This week’s theme is…Falsetto Bros! It’s good to be a man 🙂 Male singers possess a major difference in comparison to females: a falsetto range. It’s like a magical third zone of vocal timbre that allows men to soar like chirpy birds above their more commonly used tenor and baritone registers. I love to sing in my falsetto register. I often experience an enchanting and lyrical freedom up there that I don’t experience in the lower tessituras. Across the years, and in different musical cultures, many male singers have discovered the same thing, and have worked to cultivate performing voices through their falsetto ranges, often grappling in some way to reconcile their masculinity with the feminine associations of their chosen (or determined) voice. This week we look at some such gentlemen.
Falsetto Bros, Day 4 – God Only Knows by Brian Wilson
The producer Jack Good once made the frank and honest observation that the Beach Boys sung “like eunuchs in the Sistine Chapel”. Anyone who is familiar with the history of eighteenth century European vocal music senses the long and conflicted history evoked by that statement. Was it a compliment? An expression of discomfort? In like manner, albeit more florid and analytical, but still with an undertone of queasiness, Rock Critic Erik Davis wrote “The ‘purity’ of tone and genetic proximity that smoothed their voices was almost creepy, pseudo-castrato, [and] a ‘barbershop’ sound.” Davis’s prose reveals a discomfort with the close family ties that united the band-of-brothers Beach Boys in addition to their prolific use of the falsetto range. He all but describes them as “insestuous”, although it’s pretty well implied. Again, is it a compliment or criticism that their voices meshed so perfectly by virtue of their familial relation? And that seems intended to be sensational – there are many great singing groups who blended well by virtue of coming from the same family (Jackson Five, anyone?).
I grew up listening to singles by the Beach Boys as they would enter the regular rotation of our local oldies radio station, and because of this many of their hits are ingrained in my consciousness, just part of the fabric of my memory. We all have such a fabric, an amalgamation of countless influences and experiences that simply feel normal by virtue of our having grown up in and around them. So, the Beach Boys feel natural, comfortable and ordinary to me. But had I lived through the phenomenal 1960s in America and experienced the Beach Boys as they formed and rose to fame, making their deep mark on Rock ‘n’ Roll, maybe I would have made observations similar to Good and Davis.
The comments of both critics resonate with centuries of pent-up uneasiness about a fascinating phenomenon that affected Western music deeply, the castrato singer. I’ve already written about the castrati and their uncomfortable history during this week of posts, so if you want a more complete exploration of them, check out this post as well as this one. But I was intrigued to find those quotes about the Beach Boys, evidence that the castrati and the ethical conflict they inspire in anyone who contemplates them are still very much with us, and probably always will be. You could look at the castrati as a kind of artistic ethical dilemma akin to the famous Trolley Problem which is so effective at revealing inconsistencies in our moral framework. You can listen to a more elaborate summary of the Trolley Problem here. It’s not as long as the whole clip.
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I think the castrati pose a similar question in utilitarian ethics. Was the mutilation of thousands of young boys justified for the astounding artistic legacy they left? Even if you would rather not listen to them, the very musical landscape would be dramatically different without them. Would you have prevented Marie Curie’s radium poisoning if the world would lose its knowledge about the element?
Beyond the ethical dilemma, the castrati set an odd precedent for representing heroic masculinity with female vocal ranges. One can get used to this, but there is still obviously a deep sense of paradox and discomfort with this, which very much comes through in the words of Good and Davis. Still, ever since the castrati, many male singers have been expressing their masculinity through their higher vocal ranges. I’m not sure if it’s because of the precedent set by the castrati or in spite of it, but Rock ‘n’ Roll is merely the latest manifestation, succeeding a series of styles that did the same including Alpine yodeling, barbershop quartet singing (which Erik Davis referenced in his description of the Beach Boys) and American Country Music.
American Country singers, starting with Jimmie Rodgers, had seamlessly incorporated yodeling into their tunes from the 1920s on and the tradition has continued to this day, although the falsetto inflections are often worked more intricately into the vocal line than Rodgers’ breakout episodes. Country music as a whole has developed a high level of comfort with its male singers crossing their vocal breaks. Rock ‘n’ Roll can be said to have developed in parallel to Country music, with occasional points of confluence, growing out of the jazz music of the 20s with perhaps a bit less folk song influence than Country. As such, Rock ‘n’ Roll does not yodel, and falsetto is not quite as ubiquitous as it came to be in Country, but certain artists have developed a high level of comfort with falsetto and incorporated it richly into their palette of vocal colors.
And perhaps none so gracefully and imaginatively as the Beach Boys. One of many all-male vocal groups who used the falsetto register to extend the range of their harmonies like a barbershop quartet, the band’s leading man and guiding creative genius, Brian Wilson, had to warm up to the idea of performing so extensively in his falsetto range. Again, illustrating the centuries of discomfort with men singing in that range, Wilson thought it would make people perceive him as a “fairy”, but he was ultimately convinced to contribute his voice as naturally befit their musical imaginations. We all know this jocular and carefree jaunt, which is full-bore falsetto the entire time:
But the Beach Boys’ falsetto genius is really in the way it was used as a color in their vocal crayon box, deployed with discretion throughout their more shaded compositions, which put their voices together in constantly inventive ways that all somehow managed to express a sound that is instantly recognizable as the Beach Boys:
My favorite track by the Beach Boys, and I’m sure that I’m not alone here, is the soulful and affectionate ballad God Only Knows which intersperses the beautiful and meandering melody of its verses with episodes of ingenious vocal polyphony. Here is a rare studio rehearsal which frames Wilson’s tender singing voice in a more intimate way than the official single. The application of falsetto is sparing and masterful, adding just the right color to the vocal texture:
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