Patton and Gildenlöw are versatile because they can actually do different styles convincingly and not just change songs of different styles to fit their normal singing style, like Buckley and in a lot of cases, Mercury.

Simply put: A versatile singer changes his voice to fit a style, he doesn't change a style to fit his voice.

Lilac Wine is a jazz classic and Jeff sings the song with the same kind of phrasing and vulnerability that Nina Simone did.
The guitar is jazz, the 'light brush' drumming is jazz, the whole structure is jazz, and Buckley knew he had to sing it right.



Again, Lilac Wine.
Certain things call for proper use of spacing between notes, just like blues guitar.
It's really no different with vocals. Same concept...not rushing the notes in a rock manner but rather letting them 'breathe' and have space at the appropriate moments. So they have more of a slow-building effect on the listener.



It's all related. I guess we're just looking at this in different ways.

That's not exactly something worth praising though...

And Buckley has that approach to almost all of his material. But thanks for informing me on the Mercury thread. It really made me realise what a fanboy you really are, and that Timi has already said everything that needs to be said, but that you're not really interested in the truth.

ciao.

Until you can give me an answer on how those Mercury performances are similar to each other, then your bitchey antagonistic bullshit comments mean nothing to me.

And yes, having a sense of musical timing IS something worth praising. Why wouldn't it be?
And yes Buckley did that in a lot of his material, but never in the same manner of a jazz or opera singer. You clearly do not understand the different nuances required for different styles.
You even said yourself that he's a rock vocalist and you could see him doing opera. HOW THE FUCK IS THAT NOT VERSATILITY? Do you know how many rock singers of Buckley's status would legitimately sound good doing opera, a very select few.

The Mercury clips speak for themselves. I posted 13 songs there, and his technique, approach and phrasing are significantly different in each one (not to mention he DOES show some impressive tonal variety too). If you don't wanna bother to listen, fine. But don't comment any further until you do.

Audios.

Two kickass Kai Hansen performances:

Freddie has great stylistic versatility. That's all I'm gonna say

His technical versatility is underrated too.

Clearly, you know shit about jazz vocals. Buckley is trying SO hard imitate jazz style in that song. I however, don't think he pulls it off as well as Neg thinks he does, but he's definitely trying to do it right. For that song at least, he seems to bring to much of his style into it (and tone but there's not much to do about that) for it to be 'true' jazz vocals (there's a very specific type of voice for jazz vocals, just talked about this with some friends the other day, it's quite interesting how unique jazz vocal styles and tones are), but he really brings in all the basic style elements of jazz singing. Still a great performance.

How about this?

Pwetty coo jazzy jazz runs near the end too.

There's another jazz performance he has too, I think it's called "The 12th Of Never"?

Since this forum has almost flatlined, lemme futily try and bring some life back into it by suggesting a singer or two that have been inexplicably left off representing each decade. I'll start with the 50's and when there's predictably no responses to it that will kill it before we even get to the 60's I'm sure, but here's hoping some actual discussion comes of it.

Jesse Belvin. The godfather of Los Angeles rock 'n' roll. The most influential artist on the west coast, particularly with vocalists. He was a mentor to everyone from Sam Cooke to Etta James. A brilliant songwriter, he was a frustrating figure because he'd sell his songs for a hundred bucks and no official credit (though historians have mostly figured out what he wrote by now), and he'd sing in almost any group that was recording, usually with no credit again, but his voice is on tons of records from that era. He was killed in a car crash in 1960 while on tour in the south, with most suggesting it was sabotaged by racist sheriffs following a segregated concert that had Jackie Wilson storming off stage (and Jackie's car had similar trouble, but didn't crash). True or not, it's part of the legend and so muchof Belvin's career is a mystery that it's fitting in a way.

Anyway, Belvin was extremely versatile, his best stuff was more of a bluesy crooner, he didn't show off in the typical ways, displaying huge range and leaps, but he was a master at phrasing, made any transition seem effortless, and all of the little subtle things that go into a great singer. He had the uncanny ability to make a song sound as if it was being ad-libbed (which with Jesse, reportedly a lot of them were) because he'd pause, draw out a syllable, then repeat things. It seemed as though he was never sure where he'd take it, but it always worked out brilliantly. Youtube doesn't have some of his best sides (One Little Blessing somehow is nowhere to be found), and these are more ballad oriented than many might like (his uptempo stuff is great, but not good sound quality on Youtube, as a lot of it was transfered badly from vinyl there) but here's three songs to get things started:

"Beware" - Jesse overdubbed himself to take the lead and harmony vocal on the lyrics in this effort that also featured some heavyweight names doing the wordless backing vocals.


One of his last tracks, "Guess Who", much more pop oriented, written by his wife, who was also killed in the same crash the next year.


"Goodnight My Love" - his best known song. Featuring 11 year old Barry White on piano, another guy he mentored.

Honestly I thought "Beware" was boring as hell, but I really liked the other two. He sounds a lot like Sam Cooke, just with nowhere near the excellence of tone, imo.

1. Freddie Mercury
2. Elvis Presley
3. Robert Plant
4. Sam Cooke
5. Roy Orbison
6. Jackie Wilson
7. Ian Gillan
8. Stevie Wonder
9. Jeff Buckley
10. Steve Perry
11. Clyde McPhatter
12. Roger Daltrey
13. Otis Redding
14. Rob Halford
15. Little Richard
16. Paul McCartney
17. Marvin Gaye
18. Bruce Dickinson
19. Al Green
20. Michael Jackson
21. Ronnie James Dio
22. James Brown
23. Ray Charles
24. Jim Morrison
25. John Lennon
26. Smokey Robinson
27. Curtis Mayfield
28. Chris Cornell
29. Brian Wilson
30. Paul Rodgers
31. Steven Tyler
32. Eddie Vedder
33. David Bowie
34. Solomon Burke
35. Tim Buckley
36. Steve Winwood
37. David Coverdale
38. Bob Dylan
39. Axl Rose
40. Michael Kiske

Wow, you finally included Dylan!!!!!

Yeah but now this thread is a ghost town...

Ray Charles definitely deserves to be in the top 10.