there are Beyonce and GaGa soundalikes who could be deployed in the studio in the event that the stars had something better to do that day. But history suggests that this kind of skulduggery can’t be kept secret for very long. It didn’t take the public long to find out that Loleatta Holloway was the real singer on Black Box’s “Ride on Time”, that Manuella Kamossi really sang Technotronic’s “Pump up the jam”, that Audrey Hepburn was overdubbed by Marni Nixon (in “My Fair Lady”) and Juanita Hall by Muriel Smith (in “South Pacific”). The tabloids, with their suspicious minds, quickly discovered that Milli Vanilli weren’t singers at all. Strange, then, that in 12 years they haven’t managed to prove the same about Britney.
“There’s a Britney-button!”
According to this interesting theory, some producers are able to press a “Britney-button” on one of their obscure but impressive machines, and it makes any vocals by demo singers sound exactly like her. There’s an obvious weakness here, in that there would have to be a “her” for them to sound like, and “she” would have had to sing quite a few vocals to provide for the comprehensive programming that is evoked by the Britney-button.
Another problem is that we know the “Britney-button” isn’t a standard Pro-Tools plug-in, or an unofficial one that’s been circulating around the studios, because that’s something that would have leaked on the professional audio websites. So it would have to be a custom feature that each producer programs for himself. And if there is no “her” for the soundalike to sound alike with, how come every one of her 40 producers has managed to come up with the same vocal signatures and tone? Coincidence? Producer David Foster recently remarked that he loved Britney’s voice for her tone, adding “You cannot manufacture tone”. He hasn’t worked with Britney so he has no reason to lie.
“Her vocals are all stuck together from a few small good bits!”
At the extreme end of the spectrum, this theory holds that Britney phones in a few words and phrases to the studio, maybe just a few vowels and consonants, and the all-knowing, all-powerful producer programs them into his computer, shuffles them around a bit and out they come in the right order as a finished vocal track. As against this, we have actually seen many paparazzi pictures of Britney going into and coming out of recording studios, so we may suspect that at least part of this isn’t true!
But what does she do in there? Sing a few random words and phrases then go home? For a producer to create acceptable vocal tracks from them would be a task of unimaginable complexity and take forever. In fact, it would be a lot simpler and quicker from the producer’s point of view if Britney would just sing the complete song right through, however badly. This would be a gigantic shortcut to getting all the words and phrases required, and in the right order, for any amount of diabolical processing to take place. Goodness knows, if she goes off-key a few times, there’s always the Almighty Autotune to put things right. Right?
“Her vocals are blended with other singers!”
According to this theory, Britney has a deep voice and if you hear anything else on her records, that’s someone else’s voice “blended” with hers. Exhibit “A” is a home-edited version of “Gimme More” with the center channel taken out. It is then assumed that Britney’s vocal only appears on the center channel and nowhere else. Everything else that you hear, which is about 90% of the track, is claimed to be Keri Hilson. But. There’s always a “but”, isn’t there? Britney’s lead vocal is only placed on the center channel in the first part of the verse. In the second part, “working it down, etc”, and in the chorus, her voice is split between left and right channels. It’s blatantly obvious, if you listen using a pair of good headphones. And it’s also obvious what Keri contributes, which is a couple of “Aaaah” sounds during the first part of the verse.
The same thory is applied to “Piece of Me”, but here the “real” singer is claimed to be Robyn Carlsson. However, on good headphones, you can detect quite easily how much is really Robyn. It’s the part of the vocals that sounds especially heavily synthesized - the “You want a piece, piece of me….” section at 2.22. She also sings “You want a piece of me” at the end of each verse and alternately in the chorus. And that is all.
But why are we giving the “blending” theory any credibility when it’s pure bullcrap anyway? You can’t blend two different voices together without it sounding like a duet. It would always be audible. And it isn’t. The alternative is that one of the “blended” voices would have to completely dominate the other to the point that it is inaudible. In which case it isn’t really a “blended” vocal at all. As for the idea that deep voice A could be blended with high voice B so that you ended up with the tone of A and the register of B - it is, frankly, ludicrous. You can see why I say that conspiracy theorists are gullible.
“An older black woman....!”
A lot of excitement was generated among Britney-haters and conspiracy theorists in 2008 when musician, writer and broadcaster Henry Rollins said this: "They have the black chick come in and sing, and Britney sings over it, and they mix them together. Britney gets her phrasing basically from this older R&B woman. I found that out talking to an engineer. Britney apparently isn't actually the worst singer, she just has no feel. So they bring in this older black woman who sings the song, then Britney sings to it, and they kind of make a mix of the two voices, and that's what you hear on the records."
Part of this has a limited degree of credibility. It is a widely-used studio practice for a producer to provide guide vocals to show a featured artist the kind of thing he’s looking for, especially when the star hasn’t written the song him/herself. It’s harder to see how an “older r&b woman” would have more “feel” than Britney does for her dancey electro-pop, or more experience in performing it. It also seems less than credible that all 40 producers, in studios across the USA and in Sweden, would use the same older black r&b woman. It has been alleged that Henry Rollins has an agenda though - which is his belief in the superiority of black over white musicians, so go figure.
It may be credible that Britney’s producers would sometimes use guide vocals, but what isn’t credible is that they would “make a mix of the two voices”. I spoke about this ridiculous suggestion in the previous section above. Either you can hear the guide vocal or you can’t. And with Britney you can’t. Which is just as well, because producers go to great lengths to make sure you can’t. This is because it’s not unknown for the anonymous and uncredited singers of guide vocals to CLAIM that their voices are audible and therefore they should get a share of the royalties. This happened to Paula Abdul in a celebrated case, which Abdul successfully defended. The court agreed that only her voice was audible.
“Heavily Autotuned!”
If people want to claim that her voice is usually or always put through some kind of synthesizer then I would have to disagree. On most of her albums, her voice is rarely, if ever, electronically altered. Listening on good headphones shows this to be true. She does use a robotic, metallic kind of voice sometimes, and it sounds electronic or artificial, but that is an effect SHE creates. In a few places, the producer or mixer adds a kind of thin electronic fuzz on top of her vocal line.
“Femme Fatale” is different from her previous albums because it does feature more use of electronic processing of her voice, but these are effects customized to each track and not just a load of generic distortion such as you get by misuse of the notorious Autotune.
The “Autotune” conspiracy argument, however, makes a different claim - which is that Britney is such a bad singer, and requires so much Autotuning to bring her into key, that Autotune is forced into distortion. But, as I said, what you hear on “Femme Fatale” isn’t the Autotune distortion sound, and at least 90% of her vocals, even on “Femme Fatale”, aren’t distorted anyway! Again I say “Listen with good headphones!” I could call upon any number of producers ready to testify that she can sing perfectly well in the studio and needs no more Autotuning than anybody else, but the conspiracy theorists say they’re all lying, so I won’t bother.
“Copy and paste!”
When I argued last week that Britney’s professional qualities as a singer were exemplified by her consistency, in other words that she could sing a phrase identically several times, a number of those who made comments said that this was achieved by copying and pasting. OK, I agree that this may be true. At the vocal comps stage, the producer and artist may agree that a certain “take” of a certain phrase was the best, and it would then be used for as many repeats as possible. All of this is true.
But what I wanted to argue was that Britney isn’t the kind of artist who needs dozens of takes before there are enough good parts for the comps to be of any use. Quite a few producers down the years have commented that she’s really fast and professional in the studio, and doesn’t require many takes. She is said to have laid down the lead vocals for “Till The World Ends” in about 15 minutes, so that seems to confirm it. And here’s a small section of Jenny Eliscu’s 2001 “Observer” article about Britney. She’s with Britney in the studio during a comps session: “Britney's sultry vocals sound near perfect in every version played, and her voice is stronger and more confident than you might expect. 'It's so hard to do vocal comps with Britney,' BT says with a laugh. 'Every take is so good. It's easier to do this with a bad singer.' There we have an independent witness from the press to testify that BT wasn’t lying.
But anyway. The “Femme Fatale” album is full of repeated phrases that show her consistency. My argument is perhaps better made by referring to an instance where they couldn’t be copied and pasted. Try, for example, “Shame on me/To need release/Uncontrollably” in “I wanna go”. Or “Diamond, diamond, shinin’ shinin’, oh boy you’re so fine/Gotta be the finest thing that I seen in my life/I will pay whatever just to get a better view/And yeah, your body looks so sick I think I caught the flu” from “(Drop Dead) Beautiful”. Different phrases, but sung identically. Yes, they may be the best versions of each phrase, comped from 6 different takes, but at least it shows her excellent consistency across the different takes - which is all I wanted to demonstrate and is good enough for me!
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Britney's voice / singing down the years - deteriorating?
Britney Spears has been a professional singer, on and off, since she was recruited into the All New Mickey Mouse Club in 1993. We’ve seen videos of her performing like a real little trouper on Star Search when she was only 10 years old. You would think, wouldn’t you, that she would know quite a lot about singing? I certainly expect her to, and I think she does.
In fact, despite a hundred thousand sneery websites assuring us - or trying to reassure themselves - that “she can’t sing”, Britney’s recordings show a great deal of professionalism and skillful technique. It’s there IF you know what you’re looking for and are ready to look beyond power and Lea-Michele-style wig-out climaxes. If the sound of innocent little songs being bludgeoned to death by mindless excess is what floats your boat, you probably won’t be open to anything that I’m about to say.
The unobservant, such as hostile critics, try to put Britney in a box, saying she “has” this kind of voice or that kind of voice. “She has a nasal voice.” “She has a thin voice.” “She has a breathy voice.” “She has a robotic voice.” “She has a babyish voice.” And so on. Actually she has all of those voices and a lot more. A better way of expressing it would be to say that she possesses and USES those voices and isn’t limited to any of them.
Britney is an actress in song, you see. Consciously or unconsciously, the voices she applies to particular songs are her artistic choices. We may not especially like it, but the whiny, brattish voice she uses for parts of songs like “(Drop Dead) Beautiful” is supposed to create the image of a saucy, scheming little sex-vixen. But she’s not stuck with that voice. She only uses it in the verse and changes it for the chorus.
The voice she used in “Piece of Me” was also a little whiny, but it was very different from her sex-vixen voice. She sounded metallic and robotic - and did it so successfully that many unobservant critics thought her voice had been Vocoderized. If only people would listen through a decent set of headphones before they pass judgment.....
I guess it’s too much to expect from busy reviewers that they would take the time and trouble to pick up the subtle differences in the ways in which Britney treats each and every song on “Femme Fatale”. It’s a lot easier (and lazier) just to dismiss her and say “Her contribution to the project isn’t clear”. But if you’re interested in vocal craftsmanship, you will pride yourself on spotting the fact that her vocals on “Trouble” and “Big Fat Bass” are very different from “(Drop Dead) Beautiful”. If you can’t see that difference, you shouldn’t be writing about vocalists.
Another faulty approach in talking about Britney’s singing is to categorize her voice by eras and say she was better at this time or that time. One popular theory is that her voice has gradually deteriorated over the years since her first album. The explanations given are that she doesn’t practise enough and that she smokes. This, it is said, is why her voice became more whispery and breathy by the time of “In The Zone”.
But this theory ignores the fact that each era has contained its own anomalies and departures from a consistent timeline. For example, her high, whispery voice makes its first recorded appearance on “When your eyes say it” on the “Oops...” album. But that didn’t mean she had no other choices. On the “Britney” album that followed a year later, she chose to use a whole range of different voices, including the whispery one - but it only made an appearance on one track, “That’s where you take me”.
By the time of “In The Zone” in 2003, the “gradually getting worse because of the smoking” theorists were pretty sure she’d lost all strength and assertiveness from her voice for ever, and sang in a breathy style because she no longer had any alternative. But this album was Britney’s “Erotica” and it was appropriate that she delivered softer, sweeter, sexier vocals on most of the tracks. But there is a continuum of breathiness that stretches from “Showdown” and “Breathe on me” at one extreme, through tracks such as “I got that boom boom” and “The Hook Up” right through to “Brave New Girl”, which is sung with straightforward strength and isn’t breathy at all. Once again, the supposed timeline of steady deterioration looks extremely shaky.
Next we arrive at “Blackout”, and the consensual but completely delusional theory that, by this hopeless and helpless stage in her career, she had to be propped up in the recording booth while she croaked a few phrases into a Magic Autotune machine which then produced the vocals. Hence the flat, disengaged, metallic sound of “Piece of me”. But... ummm.... although that’s what people EXPECTED to hear, “Piece of Me” is the ONLY track where she uses that approach. Every other track, even including “Freakshow”, is totally different. This was the album where she first began to explore her full vocal range, with many songs beginning in a low register then moving into an extremely high one. “Toy Soldier” gives her sex-vixen voice an early airing, and the breathy style is also represented, e.g. on “Heaven on Earth”. But the outtakes are the clearest indication of the vast range of styles she had at her command - think about “Let Go” and “State of Grace”.
And what about “Circus”? According to the theory of Britney’s steady vocal deterioration, an album that emerged a full 5 years after “In The Zone” should show her in a state of total vocal collapse, yet it contains some of the liveliest, most varied singing of her career and very little whisperiness. Again there are songs where she switches from low to high register for the chorus, and here her high voice is stronger and better integrated than previously. “Womanizer” and “If U Seek Amy” reveal her bratty sex-vixen, but only in the verses, while “Lace and Leather” shows us a non-bratty vixen. In “Kill the lights” and “Mmm Papi” she’s mid-register fierce. “Shattered glass” is assertive enough, but with a softer edge. “Unusual you” and “Blur” aren’t breathy, yet somehow they’re still dreamy and poignant. Even the ballads, “Out from under” and “My baby”, while sweet and affectionate, are sung in a stronger, more open-throated voice than (for example) “Everytime” and in “My baby” she also displays uncharacteristically sustained notes and a more obvious vibrato.
And finally “Femme Fatale”. Britney got a bashing from many critics for sounding unnatural and electronic, but that’s a product of lazy listening, as I said at the start. Her approach on this album is basically to put the songs out there as vigorously as possible and with relatively little of her usual ornamentation. Yet there are still differences in the ways in which she sings each track. And there is much unobtrusive professionalism. On “(Drop Dead) Beautiful” she repeats the line “You’re beautiful” many times, and every time is identical to the one before. That isn’t an easy thing to achieve. On “Don’t keep me waiting” she belts the song out as aggressively as anybody, and shows that even at full power she can hold a note AND repeat it perfectly again and again - which is something the haters said she couldn’t do.
Now, you may want to turn all of this against her and argue that this recourse to basic pop techniques is in itself a sign of diminishing vocal skills and loss of finesse. And indeed, only one track on the entire album contains any vibrato at all. But that is “He about to lose me” where all of her great qualities are shown to be intact in one song, and available for use any time she requires them. It’s almost as if she gave us this one little, anomalous track to tell us in her usual modest way “Hey, I can still do this y’know!”
In fact, despite a hundred thousand sneery websites assuring us - or trying to reassure themselves - that “she can’t sing”, Britney’s recordings show a great deal of professionalism and skillful technique. It’s there IF you know what you’re looking for and are ready to look beyond power and Lea-Michele-style wig-out climaxes. If the sound of innocent little songs being bludgeoned to death by mindless excess is what floats your boat, you probably won’t be open to anything that I’m about to say.
The unobservant, such as hostile critics, try to put Britney in a box, saying she “has” this kind of voice or that kind of voice. “She has a nasal voice.” “She has a thin voice.” “She has a breathy voice.” “She has a robotic voice.” “She has a babyish voice.” And so on. Actually she has all of those voices and a lot more. A better way of expressing it would be to say that she possesses and USES those voices and isn’t limited to any of them.
Britney is an actress in song, you see. Consciously or unconsciously, the voices she applies to particular songs are her artistic choices. We may not especially like it, but the whiny, brattish voice she uses for parts of songs like “(Drop Dead) Beautiful” is supposed to create the image of a saucy, scheming little sex-vixen. But she’s not stuck with that voice. She only uses it in the verse and changes it for the chorus.
The voice she used in “Piece of Me” was also a little whiny, but it was very different from her sex-vixen voice. She sounded metallic and robotic - and did it so successfully that many unobservant critics thought her voice had been Vocoderized. If only people would listen through a decent set of headphones before they pass judgment.....
I guess it’s too much to expect from busy reviewers that they would take the time and trouble to pick up the subtle differences in the ways in which Britney treats each and every song on “Femme Fatale”. It’s a lot easier (and lazier) just to dismiss her and say “Her contribution to the project isn’t clear”. But if you’re interested in vocal craftsmanship, you will pride yourself on spotting the fact that her vocals on “Trouble” and “Big Fat Bass” are very different from “(Drop Dead) Beautiful”. If you can’t see that difference, you shouldn’t be writing about vocalists.
Another faulty approach in talking about Britney’s singing is to categorize her voice by eras and say she was better at this time or that time. One popular theory is that her voice has gradually deteriorated over the years since her first album. The explanations given are that she doesn’t practise enough and that she smokes. This, it is said, is why her voice became more whispery and breathy by the time of “In The Zone”.
But this theory ignores the fact that each era has contained its own anomalies and departures from a consistent timeline. For example, her high, whispery voice makes its first recorded appearance on “When your eyes say it” on the “Oops...” album. But that didn’t mean she had no other choices. On the “Britney” album that followed a year later, she chose to use a whole range of different voices, including the whispery one - but it only made an appearance on one track, “That’s where you take me”.
By the time of “In The Zone” in 2003, the “gradually getting worse because of the smoking” theorists were pretty sure she’d lost all strength and assertiveness from her voice for ever, and sang in a breathy style because she no longer had any alternative. But this album was Britney’s “Erotica” and it was appropriate that she delivered softer, sweeter, sexier vocals on most of the tracks. But there is a continuum of breathiness that stretches from “Showdown” and “Breathe on me” at one extreme, through tracks such as “I got that boom boom” and “The Hook Up” right through to “Brave New Girl”, which is sung with straightforward strength and isn’t breathy at all. Once again, the supposed timeline of steady deterioration looks extremely shaky.
Next we arrive at “Blackout”, and the consensual but completely delusional theory that, by this hopeless and helpless stage in her career, she had to be propped up in the recording booth while she croaked a few phrases into a Magic Autotune machine which then produced the vocals. Hence the flat, disengaged, metallic sound of “Piece of me”. But... ummm.... although that’s what people EXPECTED to hear, “Piece of Me” is the ONLY track where she uses that approach. Every other track, even including “Freakshow”, is totally different. This was the album where she first began to explore her full vocal range, with many songs beginning in a low register then moving into an extremely high one. “Toy Soldier” gives her sex-vixen voice an early airing, and the breathy style is also represented, e.g. on “Heaven on Earth”. But the outtakes are the clearest indication of the vast range of styles she had at her command - think about “Let Go” and “State of Grace”.
And what about “Circus”? According to the theory of Britney’s steady vocal deterioration, an album that emerged a full 5 years after “In The Zone” should show her in a state of total vocal collapse, yet it contains some of the liveliest, most varied singing of her career and very little whisperiness. Again there are songs where she switches from low to high register for the chorus, and here her high voice is stronger and better integrated than previously. “Womanizer” and “If U Seek Amy” reveal her bratty sex-vixen, but only in the verses, while “Lace and Leather” shows us a non-bratty vixen. In “Kill the lights” and “Mmm Papi” she’s mid-register fierce. “Shattered glass” is assertive enough, but with a softer edge. “Unusual you” and “Blur” aren’t breathy, yet somehow they’re still dreamy and poignant. Even the ballads, “Out from under” and “My baby”, while sweet and affectionate, are sung in a stronger, more open-throated voice than (for example) “Everytime” and in “My baby” she also displays uncharacteristically sustained notes and a more obvious vibrato.
And finally “Femme Fatale”. Britney got a bashing from many critics for sounding unnatural and electronic, but that’s a product of lazy listening, as I said at the start. Her approach on this album is basically to put the songs out there as vigorously as possible and with relatively little of her usual ornamentation. Yet there are still differences in the ways in which she sings each track. And there is much unobtrusive professionalism. On “(Drop Dead) Beautiful” she repeats the line “You’re beautiful” many times, and every time is identical to the one before. That isn’t an easy thing to achieve. On “Don’t keep me waiting” she belts the song out as aggressively as anybody, and shows that even at full power she can hold a note AND repeat it perfectly again and again - which is something the haters said she couldn’t do.
Now, you may want to turn all of this against her and argue that this recourse to basic pop techniques is in itself a sign of diminishing vocal skills and loss of finesse. And indeed, only one track on the entire album contains any vibrato at all. But that is “He about to lose me” where all of her great qualities are shown to be intact in one song, and available for use any time she requires them. It’s almost as if she gave us this one little, anomalous track to tell us in her usual modest way “Hey, I can still do this y’know!”
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