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Under-rated/over-rated vocalists

buldog5151bass

buldog5151bass

Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Oct 22, 2003
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#1
Kind of a follow-up to my "musicians you appreciate but don't like" thread, who are some truly under-rated (and over-rated) vocalists?

I nominate Ann Wilson of Heart as most under-rated. Early Heart is so powerful. As a runner up I nominate (as I prepare to duck the slings and arrows) Meatloaf. Yes, his music was overly bombastic, but the dude had a set of pipes.

Most over-rated? Ozzy Osbourne. Heck of a front man, but not a talented vocalist at all. I remember reading an interview of Tommy Iommi, where he said there was a reason they didn't put out live albums with him as vocalist.
 
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#4
Overrated? For me it has to be Sade. Lots of long notes, no inflection, no vibrato or any other indication that there's any emotion being emoted there, and very limited range. But I know lots of people just love her.

Underrated, it's hard to say. There are probably many. I think Pink has a fabulous voice but she's overlooked a lot because she's a pop star.
 
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#5
The problem with rating vocalists for their performances is what parameters you use. If the bar is set for overall vocal range, Minnie Ripperton would be hard to beat. If the gauge is set for authenticity, then Randall Bramblett or Fats Waller would be at the top of the list. Having great pipes and convincing an audience you mean what you're singing are two different things. I'd rather hear a limited range vocalist who the audience connected with than an opera singer who was obviously going through the motions. Burton Cummings is a good choice for all around great singer, as is Paul Rodgers. Underrated? Ian Lloyd, Colin Cooper, Solomon Burke, Ronnie Hammond, Ronald Isley, and Johnny Townsend come to mind.
 
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#6
You have to take into account that their are vocalists (folks that are good at their own stuff and hardly anything else) and then there are singers (folks that can sing anything and sell it in spades).

From the preceding responses, Ozzy or Sade do really good Ozzy or Sade. Nobody is waiting to hear the Ozz sing the National Anthem at the World Series or Sade do Carpenters covers. On the other hand, performers like Ann Wilson or say, Tom Jones, can step out of their 'usual gig' with not much effort.
 
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#7
Sorry, but Ann Wilson is not underrated. She is largely viewed as one of the top rock vocalists of all time, and perhaps among the very top handful of female ones. So much so, that I think she is overrated (not that I dislike her singing).

As for underrated, I would say Ozzy Osbourne. He is generally viewed as a great frontman/personality who can't really sing. I, OTOH, think his voice was absolutely incredible early on...and got progressively worse, such that it was toast by Vol. 4, and never came back. But first album Ozzy...effing hell, man. He had some real pipes on a technical level, and knew how to do something new and interesting with them. Yet he gets practically no credit for actually being a "good" singer.

Most overrated is, IMO, Ian Gillan. And a close second would be Bruce Dickinson. Both of these singers are actually quite horrible and unskilled on a technical level. And while some technically horrible singers have good musical style and taste in spades, and because of this, can sound great anyhow, both Gillan and Dickinson have neither good musical style nor good musical taste, and thus eventually musically tanked their respective bands when they joined, or soon after (I still dig In Rock and The Number of the Beast, and some other Gillan-era Deep Purple and Dickinson-era Maiden).
 
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#9
2F/2F said:
Sorry, but Ann Wilson is not underrated. She is largely viewed as one of the top rock vocalists of all time, and perhaps among the very top handful of female ones. So much so, that I think she is overrated (not that I dislike her singing).

As for underrated, I would say Ozzy Osbourne. He is generally viewed as a great frontman/personality who can't really sing. I, OTOH, think his voice was absolutely incredible early on...and got progressively worse, such that it was toast by Vol. 4, and never came back. But first album Ozzy...effing hell, man. He had some real pipes on a technical level, and knew how to do something new and interesting with them. Yet he gets practically no credit for actually being a "good" singer.

Most overrated is, IMO, Ian Gillan. And a close second would be Bruce Dickinson. Both of these singers are actually quite horrible and unskilled on a technical level. And while some technically horrible singers have good musical style and taste in spades, and because of this, can sound great anyhow, both Gillan and Dickinson have neither good musical style nor good musical taste, and thus eventually musically tanked their respective bands when they joined, or soon after (I still dig In Rock and The Number of the Beast, and some other Gillan-era Deep Purple and Dickinson-era Maiden).
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Gillan and Dickenson were easily the best singers in both their bands, and how did they tank them? Bruce Dickinson with no doubt made Iron Maiden better.
 
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#11
Jason Harris said:
Gillan and Dickenson were easily the best singers in both their bands, and how did they tank them? Bruce Dickinson with no doubt made Iron Maiden better.
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We'll have to agree to disagree, in this entirely opinion based thread. I am certainly not criticizing your opinions here. DiAnno Maiden and early D.P. for me. I can tolerate bad chops if I like the style. But I don't do bad chops and bad style. I do think that Dickinson and Gillan did not have good technical chops, nor did they have a style I like, and even so, I enjoy some of their respective bands' output with them (as long as we're talking studio recordings, where only the best vocal takes were used). Passable voices for those styles of music...but not exactly technically on point. The other members of their bands were quite technically on point IMO, especially D.P., which had some of the most technically skilled players ever to play in a "dumb rock band." Never liked any soloist in Maiden, but I dig the over all sound of the band for five albums (and especially the first two). And on a technical level, Dave Murray bends terribly flat pretty much every time, even on record...but to me it's easier to mentally "ignore" noodly guitar as background noise than it is a high pitched, strained human voice that can't really sing in tune and has a tone that I hate.

When I say they musically tanked their bands, I'm talking about how the bands eventually became unlistenable to me, largely (but not entirely) due to the singer. I can't go past Powerslave with Maiden (it's just plain horrible to me), and I heavily cherry pick D.P. even in the Gillan era. By "musically tanked" I'm not talking about a fact. I'm talking about a personal judgment on listenability – my "cutoff," so to speak.
 
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#13
2F/2F said:
We'll have to agree to disagree, in this entirely opinion based thread. DiAnno Maiden and early D.P. for me. I can tolerate bad chops if I like the style. But I don't do bad chops and bad style. I do think that Dickinson and Gillan did not have good technical chops, nor did they have a style I like, and even so, I enjoy some of their respective bands' output with them. Passable voices for those styles of music...but not exactly technically on point. The other members of their bands were quite technically on point IMO, especially D.P.
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I will agree that Rod Evans was a great vocalist, even if he didn't fit the style or the MkII line up. Love those first 3 albums
 

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