Listen to Billy Gibbons’ isolated vocals on ZZ Top song ‘Sharp Dressed Man’
Guitars were not at the forefront of ZZ Top‘s mind when recording 1983’s Eliminator. After a full decade of honing their Texas blues-rock sound, ZZ Top began pushing ever-so-slightly closer to mainstream tastes as the 1980s began. 1979’s Degüello featured voice synthesisers for the first time, and 1981’s El Loco brought drum machines into the mix. Sensing what direction they were going in, Billy Gibbons opted to jump in with both feet on Eliminator.
It truly was Gibbons who was making the push: neither bassist Dusty Hill nor drummer Frank Beard contributed very much to the album’s sessions. Engineers Linden Hudson and Terry Manning often composed the respective bass and drum parts through synthesisers and drum machines. Over the top of those synthpop backing tracks, Gibbons would add his iconic bluesy lead guitar and vocal lines. Hill contributed lead vocals to ‘I Got the Six’, but neither he nor Beard was particularly active in the album’s creation.
That left a lot of the burden on Gibbons’ shoulders. Thankfully, he was game to take it on. Alternating between his signature bass-baritone gravel and a more strained tenor voice, Gibbons had a surprisingly malleable set of pipes that could wring pop melodies out of blues rock.
The isolated vocals for ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ features the perfect balance that Gibbons was looking for between contemporary sounds and the dirty blues tones that ZZ Top was known for. Gibbons growls his way through the track, but he’s slicker and sleeker than he had ever sounded on record. For a track concerned with being as slick as possible, that’s probably for the best.
Gibbons even gets the chance to squeal and shout a bit, something that he would normally only do with his guitar. He doesn’t get as much credit as some of his peers in the rock world, but Gibbson had a vocal range that was dynamic and expansive. It was probably the farthest thing from being “classically trained”, but ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ proved that Gibbons’ unique vocal tone could find the perfect pitch and still roar with a gravelly intensity.
Although the ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ single only reached number 56 on the Billboard Hot 100, it instantly became one of ZZ Top’s most iconic songs. With its video getting frequent plays on MTV, ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ was as popular and recognisable as any ZZ Top.
Check out the isolated vocals from ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ down below.
