Which Beatles singing voice is your favorite? | Page 2 | Fab forum

Hm. Well, first of all, there's nary a moment of Beatle vocalizing in the whole catalog that I don't enjoy thoroughly. But George and Ringo clearly had limitations – Ringo was restricted to a kind of goofy lovable charm; and George didn't have the ability to really belt out the raucous rock 'n rollers. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, and anyways he was never really asked to do so.) So it comes down to John and Paul; and really, I don't think any band ever had a finer two singers.  But I gotta go with John as my ultimate favourite, for the unfair reason that Paul was so virtuosic, so able to switch effortlessly between the Little Richard screamers and the "Honey Pie" cutesiness, that it suggested that he was a mere mimic. When Paul sang "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?", especially, he sounded to me like he was trying to sound black, rather than finding his own white-soul voice. Unfairly or not, that's the impression I got sometimes.

Oh, and since this is the Beatles we're talking about here, it should go without saying that their ability to sing in harmony exponentially increased my enjoyment levels – in other words, the sum of John & Paul singing together was more than twice as good as either of them individually. And obviously the addition of George increased that even further.

paulsbass said:

DoctorRobert said:

Yeah, I admit Paul's voice can be brutal (oh darling springs to mind) but it lacks the honest emotion John shows. It all seems a bit plastic soul (or should that be rubber soul).

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First: I LOVE your avatar! I could watch it for hours! Ok, after a few minutes you get a little dizzy…
 

I think Paul just never was as insecure and depressed and desperate as John. He's always been the ground-solid, controlled one and would never had let himself go down as John did.

He was always the happy and nice one, and while many critisize him for that, calling him dishonest or fake or false, I do like that attitude much better than any of this "everything sucks and goes to hell anyway, so f&%$ you…" attitude people like Kurt Cobain and also sometimes John showed.

People generally seem to think of depressed, "emotional" people as being cooler than happy people who are confident of themselves.

I don't agree to that. For me that's just weak, I don't like too much of that.

Paul could still do very emotional songs, but more in a distant, observing way (Eleanor Rigby, For no one). Personally I hear lots of emotion in "Hey Jude" or "Maybe I'm amazed".

"Oh darling" on the other hand would be an example of fake-emotions. He just did that one to scream, without real feeling. John would have done it better (just listen to that awful "Anthology" version where John is just fooling around and still sounds much better than Paul who just doesn't know yet how to master that song).

 

So while I acknowledge the fact that Paul almost never really opened up his inner soul I'm totally ok with that. I like his attitude and his vocal diversity which is unparalleled, imo.

Hmm, I think they both did a decent amount of "fake emotions" type songs, hell with the amount of songs both did in the course of 7 years it would be impossible for them not to do a few fake ones. The difference between John and Paul, to me, is 1st person versus 3rd person, it's fiction versus non-fiction. They both have their charms, but different people just like different things.

 I don't think John was always a depressed "emotional" person, but he was willing to let that aspect of his personality into his songwriting, whereas Paul really didn't and I really respect John for that. Despite his fame and fortune, he was still able to look at himself introspectively and tell the world what he thought of himself. Paul liked to mask his emotions behind characters or metaphors and there's nothing wrong with that, but I've always found it a bit harder to relate to.