ITT: Singers whose voices are completely shot now

Age and smoking really caught up to her.

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Fuck

really shot

Really gets the (you)'s going

he ain't singin no more

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:(((((

David Coverdale. He had fantastic range and power and now he's...well, don't look at recent concert footage.

On a serious note i'd say Perry Farrell

I guess Bob Dylan is the obvious example, but Elton John is pretty bad now too and maybe Stephen Stills?

Tom Petty has taken good care of himself; he still sounds really good and he can hit high notes consistently.

Ian Anderson is pretty bad now. Paul McCartney sounds weak at the start of concerts but gets better as he warms up. Stephen Stills has a hearing problem so that may contribute to his vocal issues.

I saw Bob Dylan a few nights ago and he didn't sounds awful at all. His voice was pretty haggard but he was able to carry the tunes alright.

Every singer. Singing is really bad for you, the longer you do it the worst you're voice will get. It's harder to name older musicians who still have a voice.

The D.O.C.

Elton John has to sing in a completely different register because he can't go anywhere near the high notes. It sounds like he's trying to impersonate someone else.

Elton John doesn't have the same voice he did in 1974 but he's still able to perform without too much distress. I don't think James Taylor is as good as he was in the 70s, but he's still more than adequate.

I listen to a lot of opera which wears out performers' voices fast. I think Angela Georghiu, based on her last Covent Garden performance in La Rondine, is on the way out, if not out already.

Paul Stanley definitely can't sing most KISS songs anymore.

Robert Plant can't sing Led Zeppelin songs anymore but his solo stuff is still quite good.

Chris Farlowe sounds good although he looks very old and weathered.

This. It's like being and athlete, the time eventually comes when you're completely shot.

Oh yeah. Elton's voice is definitely pretty weak now, it's hard to even make out the words of the songs when he sings them now. Especially on the uptempo numbers.

Mariah Carey is shot to hell; I guess all those kettle whistles finally caught up to her.

Aretha Franklin, but it's not as if she was any good after the early 70s anyway.

Ozzys still going strong for being 68, anyone know how Geddy Lee sounds live these days?

Dionne Warwick. I'm not even sure if she tours anymore; I remember seeing her on TV and she was basically talking her way through the David/Bacharach songbook.

>Tom Petty has taken good care of himself; he still sounds really good and he can hit high notes consistently

Steven Tyler has held up remarkably well too. He sounds older now but still has good range and control.

Just because nobody's mentioned him.

Steven Tyler

wew

Geddy Lee's voice has taken an abrupt turn for the worse since Snakes & Arrows. I'm really happy I went to see Rush on that tour, despite being unfamiliar with most of their work, because I sure as hell wouldn't pay money to see them now (or for their post-Snakes & Arrows Live live releases).

Jon Bon Jovi. He was never an exceptional singer to begin with but now he pulls away from the mike during the chorus of Living on a Prayer. Always Now is difficult for him to pull off now as well.

Ian Gillan. He just keeps getting worse and also off-key now.

Bob Dylan

Graham Bonnett

Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney sounds like an 80 year old woman for the past 20 or so years. Ian Gillan and Paul Stanley are completely done. David Bowie started losing it in the late 90s.

Because it's such an earth-shattering revelation that people over the age of 60 can't sing like they did in their 20s. What is this world coming to...

If you read this thread carefully, you'll find that there are many people who still sound good (perhaps different but not completely shot). Fact is that many singers are gifted with great voices but they don't seem to be aware of the techniques you can use to preserve it. I don't even want to know what Adele is going to sound like when she's 60.

Totally done means different things to different people. Elton John should just retire, he sounds like total garbage now. I saw a performance of Million Dollar Piano that was so bad I had to turn the video off. I actually felt sorry for him. David Lee Roth is also horrible to listen to now and so is Paul Stanley, he sounds bad compared to even his 2000s self let alone his 70s-80s self. The decline is to noticeable to ignore and for that reason when I last saw KISS on tour with Def Leppard, I made a note in my head to never go see them again. And Bob Dylan, lol, the dude could never sing.

Roger Waters. His voice already sounded shredded by Radio KAOS.

>David Bowie started losing it in the late 90s.
this
it was painful to hear in Blackstar: totally ruined the album for me :/

David Sylvian. He had a really powerful voice at once time but now...

>Mariah Carey is shot to hell

For some reason Sony signed her to a multi-album deal in 2015? Why? She's finished. She has no midrange left and can't hit high notes at full power. There's nothing left of her voice except the kettle whistle and her whispery leads.

I saw Elton John in concert and his voice honestly wasn't that terrible, but he definitely can't hit high notes anymore. He compensated by taking the lower harmonies and letting the backing band do the falsetto register stuff.

Joe Jackson if a concert I saw from the 2000s on VH1 Classic is an indication.

Roger Daltrey has to be picky about what vocal bits he attempts.

Joe Elliot is not so good from what I hear.

Eric Bloom of BOC is kinda weak which is why they play more Buck Dharma songs nowadays.

Johnny Solinger can still sing very well, but he had very little upper register when I saw Skid Row last year.

OTOH I was shocked how great Steven Tyler was when I saw Aerosmith in 2012. Cheap Trick opened, and he may have bested Robin Zander (!)

what kind of note heh

John Wetton is a sad case because the short vocal prime he had was quite nice, but looking at the last Asia performances he did... (I know, I know, he did have cancer that ultimately kill him, but even before that, it was not good)

Wetton could at least compensate a little bit because he was a great bassist

robert smith

Daltrey is getting weak; trying to perform Quadrophenia songs is asking for trouble at this point. Joni Mitchell is done. Donald Fagen also can't sing most of the Steely Dan canon anymore.

Not every singer- Jon Anderson is 72 and he still sounds like he did in his prime.

Steve Walsh was starting to lose his voice by the early 90s, thank God he retired because those last concerts he did were...yikes.

Disagree. Check out this UK performance from 2012.

youtu.be/ZX39JUjoJ-s

I'm very sorry to agree that Debbie Harry is done. Paul McCartney...still great live performer but he can't sing anymore at all.

This is just a year later with Asia; 'Heat of the Moment' is lowered in key and it doesn't have any power behind it like when it was released.
youtube.com/watch?v=Xn5EzIOAHAU

James Cotton could hardly talk, let alone sing towards the end. I saw him in about 2010 and he didn't sing at all or even talk to or interact with the crowd, his guitarist handled the vocals. He was still pretty good at his harmonica though.

I love the man, but it's sad and true

Steve's still okay in Freaks Of Nature – a bit of strain here and there but he can still reach fairly high. It's on Somewhere To Elsewhere where he starts crooning. By 2002, when I saw them live, he was clearly struggling hard.

Shrugs shoulders. Sounded pretty good to me. Granted he's lost a little to age but it's still respectable live singing.

RIP John Wetton

Steve Walsh had a god-level voice but he lost it somewhere between the Power and In The Spirit of Things tours. He still sounded alright then, but not anywhere near what he was in 1976.

The man was astonishing on bass. Sound and style like none other, I've seen him do stuff that others wouldn't even attempt, like literally slapping the bass with his open palm

Billy Joel is still quite good, Olivia Newton-John isn't bad either.

She's done now, but my dad saw her in 1977 and her voice almost blew everyone in the room away.

It's almost heartbreaking how much pic related fucked himself up

youtube.com/watch?v=4Zx-oVwhdLc

People get old, sure, but at the same time they also shouldn't have the balls to charge $200 a ticket when they clearly can't sing anymore.

Well they aren't charging based on how talented they still are, people will want to see them no matter what shape they're in just because they were once famous. And supply/demand ect drives prices up.

>Ctrl+F
>Barry Gibb
>no results
I feel bad for the guy. Why he even tries to still sing falsetto is beyond me.

came here to post this

The problem is that a lot of his big hits use the falsetto voice so he kind of has to do it. His pitch control is pretty bad, his voice is really all over the map but sometimes he still has surprising amounts of power left.

I looked up some recent concert footage and honestly Barry Gibb is better than a lot of the other people mentioned in here, but it's not like the Bee Gees performed live that much which means less wear on his voice. They were mostly a studio band, but they did still sound pretty good live. Robin had the best voice technically, but his vibrato got kind of grating after a while. Barry and Maurice by themselves weren't all that good. Still, nice to see he's still performing.

Chris Cornell still sounded great, before he hung himself. Fuck knows why he did it..

James Hetfield's voice was only good up to the early 90s, he sounds like a busted dishwasher now.

Ann Wilson, Steve Winwood, David Byrne, Jon Anderson, and Suzanne Vega are all still really good.

Chuck Berry at the end was horrible to watch. His family should have been investigated for elder abuse.

What's sad is that nobody can play his licks properly. All the countless thousands of Chuck Berry cover artists over the decades and none of them could get the groove and tone exactly right. Remember how he schooled Keith Richards for not being able to play his songs right?

Brian Wilson is shot.

>inb4 a horde of irate Beach Boys fans come charging at me with flaming surfboards in hand

Marianne Faithfull

Siouxse Sioux is pretty bad now desu. They have to downtune for her and she can't hit high notes anymore. When I first heard The Seven Year Itch live, I was blown away at how bad she was. Her voice is very weak now, it's sad.

Someone else mentioned David Lee Roth and if recent live TV clips are anything to go by, I'd agree with that.

Chuck Berry. He even forgets the notes to his own songs.

Brian Wilson's voice is fucked but I don't even care, I have a front row ticket to see him doing Pet Sounds a week today and I can't wait

...

I wouldn't say Debbie Harry is completely shot. She was always kind of a studio singer and never entirely perfect live, but she made up with her stage presence. For her age I think she's still quite good.

You know who has gotten somewhat better over the years somehow? Marilyn Manson. Crazy to think Manson of all people would end up sounding better than a lot of the names mentioned here..

>inb4 a horde of irate Beach Boys fans come charging at me with flaming surfboards in hand
Wouldn't that be nice.

>forgets
m8

The problem with a lot of rock and pop singers is that they don't use their natural voice, they use a certain singing style that happens to be popular at the moment, regardless of whether it fits their voice naturally, for example 80s pop chicks all have that "chipmunk" voice Madonna uses on Material Girl (that's the best way to describe it). Or how all late 90s-early 2000s pop punk vocalists have the same vocal style.

When you're 25, you can pull it off and force yourself to sound like whatever the current popular singing style is, but in time it will catch up to you. If you write songs for your voice as it sounds when you've just gotten up in the morning and are sitting down to a cup of coffee, you'll still be able to pull it off past the age of 60, if you write songs after drinking herbal tea, warmups, and a steam vaporizer, you'll be crispy-fried after enough years.

paul stanley's voice has been more or less destroyed since the late 00s. it's insane how he still wants to do 50+ shows a year sounding like this:

youtu.be/dw8Dn1vxli0

>Robert Plant can't sing Led Zeppelin songs anymore but his solo stuff is still quite good

Plant's voice isn't gone. In fact, his voice is in better shape now that it was for all of 1975 (with the possible exception of some of the Earls Court nights) and most of the 1980 Euro tour.

He got surgery on his throat in the late 2000s but he ignored doctors' orders to rest his voice. I think he's in complete denial about himself. Otherwise he wouldn't try and still perform the intro to Heaven's On Fire live.

Plant is fine with the hokey adult contemporary tunes he's done since the 80s and also some of the acoustic Zeppelin numbers, but there's no way in hell he can still perform Black Dog and whatnot.

Sting still has power in his singing (must be all that Yoga), but his range is fucked, compared to his singing with the Police. Everything he sings is just at one level, where in the 80s with the Police and solo, he had a great range.

Much as I love Neil Young, his voice since Greendale is a thin whisper.

Bob Dylan isn't bad in the studio where he can drink herbal tea and get multiple takes.

Brian Wilson is done as a live singer without a question. That's Why God Made The Radio had massive overdubbing and multitracking to make him sound passable.

Fuck, I was amazed seeing him on tour now with Trevor Rabin and Rick Wakeman, and he is singing all those 80s Yes songs when Rabin was the guitarist, and Anderson sounds great.

Bruce Springsteen has held up very well, he doesn't sound quite like he did in the 70s but he still sings most stuff in the original key and for three hour shows.

The lead singer from Loverboy is fat as fuck now.

A couple years back there was a Mariah Carey bad performance going around that everyone laughed at, and I thought, ah, big deal, everybody has an off night. Then, I saw another performance of live TV that was even worse. Just sad.

Steve Perry, but he knew he was done and retired in the late 90s. Better that than embarrass himself still trying to sing Wheel In The Sky and Don't Stop Believin'.

Mariah Carey is really someone who lives in denial; she keeps trying in vain to hit those stratospheric notes and won't readjust her singing style.

John Sebastian. Him and Paul Stanley might be the only guys whose voices are so bad now that listening to them sounds like a monkey being thrown into a wood chipper. And Sebastian doesn't even have cool stage gimmicks to fall back on.

Dylan's recent material isn't half bad because he and the band write the songs around his current vocal abilities. I can't say I disliked any of his recent material other than the Frank Sinatra cover album.

Having said that, when he tries to perform his 60s material...not so good.

Problem with Bob Dylan is this cult of personality around the guy. People go to his shows and hang on every word, every syllable like he's Pavarotti. They applaud him when they should be leaving en masse after the third indecipherable ditty and asking for their money back.

Sting can still sing well last I heard

Ian Anderson: I mean, what the fuck. His voice got thinner and raspier over the course of the 70s until it finally broke during the Under Wraps tour, but he managed to recover and sing decently well through the early 90s. Then we got Roots to Branches where he introduced the dynamic free-for-all voice he's used since but at least he could still emote on that album, afterwards he stopped trying. Actually, for a real head scratcher, there was a song on his solo album from the early '00s, Rupi's Dance, I think it might have been Calliandra Shade, where he sort of pauses at one point and lets out this almost guttural "Right!" before resuming the song. His voice dropped an octave or so into this nice, gritty baritone, and I can't help but wonder if that Heavy Horses voice is still hidden in there somewhere. Anderson hasn't said a whole lot about his voice in interviews other than a vague comment or two about how it's harder to bring the energy live. Too bad because he hasn't lost his ability to play and compose songs.

Eric Bloom: When did his voice start to go? He was fine up to the 90s with "Heaven Forbid", but "Curse of the Hidden Mirror" hardly has any of his vocals and what is there is so understated that I wonder why he's even on the album at all.

Roger Waters: Is done as a singer, but at least his recordings will live on forever.

>Eric Bloom
He had such a great voice, too. Shame.

>Anderson hasn't said a whole lot about his voice in interviews other than a vague comment or two about how it's harder to bring the energy live

Actually he has. He's claimed he suffered from emphysema brought on by onstage fog machines. He also used to smoke but doesn't do it anymore.

Geddy Lee's voice nowadays is depressing.

I take more issue with Paul McCartney's static setlists and unchanging stage banter (same jokes and stories at every concert) rather than his voice.