singing in weird affected voices and the '80s/

[Slothrop]

I'm going with:
post punk rejection of rawk authenticity with its consequent need to sing as unaffectedly as possible
b2b
increasingly intellectual music culture meaning that people forming bands are influenced by Artaud, Brecht, Weil etc as well as the Beatles and the Stones.

Although people are right that there are precedents for it going back a lot earlier.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I like John Lydon's super-precise enunciation, it's kind of so correct as to be sarcastic. Very English and, by trad '70s standards, very un-rock'n'roll (and therefore all the more punk).

 

[PeteUM]

increasingly intellectual music culture meaning that people forming bands are influenced by Artaud, Brecht, Weil etc as well as the Beatles and the Stones.

Yeah I've been wondering about this 80s affected voice thing for a while and had come to the conclusion that Bowie is somewhere near its source and had spawned a zillion singer-types who wanted to be a bit literary, a bit theatrical, look a bit mad and intense and as if they might know a bit about German expressionism etc. This must be true of the UK although it gets a bit more of a diluted influence by the time it gets to the US and I'm not sure it's got anything to do with Word Up etc. I think after a while it just because such a dominant cultural meme that it became produced and consumed without people thinking about it, like metal dudes growling or whatever. I know that's a bit vague.

I think local Cambridge band Stormed would be a good example of this, for the silly voice:


and this for the look:

 

[skull kid]

yeah bryan ferry is responsible for this

bowie's voice is way more soulful than he gets credit for

 

[skull kid]

and jacques brel by way of bryan ferry/scott walker is the ultimate start point

 

[mistersloane]

Yeah Pete UM um the money there. German expressionism, the last throes of modernism, belief in originality coupled with the (re)allowance of affectation. You could also argue that house, with its repetition and destruction of language (jack, jack the groove) was the end of modernism/beginning of something else maybe.

I don't think Larry Blackmon's voice is part of the same thing, he was singing like that cos he was hanging out in Atlanta and really liked Bootsy.

 

[PeteUM]

yeah bryan ferry is responsible for this

bowie's voice is way more soulful than he gets credit for

It took me a long time to fully appreciate Roxy Music's influence and I'm enjoying Michael Bracewell's Re-make/Re-model book at the moment. I think Ferry's affected voice will have fed into what i was talking about above but there is also a distinct strand of portentous, theatrical vocal stylisation that is rooted in a kind of literary/theatrical European-ness whereas Roxy were all about an American-influenced idea of pop-culture. Like, a band like Bauhaus could be influenced by Bowie but less so by Roxy Music, I would argue. Again, these are ideas in search of a theory, really.

 

[CrowleyHead]

Technically, Bolan was doing the affected stuff really early too though, no? Which reminds me of this song in particular...

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[swears]

Bowie's voice got more affected as time went on, in some kind of weird feedback loop with rest of the culture.

 

[bb_rebozo]

almost any 80s sucker was into hedonism. there were just a few affected plus weird:

genesis p. orridge

holger hiller

ian curtis

bob dylan, established weird voice since the 60s until now

maybe gary numan a little