On Aug 29, 2004, at 12:00 PM, John Howell wrote:
Show me a list of a dozen pop songs that have a range of a 12th without going into falsetto.
Oh, a challenge, is it? OK.
It's possible we have different ideas of "pop" and/or "untrained singer". For the latter, I'm thinking of someone who is non-professional, has never had a voice lesson, and possibly can't even carry a tune, but nevertheless likes to sing, whether it's in the shower, along with the radio, or at a karaoke bar. I'm not talking about those people who basically don't sing at all except "Happy Birthday" once or twice a year.
"Pop" for me is a big category, encompassing old standards, musical theater, country, rock, etc. I'm certainly not well versed in all of it. With rock, I never got much past the '80s (as you'll see in my list...), and I know very little country other than the handful of diehards that get turned into elevator music or I get asked to sing at a wedding.
I'm in the middle of moving, and almost all of my songbooks are packed in boxes at the new place, while the computer is still here at the old place (because I use dial-up and the phone doesn't switch over until Tuesday), so I'm relying on tunes I can reconstruct from memory plus one book from the library that happens to still be here ("Pop Songs for the Wedding").
Now that you put me on the spot, I find that many of the songs I had in mind span only an 11th, not a 12th, so I guess I exaggerated the point a bit. The 11th range is extremely common in the old standards (which I do know well), and seems to be fairly common in contemporary stuff as well. Even so, I think I can scrape up a dozen songs that span a 12th.
I remember noticing once that Simon & Garfunkel's "America" has exactly the same range as Star Spangled Banner, which I thought was cute. I'll bet there are other S&G songs with a 12th, but I can't think of any. "Sound of Silence" and "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" are both an 11th.
"Just the Way You Are" (Billy Joel) = aug 12th "Piano Man" (Billy Joel) = 12th
(Probably more from Billy, but those are two I'm familiar with that amateurs like to sing.)
In MT, "Music of the Night" from Phantom has a full two octaves. I don't know if you'd count that. I'd count it and also "Tonight" (West Side Story; dim 12th), but not "Maria" (two octaves minus a half-step) which may as well be an aria.
Here, There & Everywhere (Beatles) = 12th.
Sometimes When We Touch (Dan Hill) = 12th.
Through the Years (Kenny Rogers) = 11th plus 1/2 step modulation = dim 12th.
I know the male pop rep much better than the female, but I'll bet there's even more songs with large ranges for women. It's very common in contemporary pop for women to sing down around F below middle C for the breathy intimate part and then up to C or D for the big refrain.
Here's three from the wedding song book that do essentially that: Anything, Always = m 13th Two Hearts, One Love = 12th You Make Loving You Feel So Right = 12th.
(And three more with an 11th: You Needed Me, I Do, Everlasting Love.)
All of these are quite popular.
I'm still one short of a dozen. Hmm, let's see. "Turn Around, Look at Me", which is popular at weddings but not in this book, has a range that must be nearly two octaves. I can't quite reconstruct it in my head, but I'm sure it's more than a 12th.
There's also quite a few songs sung by male artists who do the high stuff in mixed voice which their imitators invariably do in falsetto. I'm not sure if those count as "going into falsetto" for your purposes. Lots of Sting, Paul McCartney, Elton John, etc, like this (but not Michael Jackson, who never goes *down* far enough!). In "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", Elton sings the super high note in falsetto, but I'm pretty sure he mixes he one below that, so that gives you, what, a 13th? for non-falsetto. "Your Song", which is immensely popular for karaoke, is an 11th, with no falsetto at all. Come to think of it, if you add that unwritten blue note in the final ending ("I *hope* you don't mind"), which most people do, that makes it a minor 13th. "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" is also an 11th, I think.
Oh, and I assume that Mariah Carey's whistle tones count as falsetto. Otherwise, you've got whole albums full of songs with a "range" of a little over two octaves (but with a significant gap between the registers).
At this point I'm being technical just for the sake of answering your challenge, but the basic question was whether the Banner's range is really excessive. Songs with a 12th (and I'm sure I could come up with more if I had a pile of songbooks to jog my memory) are exceptional, but an 11th is pretty common. Does the one extra note really make that much difference? I don't think so. I think people exaggerate how exceptional the Banner is. To the extent that it is different, it's more the way it sits within the range than the range itself.
mdl
[Postscript: I had a chance to look at "Piano Man" this afternoon. It actually spans a 14th, not just a 12th.]
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