Stevie - MOJO - 'The Story Behind Christine McVie's Live Return'

[bethelblues]

Originally Posted by applebucked

Even Christine, to a certain extent. Relatively intact, but lost some of her top range.

As stated multiple times, I understand Lindsey's point, so I'm not going all out to crucify him or anything like that (if anyone got in the way and I crucified them, I blame it on my impulses and emotions getting in the way).

I'm glad you said this, a few pages back. Christine had lost a little bit of the top of her range back in 1997-8. Recorded footage of "Oh Daddy" from The Dance Tour is a good example and available on YouTube. You can hear most clearly in the refrain: "Everything you do is just alright." I could tell from "Don't Stop" in London that her range has gotten smaller (and she did do a trick or two in there to hide not being able to hit a few notes), but understandably we only have one small verse from one song to look at today, and without several songs to get her voice going and properly warmed up. I know it doesn't get mentioned as much in discussions of why Christine left, but maybe she never wanted to get to the point when she couldn't sing her songs the same and had to fake her way through them. Tina Turner had a really emotional interview with Oprah a few weeks ago and discussed that feeling, how devastating it was when she had to resort to tricks to hit the notes she could once hit effortlessly, how she relied on certain songs to build her stamina for certain hits. It got me thinking a bit, for comparison with Stevie, who also has a legendary voice, which had a peak period much much briefer than Tina's. We've all seen how Stevie has changed "Gypsy" and relies on her background singers to quietly drop out of "Dreams." The natural aging process on the voice is sad. And for some people they mature much earlier than others, certainly the effects of substance abuse and alcohol consumption. I wonder if Christine would be comfortable singing songs like "Songbird" or even "You Make Loving Fun," for the fear that she wouldn't be able to capture what she once could to the songs.