The singer Paul McCartney called “the best female voice in the world”
On ‘Golden Slumbers’, Paul McCartney showcases a voice that could stir honey into tea from 1,000 paces, on ‘Blackbird’, he croons in a way that could rock a can of Red Bull to sleep, and he uses ‘Single Pigeon’ to simply chirp a charming story, in essence, proving he is a complete singer.
If his old mate Ringo Starr was noted for ‘drumming for the song’, then McCartney showcased a similar knack when it came to singing. As Dave Grohl said of ‘Blackbird’, the “range of his voice” not only allows you to appreciate his vocals but also garner “a better appreciation of songwriting”, given how pivotal it is to the “beautiful” composition.
McCartney, however, would be the first to admit that he is not alone on this front. In fact, the singers he seems to admire the most have a similar sense of using their voice to tessellate with the melody and tell a complete story, and when it comes to the female timbre, he sees Karen Carpenter as a true triumph of this tenet.
According to NPR, the former Beatle crowned her “the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful, and distinctive”, something that you can’t really argue. When she sings, “Why do birds suddenly appear”, it quite literally sounds like a dawn chorus of canaries in Spring, and such an evocation takes an abundance of all three of those golden assets.
Carpenter was also rattling off most of these vocal lines while rolling out fills that made her perhaps the finest drummer in pop history. As Anton Newcombe told Far Out, “It’s easy to dismiss the sweet as pie wholesome ways of the saccharine, mellow music that the 1970s mainstream brother-sister group The Carpenters offered.”
But she had power and prowess in ripe supply, as Newcombe continued, “However, we are blessed through streaming services like YouTube to be able to review absolutely incredible documentation of many artists. One clip that comes to mind is a very young Karen Carpenter absolutely killing it on her version of ‘Dancing in the Street’ while singing.”
He further added of her talents, “It is very doubtful that the drummer of your favourite band could ever pull this off. It really shows off her skill and places her in the top tier of musicianship. It cements her legendary status in a way that the simple, quiet, but fitting drumming on their soft rock mega-hits do not. Mad respect.”
That multi-tasking talent is a symbol of her complete musicianship, and that ‘complete’ nature doesn’t detract from her vocals, but rather empowers them, showcasing her full understanding of how her voice informs the wider composition of music and vice versa. This was something that also moved Elton John to crown her “one of the greatest voices of our lifetime”.
Madonna also said she “had the clearest, purest voice”, but it was perhaps Herb Alpert who put his finger on the quality that truly set her apart when he quipped that Karen’s “intimate voice” evoked a feeling that she was singing only for the listener, and it’s not without irony that millions of people have felt the same, McCartney included.
