Pop music is all about perfection, which you can find in the honeyed voices of the likes of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, or Justin Bieber.
But there’s something refreshing about the imperfect pop voice. A megastar’s vocal that sounds like it belongs on early, guarded demos can feel like we’re witnessing what’s happening behind the scenes, that some scrim has been lifted. But there’s also something fantastic about hearing a pop star take a razor to the red tape that marks their vocal constraints and abilities, to hear them force through a song with what sounds like real desperation. Sia’s throaty, slurred vocals are her norm, and they are what make her dark songs about lost love and drunken nights all the more devastating. One of the best songs from Adele’s 25was the Bruno Mars–penned breakup song “All I Ask,” partly because she is purposefully pushing the limits of her vocal range. “I’ve never sung that high before,” she told Rolling Stone about the song, which is understandably hard for her to even perform.
For singers who’ve built a career on the distinctive perfection of their voice, the strained, frayed vocal take rejects the known narrative. It pulls celebrity musicians down from their pedestals to a place where they can mess up a bit and let their voice curdle and break from what listeners have come to expect from them. The imperfect pop voice strives for #realness, for bringing a sense of authentic pain to a song by a singer who could very easily deliver the same track in A-plus pitch. It’s notable when a pop star sings this way, betraying their perfect voice and inventing a dimension to their image — something beyond groomed perfection. We love the rawness of pop imperfection for the difficult nature and labor of the singing itself, for the singer showcasing their voice in less glamorous tones, and for how messy singing strengthens the emotional impact of a song.
On the Anti stand-out track “Higher,” Rihanna pushes her voice to its frayed edge, to notes at the limit of her range. “You light my fire, let’s stay up late and smoke a J,” she’s pleading with a lover for company at some dismal early-morning hour. Rihanna’s vocals are jarring — we are not used to her sounding genuinely desperate. She’s long been pop music’s intimidatingly cool girl who straight-up demands male devotion and is more than vocal about the fact that she doesn’t need a man or even have time for one. Her singing voice, even when it’s sprightly turning abstract syllables into a flirty hook, always rings with flawless, reliable authority. And you hear none of that steely authority in “Higher,” in which Rihanna’s scratchy delivery makes her sound like she’s huddled up somewhere in the dark just barely holding on to a glass of whiskey, a joint, and her well-publicized, untouchable sexual confidence.
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