Voices
I sing a lot. I write and record my own music, so it’s hardly a surprising statement. But I sing A LOT. I sing silly songs to my kids, I change lyrics to make a point and make people laugh. I sing along to whatever I’m listening to. Like I said, a lot. I’m sure there are times people wish I wouldn’t. I love singing, and I’m good at it. If I’m at a karaoke night or an open mic, I’m going to get up and sing. To hell with false modesty as my dad used to say.
I grew up in a house where there was music playing a lot of the time. Some of it, I’m afraid, was garbage. Straight up, unadulterated shite. But occasional nuggets of gold got through: Johnny Cash, The Supremes, Nat “King” Cole, Dusty Springfield, Stevie Wonder, the Monkees.
And there was always singing. My mum couldn’t, and can’t, sing. But my dad sang all the time. A baritone voice, roughened by years of smoking, thick and rich, loosened and mellifluous after a couple of drinks, singing Let There Be Love or I Will Take You Home Again Kathleen or any number of sentimental, lachrymose Irish ballads. I took it for granted, but I’d love to have a couple of hours now with my dad, trading songs.
So I grew up singing too. Mostly singing whatever I heard at school, or on the radio, or at Mass. At six I had a sweet, clear, boy soprano’s voice, high, but controlled, genuinely capable of making old ladies gasp. And throughout primary school and the first couple of years of secondary it served me well. I was shortlisted to be in the choir for the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in 1986, but ultimately didn’t make it. I was the regular guide vocalist for school assemblies if there was nobody to play the piano. I was first or second in every school singing competition I entered. My dad proudly encouraged me to sing to family, friends, anyone who would listen.
And then my voice broke.
It didn’t break overnight. I didn’t have a Barry White moment, waking up with a voice two octaves lower. My voice’s journey to adulthood was a prolonged one. The treacherous squeaks still snuck up on me, well into my late teens.
At 13 or 14, I fell in love with music. Music that was my own (or at least shared with friends). Some I still love, some I cringe that I ever gave it time. But isn’t that the point? It was mine. And, inevitably, as someone who had loved singing, I loved it again.
The problem, however, was that now I couldn’t work out where my voice sat. I could still hit the odd high note, but I was no choirboy any more. So, I’d start in a lower register and find I was struggling to control it down there too. Where had my voice gone? Good natured teasing from family cut me deep, though I pretended it didn’t. I became less confident in my voice, only sang quietly, or when I was on my own.
For four or five years I struggled to get my voice back, only singing to people I trusted. Then, at 19, I had a voice tutor at college who unlocked me. One of our assessments was to perform a song of our own choosing in front of the class. With weeks of encouragement, she pushed me to find the voice that she told me was still in there. A week before the assessment she persuaded me to change the song I was singing to The Verve’s The Drugs Don’t Work. I played and sang it in stop-start and in its entirety and just the verses, then just the chorus until I was sick of it. Then I was told not to sing it at all for two days. I was made to recite the lyrics to my song as if speaking to a loved one, then again while maintaining eye contact with someone from my class, then made to sing it to that same classmate. I made her cry.
And it was back. This voice which I thought I’d never find again. The voice that once again caused audible gasps, that stopped entire rooms in their tracks. The voice that was the final piece of the equation for the woman I love, the one that soothed my children to sleep.
Lower; a tenor rather than a baritone. But I still like to think that he left it for me.