Oh Holy Night Awards

For most 24yo gay men in NYC the title of that blog entry might make you think that this posting is about ranking my many lovers. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of material to work with on that front, so it's ACTUALLY a short blog about my favourite Christmas carol as sung by a few of my favourite divas.

1. The award for "Best coked-up 19yo diva with no sense of the meaning of the words she's singing, but possessing amazing virtuosity" goes (as one could imagine) to Christina Aguilera. She sang this version for President Clinton back in 1999 (and she has come a LONG way in terms of the choices she makes, musically, in the last seven years). I think it's hilarious that she's so concerned with getting an extra run in that she doesn't even complete the line, in the beginning, of "It is the night of our dear saviour's birth" -- it's more like "...of our dear saviour's birrr--Oh-OHH" lol. I think that her run at 1:00-1:01 on the word "night" is ridiculous, but also extremely impressive...I mean this girl grew up with NO vocal training. I feel bad posting this song, because it is BY FAR not one of her better performances, but I still find her amazing, and it does make me laugh how she missed the spirit of the song so completely...I mean she actually walks off stage before it's even over! The comment about her sounding like a constipated rabbit is also hilarious (sometimes the youtube comments are better than the clips, themselves).

2. The award for "Worst video of one of the best recordings ever" HAS to go to Mariah Carey. In this video, which she tries to market as live (and therefore mixes it differently [worse] than on the album) even though it isn't, Mariah, as one of the comments says (and is SO right!) demonstrates what an atrocious actress she is by sucking at pretending to sing her own song. The video is torture to watch, which is so sad, because her version of "Oh Holy Night" on her Christmas album is hands-down one of the best I've ever heard. I think, though, that you can see how her musical choices make a bit more sense than Christina's and Kelly's (the next one up), and I think that she's a good example of how the flip-flopping that people complain about as "vocal gymnastics" (lamest critique ever!) can actually come organically in the melody of a song such that it is used really effectively.

3. The award for "Gutsiest a capella performance by a then-emerging star in below freezing weather atop a Manhattan skyscraper" goes to Kelly Clarkson. I feel, in this performance , that even though her melodic choices are a bit weird, you can hear how rich her voice is and how her vibrato really spins. I think that her voice is actually much richer than both Christina's and Mariah's, and I think that if she didn't always have to sing pop-rock crap for record sales, people could see that she has every bit as much soul and ability as Aretha...even her head voice is really rich, and her vibrato still really spins up there. If you want a lesson in technique, then you need look no farther than Kelly. She suffers from vocal strain because she performs like 10 millions shows a year and REALLY gives her all, but she has (I believe) really incredible technique. In the FEW voice lessons that I had a few summers ago in NYC, my teacher would try to get me to practice this really trendy "speech level singing" technique (where you keep your larynx low, like when you're talking naturally, even through your upper register -- where it has the tendency to rise and create tightness/strain), and one of the things she'd tell me to do, which I didn't get at first, was reset the position of my larynx by crying into a note -- like she wanted me to kind of whimper, almost, before starting a note after a breath, and you can hear really good singers do that (which I never noticed until my voice teacher pointed it out), including Kelly, in this song, at 0:55 when she says "{whimper} a thrill of hope..." as well as at 1:12 when she says "fall {whimper} on your knees." She also does it almost imperceptibly at 1:06 as she enters the note for "a new and glorious morn' ." I keep listening to it, and I totally stand by my comment that just on a single pitch her voice is richer than anyone else out there (it's SO three-dimensional!).

4. My final award, the "Hooked on phonics purity of tone and vocal control award" has to go to Celine Dion. I think that this is BY FAR (by like a million miles) the most polished performance , and I have to say that the woman almost never, ever, EVER hits a bad note. She's one of the most dependable live performers alive (and also has miraculously little vocal strain). What impresses me about her is that she can belt like it's no one's business (4:28-4:38), but has SO much control that she can also almost whisper (1:48-1:57) and it's still tonally perfect and gorgeous (and as Curie says, never "thin" even at its most delicate). One of my favourite parts (in terms of it being bad) is at 1:00 ("A thrill of hope") where you can here EXACTLY why I could not stand her for so many years (and still can't, on any song where she has to sing the word "love"), which is that on her "Oh" sounds she raises the back of her tongue to her palette and creates an "ur" sound -- so instead of "love" it's "lurve," which I used to think was just because her English used to be pretty bad, but now, having heard her French songs, I've realized is just one of (perhaps the only) flaw in her technique. I think that this is the most stirring performance, and I beseech anyone reading this to please find a way to get me good seats to her concert in Las Vegas lol. I also should apologize to Celine for mocking her English, because I always thought that her saying, at 1:34 "oh her the angel-voices" that she was making a grammatical error and failing to add a possessive suffix and pluralize it to make it "angels' voices," but having heard all the other versions, I guess it's just originally written (awkwardly) as a compound noun. In my defense, though, you can actually SEE her struggling with the English pronunciation at 0:59 when instead of saying "and the soul felt its worth" she makes the "th" (which they don't really have much of in French" an "f" -- "and the soul felt its werf" (you can SEE her do it). Look, also, for the moment at 3:10 where Celine temporarily forgets that she's not at a Latin dance competition (not sure the arm movement really fit the mood of the piece at that moment).

Finally, and I'm only including this as part of my not-yet-declared campaign to rid America of bad taste, but here is Jessica Simpson's recording of the song. Why do we (Americans) waste money on people with NO talent and prop them up even when we have all the evidence we need to see through them? People supporting Ashley Simpson, even when it was clear she couldn't sing, even when it was clear that her reality show about her launch of her first CD was PART of Jessica's contract to continue on the Newleyweds, and even after she was caught lip synching on Saturday Night Live and RAN OFF STAGE and made a lame excuse for it, people STILL put her CD at #1...it's the SAME way Bush was re-elected after manifesting his incompetence for the first four years he was in office. Anyway, there are two things to note in this performance of Jessica's that can only be described as wretched beyond belief -- and characteristic of what her family considers to constitute "talent." First, note the Simpson technique that I call "baby voice"...not breathy in a good Lea Salonga way, or sexy in a Marilyn Monroe way...it's literally like a baby trying to be seductive and it's really disturbing. I don't need to point out specific segments in the performance that demonstrate this technique, because it's basically all throughout (and also represents most of what Ashley Simpson employs as a substitute for real singing -- that and yelling...); the second technique is what I call "strangled belt," which is when Jessica attempts to show off her diva range (and set herself apart from Ashely, who can't even manage the strangled belt!) but in the process is SO strained that she can barely get out some nasal and narrow and totally ugly vibrato. I REALLY cannot stand her. A good example of the strangled belt from the beginning of the song (since I don't think any human being should have to sit through the whole thing) can be found at 1:37. YIKES!

Well enough time-wasting aside. I should do SOMETHING with my day, now that it's 7:30PM. Maybe I'll go to the gym and not feel the oppression of ther guys who are usually there, since I'm guessing that they are using their chiseled bodies to have some fun on a Saturday night and won't be at the gym!

VC