Once more with feeling! (pt 1)

There are a lot of great technical singers out there, but that isn't what makes someone great.  Some of the best musical performances are not done with precision but with pure, raw emotion.  There are some music purists that say "oh, emotional music, that's just emo".  Well, they're wrong because playing with emotion has been a part of modern music for decades and some of the greatest artists and singers in history have gone on pure emotion.




During the 60s, most bands were either the Beatles style "british invasion" type or the psychadelic Jefferson Airplane/Greatful Dead type.  A lot of these bands generally let the music do the talking but there was one psychadelic artists and a british invasion artist who broke out of the mold and had some of the most raw emotion with singing ever witnessed.

Janis Joplin's style was wild and uncontrolled, but boy did it have feeling.  Her song "Another piece of my heart" may be one of the most powerful and soulful performances I have ever heard.  Along with her, you had Roger Daltrey and The Who.  It seemed like every single hit (Baba O'Reilly, my Generation, Pinball Wizard) was powerful and soulful and even though "Behind Blue Eyes was not powerful and raw, it was emotional in a more deep and touching way.  The song of theirs that is one of my favorites and maybe their most emotional is Love Reign O'er me.

The 70s saw a trend towards more arena rock/glam rock groups and some hard rock, but there were still some bands that were able to capture the raw emotion of those who came before them and they are also some of the most well respected bands of this decade.  The first band is Led Zeppelin with Robert Plant as the lead singer.  If there was a song that could overpower Joplin, it would be Robert Plant singing "Dazed and Confused".  Just listening to the power and the spirit behind gives me chills.

The other band has a singer I personally love, though isn't on Rolling Stone's 100 best of all time (though the rest of these are).  That is Pink Floyd and lead singer Roger Waters.  I personally think The Wall is one of the more touching and heart-wrenching albums.  Waters is the lead singer and writer, and his life is the inspiration.  They have some pretty powerful songs not on that album (Time, Shine On You Crazy Diamond for example), but if you want to get to the soul of a person and the root of music, The Wall may do it as well as any album ever created.  The 2 favorites of mine on there are Hey You and Comfortably Numb, both of which are extremely powerful.  While Hey You has that "loud power" of Dazed and Confused, Comfortably Numb is hauntingly chilling

    Its hard to make just one blog post about all the great bands who had singers who sang with their hearts and where the bands played with such emotion.  Thats why this must be in 2 parts.  While I highlighted the voices (because its the part that shows the emotion the clearest), all of these groups had other musicians that played with power and emotion.