I’m watching lots of concerts on YouTube. It’s surprising how many there are. Name a band and there’s usually a full concert on there. So cool!
I have to say, though, that I’m a grumpy old man when it comes to the crowd singing. I get it – you want the crowd to get involved and letting them sing the chorus to your hit song without you is a good way to do that. But as a music fan, I don’t want to hear 18,000 non-musicians badly sing your chorus – I want to hear YOU sing it!
Imagine a famous painter doing a live painting and then saying “Hey, I’m going to give each of you a brush, come on up and add to the painting.” It’s particularly amusing if the singer’s singing really high, which they always are. I’m listening to Keane’s concert recording of “Somewhere Only We Know” and the crowd is singing the chorus, but it sounds low… because only the women are singing, and it’s low for them, and few of the men are singing the high notes because they can’t hit them. Or they hit them badly. And the whole crowd is badly out of time. And probably drunk.
It’s a whole ‘nuther discussion, but in most genres, male singers are now almost exclusively singing higher than 80% of the male population can sing. This isn’t new, I guess – think about Journey and Foreigner. But, I mean, Johny Cash was a bass. Frank Sinatra was a bass. Jim Morrison of the Doors was basically a bass. Those days are long gone. Most guys can’t sing along with the choruses of most songs. Are we missing something? Why do these short dudes with alto voices dominate music? Will it ever change back? Do we care?
OK, enough “get off my lawn” talk. I’ll go watch some more concerts. And just ignore the drunk crowd choruses.
