As an incurably immature fan of punk and thrash metal I do like some of my playlist to feature good musical shouting. Here are some of my favourite shouters:
1) Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters and Nirvana
Intensity, endurance, stamina, and sheer quality. Mr Grohl is the unbeaten king of splendid shouting 2) Lemmy from Motorhead
A kind of favourite heavy metal uncle. He earns his place for long service and inspiration 3) Napalm Death
Don’t remember the singer’s name, but one of the first to get away with that unspeakably silly vocal style 4) Shane and Spider from The Pogues (who I’m off to see again next month )
Even if neither of these gents ever shouted again, their version of Waxies’ Dargle is qualification enough.
I suppose it’s more pop than punk, but I dig Tracy Bonham’s Mother, Mother in which she crescendos into the shout:
“I’m losing my miiiiIIIIIIND – EVERYTHING’S FINE!”
Hah. I’ve heard a lot of people say that before she became a Catholic priest or before she had the whole “Pope incident” she made good music but now she doesn’t, but I disagree. I believe a lot of people dislike her political/theological views so they dismiss her music as crap, when it’s really not. She’s a first-rate musician, who just happens to be a little bit crazy.
At any rate, “Never Get Old” has some spine-tingling shouting. I really hesitate to call it shouting, though, because that’s just how her voice works. It’s really beautiful.
Another song by her which I hesitate to suggest is “Fire On Babylon.” It’s a song about child abuse and I guess it does have a lot of shouting, but I’ve never thought of it as shouting, more as singing with A LOT of force and power, and she does it very very well.
Almost? Hehe…nobody I know really has a voice with as much stamina as hers. I love the way she can manage to keep such a high-velocity force of pure vocal sound for so long, so well.
“This Is The Last Day Of Our Aquaintance” is good, too.
And her version of “Paddy’s Lament,” is, I think, the best anti-war song I’ve ever heard. She literally becomes the ghost in that song and literally makes me cry when she sings it.
She’s not at all crap. I prefer the vitiolic stuff to her quiet moments, but she makes good records. That said, I quite liked that ‘Nothing Compares’ one until it got played to death on UK radio. Grr… why do they have to do that?
I can’t bear to watch her in interviews though. That’s the context in which I find her annoying. ‘Madinka’ remains my favourite track. I think I still have the single somewhere.
Sadly, I do know what you’re talking about re: interviews. She comes across as contradictory, “not all there,” painful to watch, and sometimes just plain weird (like me! haha), especially with all her retirements from the music industry and the way she came out as a lesbian then got married to a man a few months later. She has publicly announced her retirement, I think, three times, mabey four, only to come back a year or two later with a new album.
She seems to be infected with music and seems like one of those people who has to record to stay alive which, I suppose, can be a blessing (for the listeners) and a curse (for her).
As you might know, she didn’t sing “Nothing Compares 2 U” for a lot of years because of the overplaying and the way everybody only associated her with one song, but, a year or two ago, she released a live version which featured low whistle and it sounded like a completely different song. I love the live version.
Morbid angel
Death
King Diamond (actually cannot tell what he is doing)
Slayer
DRI (really fast shouting)
The first Suicidal tendency’s album
Accept (heard Balls to the wall on the radio the other day)
Kilgore
Rage against the machine
Bad religion
Skunk Anancy (some female screaming)
…
Oh yeah, King Missile’s song Martin Scorsese is really just yelling
over background music, with some irony and the F-word (no, not
“fillibuster”) thrown in…
)
