Kurt's Singing Voice

Oh the good times. This song basically transformed me in an 'Un-Klainer', Blaine-hater and massive bitch towards Glee. My very first post on this board was about this song.

Thank you for writing and sharing it. It was really informative and so, so right on so many levels. I am still pissed of about the voice allocation. CWM represents Klaine and the bias towards Blaine on all levels.

Glorfindel wrote:Sadly I don’t have the means or knowledge to do that, but I was able to cut the first half of the Glee version off (sorry Darren) and replace it by Ewan’s original solo just for my own amusement. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do. So if you want that version, or only the 2nd half of the song without Blaine’s solos (so from the moment that Kurt starts singing), PM me and I might be able to assist.

Pretty please

I would love to hear Darren replaced by Ewan.

brisallie wrote:But I'm wondering if weren't a headache to analize every line and realize how Kurt was put aside in his "own" fantasy.

Yes, but once I started picking the song and especially the scene apart I couldn't stop till all was revealed. It was like peeling an onion: I discovered layer after layer of more effemiphobia/heteronormative/Blaine ass-kissing crap.
I mean: I was furious when the song came out and Kurt was only singing in half of it, but when I discovered so many deliberate choices they made to give us their 'view' of Blaine and Kurt, I was livid, fuming at the mouth. But now that it's all laid bare I feel better.
At least I did my part, and all the crap of RIB/Glee won't stop me from loving and enjoying Chris' voice in one of my favorite love songs (and I only listen to the version I made myself, with Ewan singing the solo: if I close my eyes and concentrate only on Chris' voice I can then pretend that Chris is singing with Ewan in the duet part).

Lottie2303 wrote:Pretty please

ColferInspired wrote:I would love to hear Darren replaced by Ewan.

As I said: I can't replace Darren in the duet part, but replacing him in the solo by Ewan McGregor is quite an improvement.
I'll send you a PM.

What song do we have to look forward to next, Marie?

Great review, Marie! And I would also be interested in the version with less Blaine and more Ewan, please :-)

I personally would love to know how chris would sound singing the Ewan's part.

ColdFlame96 wrote:What song do we have to look forward to next, Marie?

Bring Him Home.

arina wrote:I personally would love to know how chris would sound singing the Ewan's part.

Heavenly.


*sigh*

Yeah, cannot wait for 'Bring him home'.

Little snark moment, I had true troubles to think of another Kurt song you could cover .

Lottie2303 wrote:Yeah, cannot wait for 'Bring him home'.

Little snark moment, I had true troubles to think of another Kurt song you could cover .

Well there's 'Just Can't Get Enough', the little bit in 'We Got Tonight', 'Big Girls Dont Cry', 'I'll Remember', and 'YATSOML'.

Glorfindel wrote:Heavenly.


*sigh*

So unfair we will never know! Also I wanted to hear Beauty school drop out grease or Maria

Cannot wait Bring Him Home, one of the rare bright moments of the last season.

arina wrote:

Glorfindel wrote:Heavenly.


*sigh*

So unfair we will never know! Also I wanted to hear Beauty school drop out grease or Maria

Cannot wait Bring Him Home, one of the rare bright moments of the last season.

Right? I was so glad he won! don't get me wrong. I think Lea's voice was stolen from angels, but she really overdid it with that song and it didnt sit right with me.

great review marie! thanks for coming back. i thought you have abandoned us.

I think Kurt won fair and square because he actually expressed genuine emotions while Rachel totally overdid it. That is my only complaint about Lea's acting, because I really think she "over-performs".

ColdFlame96 wrote:Well there's 'Just Can't Get Enough', the little bit in 'We Got Tonight', 'Big Girls Dont Cry', 'I'll Remember', and 'YATSOML'.

Ahhm, still a few songs. But I was thinking about S4. I sincerely was at a loss.

Thank You so much for this. I know it's twice as much work to analyse the scene along the music but you brought so much more to your review by including it. Like I hadn't noticed the black and white bow ties.

There have been many moments when Chris' acting of desperate and sad brings me close to tears and that cut in the end of CWM to his crying face is even now too painful to watch. It's a sad reminder of the physical and emotional pain that thinking about Blaine brings to him.

yeah, the thought of blaine brings me serious pain. i wish he will simply evaporate.

Lottie2303 wrote:I think Kurt won fair and square because he actually expressed genuine emotions while Rachel totally overdid it. That is my only complaint about Lea's acting, because I really think she "over-performs".

To be fair to Lea, I think that she does... shall we say embellish... her own normal singing style and push it over the top for Rachel. I think it's a deliberate acting choice because know several people who've seen her sing live and while she does make the "constipated faces" it's not as exaggerated as we get with Rachel. Rachel is, as a character, an over-performer with no sense of nuance in her performance style. She goes totally balls to the wall each and every time. The problem in this case was a song that required nuance and a real sense of the song's context and emotion. Kurt succeeded in translating that into his performance while Rachel turned it into another belting festival.

It would be nice if over the course of the show we would see a maturing of Rachel's style, where she stopped bellowing every song and learned to start dialing it back a little bit. For her to have Ms. Tibideaux tell her to stop screaming at her, and song that should be a gentle ballard doesn't need to sound like Rachel's singing it through a megaphone.

It’s funny, but Kurt and Rachel both started off the show with different flaws in their singing. Rachel had the technique and the power, but totally lacked any emotional connection (something that I remember Jesse pointing out to her at their first meeting). Kurt had the emotional resonance, but lacked the power and technique. Over the run of the show, we saw Kurt’s technique improve and his voice has gotten more powerful at the upper and lower reaches of his range (and he still has the best range of pretty much anyone on the show). Rachel, though, has not improved her ability to infuse sincere emotion into her singing (unless it’s a performance like Cry where she’s matching a song to her own overwhelming emotion).

I admire Lea’s voice (which is stunning), but Rachel (and there is a difference) I find a rather boring performer. Her songs all sound the same. She never really surprises me (except when you get a real clunker like Oops where you’re just thinking how utterly awful it was). Kurt always manages to surprise me. Whether it was how he channels a certain darkness whenever he sings Gaga, to the utterly sublime performance of AIWNSG, to the sheer joy of YATSOML. He always give us that little something special.

fantastica wrote:yeah, the thought of blaine brings me serious pain. i wish he will simply evaporate.

I'd love to be Blaine to be part of 'Hannibal - The TV show'. He'd be perfect dinner .

arina wrote:So unfair we will never know! Also I wanted to hear Beauty school drop out grease or Maria

Me too.
I always hate it when fans say that their fave was 'robbed' from this or that song, but when it comes to 'Beauty School Drop Out' I say that Kurt got robbed. With all the (ab)use in Glee of the actors' real life experiences they had to give Chris' high school song/role to, of all people, Blaine.

And if Kurt had been allowed to sing 'Maria' at his audition I would have melted into a big pool of happy tears.

fantastica wrote:great review marie! thanks for coming back. i thought you have abandoned us.

Never!!!
Although I did stop enjoying writing reviews for a while.
But I decided that my admiration for Kurt/Chris's singing is more important than my current dislike for Glee. (And isn't it sad that we once used to love that show to bits? I still hope it will regain part of its former glory.)

valkeakuulas wrote:Thank You so much for this. I know it's twice as much work to analyse the scene along the music but you brought so much more to your review by including it. Like I hadn't noticed the black and white bow ties.

Thanks for saying this.
I was a bit insecure about this review. I wasn't sure if I should have included it all, as I was overstepping my normal vocal coach expertise, and it made the review so very long. Sometimes I talk too much.

There have been many moments when Chris' acting of desperate and sad brings me close to tears and that cut in the end of CWM to his crying face is even now too painful to watch. It's a sad reminder of the physical and emotional pain that thinking about Blaine brings to him.

Oh God, his face at the end of the song was so expressive.
It makes you understand why they hardly showed us Kurt's POV about the cheating, because every little snipbit of screentime Chris got to express Kurt's feelings he showed us so much. Too much to ever be able to redeem Blaine.

Chris' acting is so powerful, and so is his singing. So powerful that they cut him out of his own d*mn fantasy.

Glorfindel wrote:

arina wrote:So unfair we will never know! Also I wanted to hear Beauty school drop out grease or Maria

Me too.
I always hate it when fans say that their fave was 'robbed' from this or that song, but when it comes to 'Beauty School Drop Out' I say that Kurt got robbed. With all the (ab)use in Glee of the actors' real life experiences they had to give Chris' high school song/role to, of all people, Blaine.

And if Kurt had been allowed to sing 'Maria' at his audition I would have melted into a big pool of happy tears.

Well, we certainly couldn't have that, because if they'd let Kurt sing 'Maria' in that sublime voice (especially if he concentrated in his lower register) it would have completely blown the argument that Kurt is too "girly" to play Tony. Of course, if Kurt had sung Maria, even Beiste's impervious "lady parts" would have been all a quiver. And Emma was have dissolved into a pool of sparkly tears.

They've cannibalized so much of not just Kurt's story to support Blaine as the supermegafoxyhot guy and performer, but Chris's as well. Very disheartening. I wouldn't mind nearly so much if Kurt had been given adequate storyline of his own to make up for it, but instead it became ALL. ABOUT. BLAINE.

Beautiful recap as always, Marie. Looking forward to "Bring Him Home" and "YATSOML".

Since at the SBL Q&A in Paris Chris talked about making an album if people petitioned for it, Hugs4Chris has indeed started a petition (lol).
If you want to participate, here's the link: petition.


They need 750 signatures, and they already have more than a third of that.

-ETA-
They changed the petition site, so please go to THIS link instead.

REVIEW: Got To Get You Into My Life.

Season 5 started with a 2 episode Beatles tribute. Despite singing ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ (IWHYH) and ‘Blackbird’ very succesfully in previous seasons Kurt got no Beatles solo in this double tribute. But he at least got to sing on 3 songs: ‘(I've) Got To Get You Into My Life’ (GTGYIML) with Blaine, ‘Get Back’ (GB) with Rachel, and the group number ‘Let It Be’ (LIB).
This review will be about GTGYIML, the other songs will get their own reviews later.

GTGYIML is another Klaine duet, and since I’ve described the dynamic in Klaine duets elaborately before (see e.g. the reviews of Perfect and White Christmas) I won’t get too much in depth with that now, although I will of course point things out if I deem necessary.

Youtube :

The Beatles:
 

Glee – full iTunes version:


Glee – episode version:


The lyrics :

- Kurt’s lyrics = bolded
- harmonies = Italic
- the cut verse = red

1st verse:
Kurt:
I was alone, I took a ride, I didn’t know what I would find there.
Another road where maybe I could see another kind of mind there.

Blaine:
Ooo, then I suddenly see you.
Ooo, did I tell you I need you?
Every single day of my life.

2nd verse:
Kurt:
You didn’t run, you didn’t lie, you knew I wanted just to hold you.
And had you gone you knew in time we’d meet again for I had told you.
Kurt & Blaine:
Ooo,
Blaine:
You were meant to be near me.
Kurt & Blaine:
Ooo,
Blaine:
And I want you to hear me.
Kurt & Blaine:
Say we’ll be together every day.

1st chorus:
Got to get you into my life.

3rd verse:
Blaine:
What can I do, wat can I be? When I’m with you I want to stay there.
If I’m true I’ll never leave, and if I do I know the way there.

Kurt & Blaine:
Ooo, then I suddenly see you, Ooo, did I tell you I need you?
Every single day of my life.

2nd chorus:
Got to get you into my life.

(instrumental break)


3rd chorus:
Blaine:
Got to get you into my life.

bridge:
Kurt:
I was alone, I took a ride, I didn’t know what I would find there.
Blaine:
Another road where maybe I could see another kind of mind there.
Kurt:
And suddenly I see you.
Blaine:
Did I tell you I need you?

4th chorus:
Kurt & Blaine: I got to get you into my life.

 
The distribution of the lyrics :
Since the often occurring imbalance of lines distribution between Kurt and Blaine in their duets is something that concerns a lot of Kurt fans, especially after Kurt getting a very noticable short end of the stick in all the season 4 Klaine duets, and since I specifically got asked about this from several directions about this particular song, I’ve decided to dedicate a paragraph to it in this review.

When you listen to the (iTunes) Glee full version of GTGYIML and count the lines for each individual character you get 6 lines for Kurt and 8-9 (depending how you split them up and count them) for Blaine. They sing 6 lines together (plus some “Ooo”s here and there). Kurt 6 <> Blaine 8-9 is not completely evenly balanced but unfortunately for a Klaine duet it’s not so bad, I guess.
However, there are a few factors that come into play that will create more of an imbalance, and sure enough the lion’s share goes to Blaine again.  

The first little nudge to tip the scale a bit further to the Blaine side is that the music engineers edited Darren’s voice louder than Kurt’s in the repeated (one line) chorus, plus they made Chris’ voice softer (in loudness) when Chris is singing the (higher) 2nd voice in the lines they share in harmony.
Irritating, but sadly this modus operandum is also quite common for Klaine duets, due to their voices not fitting together well. So I can’t really outright say that this louder/softer tweeking of their voices is solely done to get Blaine more exposure than Kurt, although of course it would be just as easy for the music editors to heighten and show Chris’s voice whenever they sing together instead of Darren’s, or give Darren the 2nd harmony and Chris the lead, and yet they somehow never (or in the case of the 2nd harmony: seldom) do. Funny that.  

The real imbalance however comes when you look at the cut episode version compared to the full version (and remember that the episode version is the only version that about 95% of the Glee viewers will ever see of hear), as the Kurt’s curse of the cut 2nd verse strikes the dashing young man once again.  
Not only does the cutting of this verse means that Kurt ends up with singing the beginning of only 1 verse of the song he initated and planned himself to counteract Blaine singing for him again, it also means that the cutting took out a Klaine harmony on one of the verses.

Let’s break this down:
- There are 3 verses in the full version of the song, each divided into 2 halves: the 2 solo lines at the beginning and the “Oooh” lines at the end, sometimes sung solo, sometimes in harmony.
- If you give these verses numbers and divide them in 2 (beginning and end), you get:
#verse 1: Kurt-solo + Blaine-solo,
#verse 2: Kurt-solo + Kurt and Blaine harmony,
#verse 3: Blaine-solo + Kurt and Blaine harmony.
- So that’s 3 verses which in total have 4 Kurt singing parts/ moments in them.
- In the episode version they cut the 2nd verse, the only one of the verses which has 2 Kurt parts in it.
- So what’s left is one verse (#1) with a Kurt solo and a Blaine solo, and one verse (#3) with a Blaine solo and a Klaine harmony, so that leaves Kurt with 2 singing parts (1 solo and 1 harmony) and Blaine 3 (2 solos and 1 harmony).
So that's Kurt 2 <> Blaine 3.  

- To make it clearer (or not, lol): if you give the solos 2 points and the harmonies 1, then the ‘end-score’ Kurt vs. Blaine is 3-5 in favor of Blaine, whereas if they had kept the 2nd verse in the score would be 6-6.
Now that’s quite a nudge to imbalancing the scale. So much for Kurt telling Blaine he won’t accept getting sung to by Blaine for once.  

But wait, I’m not even done yet:
What puts the imbalance in the episode version even further askew is that the camera focuses on Blaine and Blaine alone 2 times during the chorus while Klaine supposedly sing the chorus together (chorus #1 and #2). As the voice of Chris is hardly audible in the chorus anyway the camera focus make it appear as if Blaine is singing those 2 choruses alone.
The other 2 times the chorus is sung are:
1) the last chorus (#4), when Klaine kiss immediately after, so filming only Blaine would have been impossible, and…
2) ironically the only time in the song when Darren really sings the chorus all alone (chorus #3, after the instrumental break, similar as in the original when Paul McCartney’s voice does not get doubled), so when Kurt isn’t singing there at all! And it even seems they make the mistake of letting Chris lipsync the line that Darren sings alone too.  
So the only times they show Kurt in the chorus is while he’s not singing it and when they have to be in the same shot anyway. Coincidence? Not sure, but at the least it’s stupid camera work.

Enfin, if you add it all up then the end balance for the episode version after all this tweeking, editing and cutting is Kurt: 4 lines vs Blaine: 9 (and singing only 3 lines together).
That’s right: in the song that Kurt specifically planned to prevent Blaine from singing too much Blaine gets twice as more exposure singing as Kurt does. So it’s no wonder that I got asked by several people after they watched the episode why it seemed that Kurt sang so little in comparison to Blaine when they thought that the iTunes version was more even, ‘cause truth is: he did.   
I guess it’s time again to add the “~” whenever I write Klaine ~duet in this review, as I did in ‘Come What May’.

Harmonies :
You might like to know that the Glee version is set in the same key as the original. They didn’t really change much, but just made the solo of the original song into a duet and let the music be played by a marching band instead of the usual band and/or orchestra instruments.
I like the marching band sound: it fits the song, as the original also has a lot of brass and percussion. The only disadvantage of using a big marching band in GTGYIML is that the music drowns out the voices (and there’s no way that Kurt and Blaine could have sung over so many instruments when singing live in a school yard without microphones, but lol: it’s Glee ), but that could have been easily adjusted in the studio during editing, and imo they didn’t do that enough.

The duet is quite cut and dry when it comes to how they cut it up and adjusted it for 2 singers. Chris sings a few solo lines, Darren sings a few solo lines, they sing a bit in unisolo and a tad in the usual Klaine harmony default: Chris singing a higher 2nd voice to Darren’s lead.

Overdubbing > unisolo:
In the original GTGYIML they overdubbed Paul McCartney’s with his own voice (thanks to Wikipedia), so you’re hearing his voice twice , although the overdubbed voice is considerably softer than the ‘lead’ voice. Glee tries to recreate that sound in the choruses and a few lines in the verses by having Klaine sing together in unisolo. But I think that backfired a bit.
First of all Chris and Darren don’t really sound very similar, and they often also don’t ‘react’ the same while singing. Their timing is not in sync and therefore those unisolo lines get a bit blurry and messy, whereas the Beatles version is a lot more harmonious and even because of using the same voice twice. Add to that that Chris and Darren probably weren’t in the studio recording the song together, and therefore couldn’t really coordinate and respond to each other’s singing. If they had been recording GTGYIML together it would have helped the sound a lot, imo.
Another reason why the unisolo to recreate Paul singing twice on the original soundtrack backfired is that Chris and Darren’s voices don’t really fit together. Their voices don’t ‘merge’ so to speak, and the result is so audible the music engineers (once again) had to dial one of them down in this song, and of course that one is, as always, Chris.

Alternating lines:
Fortunately they decided to not have Chris and Darren sing the entire song in unisolo but give them separate solo lines for the most part, a duetting technique that usually works rather well with Klaine.
Most of the lines they alternated were the same (the verses), so they sang the same melodies. But they did quite a clever thing in the bridge:

line #1) Kurt: "I was alone, I took a ride, I didn’t know what I would find there."
line #2) Blaine: "Another road where maybe I could see another kind of mind there."
line #3) Kurt: "And suddenly I see you."
line #4) Blaine: "Did I tell you I need you?"

Lines 1 and 2 seem to be the same, and so do lines 3 and 4, but they’re not. There are some subtle differences. Line #1 has a higher note on “find” than line #2 has on “mind”. And the melody of line #3 is overall higher than #4: it even has a high C5 in it.
By letting Chris sing lines #1 and #3 the music editors gave him all of those higher notes, which he (as a high tenor) can reach easier than Darren.
Clever.  

Real harmony:
The lines “Say we’ll be together every day.” + “Every single day of my life.” (verse #2 and #3) are the only 2 lines sung in an actual harmony in the entire song. Darren sings the ‘normal’ melody, and Chris a 2nd voice that is a third higher than the lead melody, also a much used duetting technique used for Klaine.
Sorry, I can’t really hear if Chris is singing in chest voice or head voice in that 2nd harmony, as I simply can’t hear his voice loud enough over Darren’s and the marching band for me to distinguish that.  
My guess, based on basic vocal techniques, is that it’s all sung in his low register, because right after that harmony line (with the highest note being a G4, which is in the area of his voice where he can choose what register to use) he has to growl in chest voice to the B4flats in the "Got to get you into my life" line, and in general it’s easier to stay in the same register when there are a few difficult notes coming up that have to be sung in that particular register. But then again: this is Chris who can switch registers very easily, so I can’t tell for sure.

Unisolo:
The other lines sung together: “Ooo, then I suddenly see you, Ooo, did I tell you I need you?” and “Got to get you into my life.”, (verse #3 and the choruses) are sung by both singers on the exact same tone/melody, aka unisolo, which lbr, is an improvement from the usual standard of Chris singing one octave higher than Darren (unisolo in octave).

No fade out:
The ending is a litte different than the original, as the (studio) version of the Beatles slowly fades out after “Did I tell you I need you”, whereas the Glee version ends with one final “I got to get you into my life”, which I think is a decent ending for this song when sung ‘live’, as you can’t really let a song fade away singing live.
If you look up some versions of Paul McCartney singing GTGYIML live you can hear that he practically ends the song the same way as Glee does: with a repeat of the chorus.
   
Chris :
Chris sang Beatles songs on Glee before, and very succesfully too, so to expect good work from him this time around again was only logical. Still, especially with GTGYIML and ‘Get Back’, he had to sing grittier than he needed to do in his previous, more ballad like Beatles songs I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Blackbird.
Plus not only did he need to sing grittier overall in these 2 songs, but also grittier in some very high notes in his low register, e.g. the B4flats in the chorus “Got to get you into my life”, when he usually would prefer his countertenor head voice that high up. He’s shown that he can sing this high in low register before, but those were mostly incidental, isolated notes, whereas here he sings a string of those high notes up in the top of his chest voice, and although it’s something he can theoretically do, it’s not something he has had a lot of practice with on Glee unfortunately. I think he did well.  
Chris also sings a tenor high C (C5) in his chest voice, on “And suddenly I see…” at the end, and just listen how much easier this high C sounds than e.g. the one he sings in I'm The Greatest Star.  

When Chris makes his natural hazy low register a bit grittier whenever necessary (also think of e.g. Pink Houses, Rose's Turn and Black or White) he basically bundles the broader sound his voice usually produces into a slightly smaller ‘beam’ and then rasps it over his vocal chords while forcing his voice to stay in chest voice even on the high notes. It’s like belting on steroids, lol.  
When done right it’s a good tool to use and the rasping does no damage to the voice when done controlled and not too often. But when done wrong on a regular basis it can stress the vocal chords, make the singer go hoarse and eventually cause vocal chord damage. I have no reason to worry about Chris when it comes to that, though. The gritty rasping in GTGYIML stays well within limits, and the notes come out easily, without too much force behind them.


I think I need to point out another aspect of Chris’ voice that is an advantage in itself but actually could be a disadvantage when singing faster pop songs.
One of the things I love most about Chris’ voice is the overall balance and support of it, and the clear, precise way he positions the notes and sings melodies. There is a ‘neatness’ or ‘orderliness’ in his singing. Part of this neatness is due to pure physical factors combined with training, and another part can be explained by the personality of the singer himself.

Personality:
There’s a lot you can learn about a person’s character and personality from the way they use their (singing) voice. This ‘neatness’ I described in Chris’ voice is something I recognize as a specific singer ‘type’ I learned about in my studies.  This particular ‘type’ of singer usually has several of these characteristics: perfectionistic, prepared, fully committed and focused, organized, in control, devoted, tidy. I even remember the example they gave for this type of singer when we discussed this in class: Julie Andrews.
Hey, maybe Kurt got his voice from his grandmother.

Physical:
On top of the way Chris approaches his singing mentally there is also the physical aspects of his voice: his timbre is ‘old Hollywood musical style’, classy, clean and very luscious due to his vibrato and depth, and frankly also because he’s not afraid to use his falsetto/head voice.
All these characterisitcs of Chris’ voice I just mentioned make his singing voice what it is, and though it is beautiful and has many merits it can also cause some ‘thickness’ and ‘slugginess’ in his singing. This ‘slowing down’ aspect of his timbre/voice is the reason why many people think Chris can’t sing pop songs, but should only stick to the Broadway songs. And yes, in theory there is some truth to that concern.
But Chris is not a one-note performer, neither in his acting nor in his singing. He can turn the ‘thickness’ in his timbre off for the most part, most efficiently done by simply reducing his vibrato and by not singing too deeply into his resonating chest, and therefore he can sing fast pop songs as well.  

The first time he showed us that was with Madonna’s ‘4 Minutes’, but he was much younger then and vocally not fully trained, so for a while I thought he would probably lose some of that youthful agility in his voice when he started focusing (or when Glee limited him) on strictly musical songs and countertenor parts. As I said in other reviews: it’s hard to keep several voice type balls in the air once you start to specialize, train and focus on a more specific style. And there’s no denying that Kurt at least focused mostly on the musical songs and wasn’t given much opportunity to sing pop songs (also: Chris singing the Wicked score as an adolescent over and over again to maintain his countertenor voice is an indication of honing his voice in that direction).
And it’s true that his voice has become broader over the years while his timbre and vibrato gained more density, but fortunately he hasn’t lost much of the agility of his younger voice, and he is not afraid of slipping in little ‘imperfections’ and a less bel canto timbre when he’s singing a pop song, in order to match that style. It seems he can adjust his voice to the song style he wants to sing just fine, using his wits, his acting and emotive skills, and his control over his voice, which makes him quite versatile. (and I keep hoping that Glee will give him more music style variety in his songs on the show)

But even with the ‘Broadway voice’ and vibrato turned way down low, the grittiness lever turned full open, and Chris incorporating the right music style into his performance, there is still this trace of ‘neatness’ in Chris’ singing in GTGYIML. The articulating, the supporting of the tone, the hitting all the notes exactly right, the almost equal volume when shooting up from the lower notes to the belted high notes, the overall control….. It is part of why Kurt songs are always so undeniably Kurt songs, even when the style of the song isn’t something you would immediately think fit him. This ‘neatness’ isn’t a hindrance at all when he sings (fast) pop songs: it’s more just part of his trademark.  
     
Darren :
I’m not going to say much about Darren in this review, mostly because I wrote this review strictly for the Kurt songs thread, and tbh I don’t want to derail it with too much discussion about his obligatory ~duet partner. It’s not like this is the first time Chris and Darren sang together, so y’all know what I’ve got to say by now anyway.

Darren imo was not that bad in the verses, but I think the choruses were too high for him.
Darren had to force himself too much there and it resulted in shouting. I know the melody and rhythm of GTGYIML practically invites the singer to shout there (and also on the high notes at the end of the verses), but sometimes less is more. Plus I can actually hear the air and the tension grating Darren’s vocal chords in those lines. This is the wrong kind of force I talked about earlier, and it’s not the first time I worry about Darren damaging his voice if Glee is not more careful with him.  
   

yay Marie!   gotta give you some big hugs and kisses! i have to make dinner right now so i will come back later to read the whole thing. meanwhile just want to thank you and give you a finger (the thumb that is) for the job well done.

 

Thanks again for this. <3

Now I can "see" why I loved Kurt's part in the very last solo line: "Then I suddenly see ya". For some reasons it sounds so clear and joyous to my ears. I could listen those four short verses over and over again.

Another great review, Marie! Thank you.

And I absolutely love how Chris sounds on GTGYIML.