Stevie's Vocal Range

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

Interesting find. The songs are not the best examples of her range but its still a noteworthy effort. Her voice has went through several changes during her career. I think 1981-1983 was her peak and my favorite era. Although some parts of the Wild Heart tour had her voice fried from coke. But her recordings during this year were really good.
The RAL era was horrific IMHO. I could not believe some of the raspy and nasal singing on some songs and demos from the RAL era. Things even got worse during the tour.
TOSOTM was a HUGE bounce back. I love her voice on the album. I love Street Angel too. I think after Street Angel is when she lost her range. The Dance was her first tour where she could not hit the high notes.
I just saw her live a few months ago and she sounded really good especially for her age. In some weird way I would say her voice is better for live singing than recording these days. I was not crazy about the sound of her voice on 24K Gold.

Not true.

While in the studio she could still muster beautiful high notes, onstage she stopped hitting high notes even on the Rumours tour. If you listen to recordings of both Rhiannon and Dreams, she either whistles or hums the highest notes in those songs (and in later years just stopped trying to sing them altogether)

On Dreams lines with high notes like "it's only RIGHT" and "players only LOVE you" she would whistle or "ooo oooo" those words because she could not reach them. Yes her voice got more beat up on the road and she could mostly recover those notes after some time off.... but she developed nodules on her vocal cords and those come from overusing and mis-using your cords. Over time you lose the ability to recover. On recordings you can hear her try to go for those notes on other songs and not really reach them....and she began going with louder volume in places where in the past she would have gone with a higher note.

Listen to Bella Donna.. while the raspiness of future years isn't yet there, notice she doesn't hit any of the type of high notes she did on the first Mac albums