Who are Overrated Singers?

Beyonce. She's a triumph of marketing more than a great singer.

Bob Fucking Dylan.

Fuck you OP.

R3 no thanks

Adele.

George Michael - not only one of the greatest pop vocalist but an excellent song writer as well - said Amy Winehouse was one of the greatest artists of the past 20 years. What sort of musical credentials have you got OP to make your statement? I understand that her music is not everyone's cup of tea, but your opinion belongs to a thread regarding vocal likes and dislikes.

R2 I don't think Bob Dylan is a singer per se, he is an artist. People don't listen to his music because of his voice (the same with Leonard Cohen).

Demi Lovato - she screeches like a banshee

Beyoncé and Mariah. Not sure if Lady Gaga belongs on this thread but her voice without the studio gimmicks is a complete bore (just listen to the songs recorded with the recently deceased TB- a yawn fest!).

Sophie Tucker!!!

Amy Winehouse was prone to caterwauling but when she was great, she was amazing.

Yoko Ono

R12 Yoko Ono is not a singer - she is a delusional con artist.

Frank Sinatra. Never understood the love for his flat, emotionless vocals.

Sinatra and Streisand are both technically excellent but they both bore me to death.

Madonna.

R16 didn't understand the assignment.

Amy Winehouse was mostly good to great, but sometimes her singing approach to some songs was off. I wouldn't call her overrated though.

Amy got even better once she got sober.

R14, that flatness, and emotionlessness is why straight dudes love him. Hoboken is as close as these poor breeders can get to frisson.

Michael Buble. I like a few of his standards, but it's more like Michael Boring.

I never got the appeal of Michael Bolton, either. I just saw him in a cameo on Nora from Queens S3.

Christina Aguilera and her horrific wailing

Never saw Winehouse's appeal.

Amy Winehouse only had one hit song about not wanting to go to rehab. I thought it was a joke that she was heralded as some great singer. She never seemed cool at all, never got her appeal. Then the stupid bitch OD on drugs like you stupid bitch, you should have gone to rehab.

It’s obviously Taylor Swift

R24, she definitely had a couple of hit songs, not just one.

R25, nobody except the most hardcore Swifty considers Taylor a great or even good singer so she doesn't fit the thread's title.

Rufus Wainwright. I've heard better moaning from suicide patients on the gurney in the psych ward.

R17 = Masochistic Madonna fan.

R24, she did not OD on drugs. It was an accidental alcohol overdose. She had gotten sober, then relapsed, and on her unhealthy, weakened body (eating disorder), the effect was fatal.

Kenny G

Kelly Clarkson. She always overdoes it and sounds fat.

r14 sounds lovely.

Anyway, Amy had a number of hits.

Sorry r14!!! ^^^ is meant for r24

Amy Drughouse

R28 Second that.

Cher

Peggy Lee

Dinah Shore

Very few contemporary artists are simply voices. They are performers/ entertainers or songwriters/poets. And Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are cults of personality.

I think those known as “voices” have a short shelf life, because life takes a toll on a voice, unless you’re methodical to a fault in caring for it (see Celine Dion). Otherwise age and lifestyle diminish a once impressive 20-year old voice, and as a result we get all the vocal gymnastics that we hear in Mariah, Whitney and Auguilera to cover up the fact that they can no longer sing the songs they recorded and performed in their 20s. It’s why I listen to Whitney’s early work and appreciate what once was and try not to think about how it all ended up. (RIP)

Julianne Moore. Seriously.

Amy Winehouse is great. To the OP’s chagrin, Amy will be celebrating 12 years of sobriety tomorrow! Mark your calendars!

Winehouse was brilliant and sang with a genuine musicianship that Adele can never hope to touch - now there’s a overrated singer and another one whose terrible technique has really curtailed her voice after her twenties (like R40 was talking about).

Taylor Swift is a very limited signer but quite a deft songwriter and has pretty brilliantly made herself the spirit animal for late millennial/early gen z white girls.

Beyoncé is a good (though not great) singer with an unimpeachable work ethic. If she hadn’t been so beautiful and with such a relentless father, she’d be getting the occasional solo in a church choir somewhere in the Houston suburbs. Jay Z and the team he put her around her has pretty brilliantly made her into the spirit animal for early millennial Black girls/gays.

I think Black people are sort of bemused by the mainstream success of Alicia Keys and John Legend, neither of whom are any great shakes as a singer.

Alicia Keyes’ voice is like nails on a blackboard to me.

Adele

Carrie Underwood

Beyonce

Alcohol is still a fucking drug. The bitch drank herself to death while singing about how she refused to go. Stupid dumb bitch. Totally unnecessary death. Overrated bitch basically had it all and killed herself.

You are definitely venting some inner anger R46 but why are you directing it at Amy? Did she ever do anything to hurt your feelings?

Yes, she died. It was so stupid. She should have been singing about GOING to rehab and getting better and still being alive. It's not cool to be an addict.

R46 is drunk. And stupid.

R48 who tf do you think you are .... God?

LOL, R31.

Mick Jagger. He's proof that there are lower standards for male artists in general.

Madonna. Cher has her number from what I saw on another thread. Not a beauty, marginally talented vocally yet she spun gold from straw.

The people saying Madonna and Taylor Swift on here don't seem to understand the thread. Who is rating these two people as singers? Only the most hardcore Swiftie and Madge fans think these are examples of singers. Madonna is a better singer than Janet and Paula Abdul but that doesn't mean she's considered a great one.

Gloria Gaynor - a nothing-more-than-serviceable disco singer who lucked into having what would become one of the biggest songs of genre handed to her. Martha Wash could have done I Will Survive about twenty times better.

Dua Lipa. She has about a 4-note range.

Dua Lipa has a boyish voice

Lucie Arnaz and her throbbing vibrato.

I feel like Dua Lipa is nouveau Kylie Minogue - tiny-voiced singer of gay dance bangers who is hot enough to have crossover appeal for straight people.

Dean Martin- super gimmicky, especially later in career. Almost a parody of himself . And, I hate to say this but later career Doris Day also became a parody.

R59 But Kylie has presence and enthusiasm. Dua Lipa is like a piece of particle board.

Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. Showy runs and melisma, no nuance.

Whitney ran around in a neon maze like an idiot and stole Best Female Video from Kate Bush. Running Up that Hill was a beautiful piece of dance that fit with the themes of the song, but Whiney Poostain was more popular.

Pariah's whistle singing was all show and no substance, and the deserved to be shaved head to toe with a jagged, rusty razor, dipped in orange juice, and staked out on an ant hill for her appropriation of Genius of Love.

Obnoxious bitches

One down, one to go.

Dearest, beloved Amy is not average. May she RIP. Amy was a fucking unbelievable singer.

OP, fuck you

Fuck you, dickhead OP.

Taylor Swift, trash music

Sarah McLachlan a perfectly fine coffeehouse singer who is lucky Eva Cassidy died when she did.

Well, I'm sure to enrage many on here with my votes: Karen Elevator Music Carpenter and Jennifer Blasé-Blandsville Warnes. I said it and I mean it.

Adele was my other entry, but has been covered and many apparently agree.

No mention of Bono?

R68, I always felt Carpenter was an underrated singer completely hampered by having to do all that drippy soft FM material with her brother.

My there I said it and I mean it is that Carpenter’s Superstar is more moving than Midler’s actressy version.

R60 is so wrong. Both Dean and Doris were excellent singers.

La Netrebko. Vastly overrated.

This is an idiotic thread.

r57 [quote]Dua Lipa has a boyish voice

It matches her mannish face.

What is a Dua Lipa?

R74 ouch. Yeah.

Dua Lipa is a handsome guy.

why does she have spider legs glued to her eyes?

Harry Connick, Jr. is the musical equivalent of a mannequin in a mid-Atlantic J. Crew Factory Outlet display window.

Ariana Grande, I find her voice really shrill

I find Carrie Underwood very shrill, too

Michael Jackson was very overrated as a singer.

Disagree about Michael (and I say this as someone who thinks he should have been in jail). He had a huge range, try to sign Smooth Criminal at a karaoke bar if you don't believe me

No, r11, Amy was not remotely "prone to caterwauling." (Are you thinking of Janis maybe?)

If I'm in error, I'd appreciate several examples (as in, "prone to").

"Obnoxious"? "Caterwauling"?

Bloody hell.

Yoko Ono is one of the most hated singers. For this reason, she is not "overrated" and cannot be. Some people are just too stupid to post on DL. And that's dire, because this is hardly a highbrow venue.

In my opinion, Yoko is underrated. Her electro music later in life is very interesting, including her voice. 1973 Death of Samantha is very well done. It's got a bit of French muse style and even some NY hip style later shown by Cyndi Lauper. I wouldn't be surprised if young Cyndi listened to Yoko.

It was reworked later in life on Yes I'm a Witch and is haunting.

This pure voice is "obnoxious"? This Blues song vocal is "caterwauling"?

GMAFB.

Carpenters - Superstar is a great tune, great performance.

Karen Carpenter had a voice like a clarion, but it was weak and she relied heavily on amplification.

Not until brother Richard had her sing in a lower register did the voice that made her a legend emerge.

Ashley Simpson

I have to disagree with whoever said Peggy Lee. She was brilliant, especially with phrasing.

I never understood the appeal of Stevie Nicks; she sounds like a coked-up Munchkin.

She would have been much happier as a jazz singer doing gigs in places like Ronnie Scott’s. The money that came with her success just gave her access to chaos. Fame and the media destroyed her.

Comparing Adele to Amy Winehouse reveals how poor (by comparison) Adele is as a singer. Can you imagine Adele singing any of those jazz songs Amy did? She would sing them the exact same way she sings all her other songs.

Beyonce - she has an unappealing tone

Etta James

R95 Beyoncé does what many female singers with really good voices do, she got bombastic and started shooting for the back of the rafters in every song. Zero restraint and makes the tone tone ugly.

Linda Lavin!

Betty Lynn

Shut your dirty whore mouth R96!

Except Beyonce doesn't have a "really good voice."

Freddy Mercury. Can’t stand his gravel voiced screaming.

R102 get help, bitch. Start with a otolaryngologist, Then move on to a psychologist for your contrarianism, and a musicologist for your ignorance.

Speaking of Amy Winehouse. Pre pandemic days I ordered in Amazon a few or what I thought were Amy Winehouse long sleeved shirts for the cool Autumn days. When the package arrived the shirts looked as advertised however right beneath the photo of Amy were the words " Amy Vin de maison" I paid 40$ fucking dollars a piece for 2 of these Made in China trash items. I was livid!!

^^ That's why I've stopped buying a lot of things from Amazon because it seems to have been flooded with fakes. But different topic.

[quote]Linda Lavin!

There’s a newwwww girl in towwwwwn, 'cause I'm feelin — GOOD!

Topic:

Michael Buble'.

Tjoigy6

Beyonce. Some nincompoop suggested that any version she does of a song becomes its best version. She even shrieked this about "New York, New York." We know who owns that song, and it isn't that girlie from Texas.

Pamela Bell, winner of the Anthem Idol contest at the local Schnooks grocery store.

R110 Sounds just like Beyonce.

R1 You are overrated. Queen Bey is a dam near perfect singer. And unlike many recording artists with a 4 octave range she can replicate her shit live.

Taytay

Beyonce sang a perfectly lovely version of "At Last," but it doesn't hold a candle to the Etta James version:

R112 Thanks for stopping by, Mrs. Knowles.

R112 I'd bet my very last dollar Beyonce is lipsyncing.

R112 Sounds more like warbling and screeching than singing.

I see no personality in Beyonce. She's like a robot who sings and dances while looking good.

R118 "Sings. "Dances." "Looking good."

I think it is hilarious how thin skinned Beyonce fans are. They freak out over the slightest perceived slight aimed toward their "Queen."

It is almost like they are overcompensating for something.

At least she can sing- but hardly a great singer. Rather a comprehensive production like Taylor Swift.

That heinous Stallion bitch.

R83, I had a friend who tried to convince me that Janet Jackson was a better singer than Madonna. But even more crazy is that they thought that Janet was "almost" as good of a singer as Michael Jackson. I have no idea who that person was listening to but it wasn't Janet.

Comparing Madonna and Janet Jackson as singers is like comparing diarrhea to a dry stool and contemplating which one is less smelly.

R125 I think the fact that my friend genuinely thought Janet was almost as good as Michael was what bothered me more. She has one octave!

R126 I think the only thing Janet did better than Michael was dance.

Oh, and not molest children.

EVERY singer has detractors who think they're overrated. Does it affect their career? I don't think so.

R127, yes, I agree with you there. Also, Janet and Madonna both had their music evolve whereas MJ seemed stunted after Thriller.

R128 you’re a loser.

I won a 50/50 raffle once. Oh, when I was a kid, I won a transistor radio.

Does anybody seriously think Janet Jackson would have had a career in show business if her brothers weren't Michael Jackson/the Jackson 5? She has zero innate talent.

Janet had a very strong promotional team and production team and rode her brothers coattails.

Maria Callas. So boring. Edith Piaf? OMG, I can’t even.

Also, everyone listed on this thread is horrible.

R134, Along those lines, I never thought Billie Holiday was anything special.

R136, it's blasphemy but I will take Diana Ross's version of her songs any day. Billy does nothing for me. I'll take singers like Ella, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan. etc. over her.

R132 Of course, no one thinks that. But Janet took full advantage of her "nepo baby" status and built herself an amazing career, despite her obvious limitations.

I do, however, still think she was a better dancer than her brother, who mostly spun around and went up on his tiptoes a few times.

Didn't Joe push Janet into making her early albums, which largely flopped? It wasn't until she broke free of him and teamed up with JJ&TL that she became successful. That's what the song Control is about.

Not to say that her being a Jackson didn't allow her to take that control, and that the family connection obviously helped, but firing her father as her manager is what kicked her career into high gear (for a while.)

R139 Yes, and that's what I mean by Janet taking full advantage of her "nepo baby" status. Do you think she would have had a snowball's chance in hell of linking up with Jimmy and Terry without the Jackson name? No way.

So many people have made a career out of not being able to sing. Elvis Costello - while I love him, some people find his voice obnoxious and I get that. Bowie a little bit too. Amy Winehouse is a great singer. Madonna owns this thread.

No one considers Madonna a great singer. If anyone owns this thread it's Lady GaGa

R142, Compared to Madonna, Lady GaGa is Leontyne Price.

R143 Compared to Madonna, a 5-year-old singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat is Leontyne Price.

Adele owns this thread because people put her in the same league as Mariah, Whitney, and Celine, among others.

I was even watching Dusty on YouTube and in the comments said “before there was Adele, there was Dusty”. Offensive! Dusty could sing circles around Adele!

Adele has 2 songs and she sings them over and over again in different forms.

She doesn’t have range at all. She can hit certain notes and she does it for every single song.

Madonna doesn't own this thread. She can't be an overrated singer if nobody considers her a great singer.

I can't stand Madonna. Never could. But she's sold (certified) 182 million or (claimed) 250-300 million records. So she gets included among singers. Stop being semanticists. She is the most overrated singer of all time.

Annie Lennox

Amy Winehouse and Adele are both vastly overrated. They have/had interesting voices, but for some reason they were both hailed as the next coming.

I never quite understood why. Their raspy, drunken vibe sounded like an Everywoman singing, I suppose.

R145 There's also the fact that every mention of Alison Moyet is followed up with an Adele comparison. Their voices sound nothing alike, and the only reason both are mentioned together is that both have been larger women and have since lost weight.

I can’t believe the OP got 13 likes. Now I know most DLers have terrible taste in music. Any’s voice is astounding and a breath of fresh air during the mid aughts. I think she sung better than Adele especially live. Vocal gymnast Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is also excellent. She literally uses her voice as instrument which almost no contemporary mainstream singers are able to do.

anyway

Diahann Carroll

r62 I don't know how you can listen to Mariah's greatest hits album, to keep it simple, and pretend she was at all overrated. Not many singers can match the recordings she was putting out, especially in the 90s. Same for Whitney, who was outstanding live.

I feel like you are confusing a distaste for their catalogue with actual talent. Mariah was never know as the BEST, just really great. True.

Whitney was know as one of the best. True. She could sing almost everyone down or keep pace. So, both women are correctly rated high on most famous singer lists.

But, I love how you leave out Celine. You have a lot to say about black artists but your girl Celine got a pass. Interesting.

[quote] But she's sold (certified) 182 million or (claimed) 250-300 million records. So she gets included among singers.

That logic doesn't make any sense but OK.

What do you call what she does, r155, if not singing?

R149, I think it was just a reaction to the hyper-clean sopranos that had been dominating the pop charts. They sounded "fresh" to people who had no knowledge of anything beyond the recent Top 40.

Oh, I loathe Celine Dione as well, R154, and I am not confusing anything. The question wasn't whether or not they have talent, the question was who is over-rated. Whiney and Pariah are over-rated. Scream-singing Celine is as well.

Nice try with accusing me of being a racist, though. Is that the best you can do?

What drugs are you people on who think Beyonce has a great voice?? It's serviceable but it is NOTHING special. Jesus. Clean your ears, bitches.

And Lady Gaga suck too. Adele as well.

Winehouse sounded like a white girl who sang in an affected voice to imitate every black sould singer she listened to

R157 I can understand and appreciate that. And there was a wave of British, peppy female artists. Throw Duffy in there too. I get it. The success of all of them was understandable because they were different (although I always found Adele so manufactured - the Restoration Hardware of singers, manufactured to be soulful).

I just don't understand the "second coming" aspect, especially of Adele. The praise for "Back to Black" was deserved but it was praise that should have been shared by Amy and Mark Ronson. Amy, too, was - as R160 said - imitating and approximating. She was so deeply happy she was trying to escape being herself. I've posted a few videos on the DL several times - both from Later with Jools Holland. One is pre-addiction Amy, a charming young woman in a sweater and a nice appearance. In the next, perhaps 18 months later, she looks a fright and like a human Etch-a-Sketch, trying to pull down her dress so her snatch doesn't show, because she wasn't wearing underwear.

That's not meant to be anti-tattoo, but when your appearance changes THAT much in a VERY short period of time, it's reflecting turmoil inside. Sad that she died so young, but I do think her death has elevated her one successful album into the stratosphere. Perhaps not "overrated" but not sure it's fully deserved.

R161, Well, that's what dying young often does for a person [See: Dean, James]. I don't believe Amy was affected or imitative, though; her words were too hard to discern, haha!

I really liked Duffy and thought she would hit it big here. "Mercy" is a great Pop song.

R161, I wanted to add this poem to support further your point about death's elevating "Back to Black."

"To An Athlete Dying Young":