It's all about the voice...

Someone put a post up about a synesthetic painter who paints music. She sees music as colour.

I relate to this. I see music as colour and motion. For me it's all about the voice. I will listen to just about any kind of music if the voice works. This morning I was listening to one of my playlists and listening to the voices. I always focus right in on the voice when listening to music. I'm quite happy to listen to Acapella. Some songs even sound much better to me without the music - like most Queen songs. The best version of a Queen song I ever heard was stripped right back to Freddie's voice. He has a great voice which is often lost is the crappy accompanying music.

Of course, my favourite voice is George Michael's. If you listen to just his voice in a song, you will hear that he hits every note right on. There is no breath in his voice, and it is very, very smooth, no sign of crackling in the background. I was comparing his voice to that of Michael Buble this morning and Buble's voice has this ever so slight crackle right at the edge of it. Like a sharp edge, not the curved a beveled edge.

Because of this, George's voice didn't age much as he got old - like old blue eyes, his voice maintained it's smoothness. His registered lower a little, but he didn't develop the huskiness of a voice which was strained early. Boy George on the other to used to have a much smoother voice than he has now. I recently saw him live (on TV), and could have cried over how he has ruined his voice.

While female voice are lovely as well (the obvious recent examples being Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, for me), there is something about a male voice than 'looks' better to me. Bono's voice is quite nice. Phil Collins is good too, though a bit weak. Rob Thomas has a nice voice - deep and relatively smooth. Prince can definitely hold a note and writes great music, but his voice is two dimensional. The only time it become somewhat tubular is when he hits those very high notes, but then it flattens right out again.

For me, nothing compares to George and I grieve that I'll never be able to hear how it would have developed as he got older. It has beatiful colour and amazing shape and movement.

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