Robert Plant

One of the greatest singers out there who has allowed their voice to develop naturally and makes music now based on how their tone has changed is Robert Plant. You won’t hear him hitting any of the Zeppelin-esque high notes anymore, because he admits that he can’t do it. His style has changed as his voice has, and that brings with it the need to reflect.

When Plant looks back on what he was singing in the early days of Zeppelin, he makes it clear that he can’t stand the sound of his own voice. While a lot of us were drawn to the chaos of Plant, as he reflects on the past, he feels as though he was doing too much.

“Songs like ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’… I find my vocals on there horrific now,” he said, “I really should have shut the fuck up!”

Bono

U2 are a band who receive a fair share of criticism, but there’s no getting over what they’ve accomplished. They’ve managed to maintain a successful track record in the music industry for decades now, and Bono is a massive contributing factor to that success. However, despite the band’s highs being so evident, the frontman admitted that he struggles to listen to any of U2’s music, as it makes him cringe desperately.

“The [song] that I can listen to the most is ‘Miss Sarajevo’ with Luciano Pavarotti,” he said, “Genuine, most of the other ones make me cringe a little bit. Although ‘Vertigo’ probably is the one I’m proudest of. It’s the way it connects with the crowd.”

Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks doesn’t point-blank hate her voice and is aware that some of her vocal stints have been pretty stellar; however, she is also her own worst critic. The one specific period in her career where she can’t stand to listen to her own singing was towards the back end of Fleetwood Mac, when she was having issues with relationships, substance abuse, and as a general rule, her heart simply wasn’t in it.

All of this trickled down into lacklustre vocal performances that the singer struggles to listen back to, as a load of vocal snippets were left on the cutting room floor, deemed not good enough for release. “I’d leave and [Lindsey would] take all my vocals off,” she said, “And I’m not blaming him for that because I’m sure they totally sucked. Vocals done when you’re crazy and drinking a cup of brandy probably aren’t usually going to be great, and Lindsey is very precise when recording… I wasn’t into it.”

Jimi Hendrix

We all know that Jimi Hendrix is one of the greatest guitarists of all time, but not enough of us talk about his vocals. As a lyricist, Hendrix was a poet as good as the rest of them, and his voice had a melodic grit that elevated his songs to a whole other degree, so while it’s pretty clear just how good his voice is, ever the humble genius, he hated it to the extent that he couldn’t have anybody look at him when he was recording in the studio.

“He hated his voice,” said producer Eddie Kramer, who previously worked with Hendrix, “I used to make these three-sided screens facing away from the control room and put him around this side, turn the lights down. He didn’t want anybody to see him sing, and he’d stick his head around and say, ‘Was that alright?’”

John Lennon

While Lennon’s vocals have since travelled across the globe and proven to be utterly timeless, whenever The Beatle worked in the studio, he was constantly asking the producers and engineers he aligned himself with to work their magic and make him sound less…Lennon.

“He was always saying to me, ‘Do something with my voice! You know, put something on it. Smother it with tomato ketchup or something. Make it different!” recalled George Martin, “As long as it wasn’t his natural voice coming through, he was reasonably happy. But he’d always want his voices to get special treatment.”