“One of the best”: The song Rod Stewart called the greatest vocals ever
Rock and roll has never been a genre that thrived on having the greatest vocalists of all time. There have been many notable exceptions of artists that have knocked it out of the park, like Freddie Mercury, but since Bob Dylan also had a massive career with his trademark nasal voice, no one was coming to the genre to hear opera by any means. It was about relating to the person behind the microphone half the time, and while Rod Stewart had the perfect balance of rasp and tone, he knew that many vocalists were miles better than he’d ever be.
But Stewart was never meant to be strictly a rock and roll singer. Although his voice has been the soundtrack of the 1970s for many different people, he was always interested in the purest form of blues singing. As much as The Faces tore up the rock clubs they played in, it’s easy to see a song like ‘Stay With Me’ being played out of a sweaty blues club more often than not.
Outside of the electric side of things, though, Stewart was never afraid to take his voice into different places. While his dabbling with disco did garner major criticism back in the day, seeing him embrace the sounds of synthesisers in the 1980s was a breath of fresh air, and when he eventually worked his way into easy listening territory in the latter half of his career, he was always able to translate the Great American Songbook in an extremely tasteful way.
All of it originated from the blues for Stewart, but that was never too far away from R&B, either. Anyone from Stewart’s generation who had ever dreamed of being a great singer was bound to follow the greats like Little Richard, but there was a certain power that came out of bands like The Temptations and The Four Tops that no one could really match. Ray Charles may have broken down that wall, but when Percy Sledge walked through it, Stewart was transfixed.
“I can’t imagine anything more to tell you about the brilliant Percy Sledge. ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ is one of the best performances I’ve ever heard.”
Rod Stewart
This was the kind of music that he had been searching for his entire life, and while it did have its roots in the blues, no one manages to put that much soul into a single track. Tunes like ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ might seem like no big deal to pull off from a raw notes perspective, but Sledge always had the power of making every single song his own, to the point where anyone who ever tried to sing after him was going to be competing for second place on principle.
Stewart even admitted as much about the performance on Sledge’s signature tune, saying at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “I can’t imagine anything more to tell you about the brilliant Percy Sledge. ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ is one of the best performances I’ve ever heard and I’m sure you’ve ever heard. He sings that with such gusto. Is anything possible when that man sings? It certainly is.”
That’s probably why Stewart ended up taking so much out of the soul playbook when he started his solo career. He was still the same rocker that he had always been, but the idea of building an entire track around that one stellar vocal performance is something that runs through the heart of every hit that Sledge ever made.
But Stewart wasn’t willing to be someone who took the spotlight away from his hero. Sledge will forever be one of the most singular vocalists in popular music, and while he may not have reached the same heights as Stewart did in terms of success, his vocal style bleeds through every single song he ever made.
