There is an epidemic going around these days that I feel the need to weigh in on. It has been around for as long as I can remember, was probably around long before my time, and I too fell victim to this plague when I was first starting out as a musician. Amateur singers, professional singers, and most of all young singers are too often caught up in this ironic cycle, a cycle in which the very steps they try to take to improve their singing causes them to never reach their full potential. I am talking about trying to sound like someone.
When I was singing in college, there was a good singing friend of mine who openly admitted to trying to sound exactly like Sarah McLachlin. My friend idolized her style and attempted to replicate it whenever she sang, and was often quite successful at it. I have had opera colleagues who have admitted to, in their earlier years, selecting a singer that they admired, listening to all available recordings, and then trying to duplicate them precisely. I have also noticed, now that I am working with more singers on the tween end of the age spectrum, that there is a certain nasal, scoopy pop style to which they often subscribe, wishing more than anything, apparently, to be a terrible singer on Disney radio. They must be stopped.
Look, I will freely admit to falling into this trap myself. When I started out singing classically in college I had almost no background in it. I had done musical theater, church singing, and do-wop a cappella. The closest I had ever come to hearing classical music was the Hallelujah chorus. So I listened to other singers and tried to do what they were doing. In my heart I am an imitator, a parodist, a forger, an arranger, a fraud, so stealing, copying, and slightly altering came quite naturally to me. I’m pretty good at it. But when I was told that I needed to find “my sound,” it terrified me. What was “my sound?” And how was I supposed to find it?
I was chatting with my wife last night about the state of singing, and she said “I started singing a lot better once I stopped caring about how I sounded,” and this, to me, was brilliant. Because she was not talking about singing wrong notes with poor breath support, or being flat all the time. No, she was talking about “her sound,” and trying to force it to be something. To be a better singer, you don’t need to stop caring about how you sound, but you do need to not worry so much about how you sound. You have a voice. It has a quality. Embrace it. Find your sound. Don’t copy other people’s sounds. One of the reasons these singers you admire so much are so successful is because they have embraced their own unique sound. Also they have tons of money, support, connections, and have worked very hard (probably) to get where they are, but that’s not important for today. Today I want you to realize that if Sarah McLachlin had decided to sound just like Joni Mitchell, she would never have made it. And to everyone out there who thinks that if they could sound just a bit more like Idina Menzel, or Katy Perry, or Pavarotti, or Josh Groban, or David Lee Roth, or Ke$ha, or Demi Lovato, or Peter Gabriel, or Adam Levine, or Christina Aguilera, or “Weird Al” Yankovic, then they could be better singers, I am here to tell you that it’s not true. Your singing will not improve by trying to be someone you are not.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of lessons to be learned from successful people, and it’s totally fine to look up to certain individuals and emulate things that they have done. But at the heart of it all, you need to be yourself. And this is a lesson that applies to so much more than singing. If you have ever thought, “I am going to try to be just like ____,” and the blank space was not filled in with your own name, then you know what I am talking about. I worried for years that I would never find “my sound.” I didn’t even think I had a sound. But eventually I kind of gave up worrying about it, and suddenly there it was. I realized that my sound wasn’t something to worry about after all. It wasn’t something to create, or to manipulate, or to control. It was something to discover. And it’s a worthwhile journey, friends. Take it, and don’t get lost among the beautiful distractions on the way.