I listened to the entire Velvet Underground discography yesterday in eager anticipation of the doc about them coming tomorrow (please don't let it be just another two hours of weird Warhol Factory film footage with endless "Lou was a genius" proclamations), and today The Ringer- I assume coincidentally? - chats about "talk-singing", what the Germans call "Sprechgesang", and of course Reed was (to me) the King of Talk Singing. But it's also important to know that it's always been around:
“For people of one age it’s Bob Dylan, and another it’s the Velvet Underground. Another it’s Modern Lovers, another it’s Talking Heads, another it’s They Might Be Giants, and another it’s Cake,” says Katz. “This is a sound that’s deep in American popular music. … Depending on how old you are, there was someone doing it in the mainstream when you were coming of age.”
And then there's maybe WHY people talk-sing:
True, the best punk singers were always the ones who couldn’t really sing.* Lately, though, there’s a halo of cool floating around the vocalists who barely try. Which is ironic, since talk-singers often say their vocal approach is driven by insecurity more than anything else. (To misquote School of Rock, those who can’t do … teach, and those who can’t sing ... talk.)
Just the other day I was talking with Rrthur (YES, ladies, THAT Rrthur) about my first time ever singing in a studio, recording a record, and we marveled at how effortlessly I tossed off the singing. I was 22 so I had the balls to just go in, knock it out the best I could and leave it at that. Today, I'd be all "Oh I need to hit this note, or this feeling blah blah blah" but back then, when the light turned red I just shouted it out. Youth, I mean amirite guys?
*This is absolutely untrue and lazy, a lot punk singers had great voices. Joey Ramone sang like an angel, for instance.
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