For Women + LGBTQIA+ People (and yes, even men!) our voices aren’t ours

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If I read one more article or hear one more Kardashian-referencing takedown of “vocal fry” - the low, breathy, creaky vocal inflection that yes, the Kardashians have indeed put on the collective radar - I am going to throw my phone across the room. Not because there’s any love lost between me and the Kardashians (spoiler alert: not a fan for a multitude of take-your-pick problematic reasons), but because I am so. sick. of women’s voices being scrutinized and commented on, dissected and dismissed. Even the Kardashians’ voices I shall defend! And women aren’t the only ones swept up in the angst of how our speaking voices sound: as a vocal coach, some of my favorite students to work with are my LGBTQIA+ loves who, more often than not, come to me to connect with their voices telling me stories of many years of being bullied over how they sound, or a youth spent trying to either shift or hide their vocal inflection to sound more - or less - the way they wanted it to sound. Even cisgendered, straight men aren’t spared from the insidiousness of the vocal police and, much like the patriarchy harms the very seeming “beneficiaries”, so does this. Many men that I work with suffer from much vocal tension as a byproduct of trying to deepen or lower their natural speaking pitch - which leads to a host of vocal problems, both speaking and singing-wise. I know, you thought this post wasn’t going to be about you, guys, but I see you and I care about you and your voices, too.

So, let’s talk about it, yeah?

Under the heavy cloud of the election and the nightmare dream-loop we seem to be within with the looming spectre, once again, of a Trump administration, I’ve been thinking a lot about something that is very core to my work, and why it’s so important to me: this idea of “our voices.”

What it means not just to sing, but on a deeper level, what it means to find, claim, embody, and use our voices.

On the one hand, it feels like such an eye-roll inducing, social media trope to talk about “using your voice” but it’s also, well, true. Finding my voice - my singing voice, my inner voice, my vocal-speaking-up-for-myself-and-others-and-against-injustices voice - has been a deep and profound fight throughout my life. So, my work has always, to me, been about so much more than just teaching people how to sing. It’s about helping people to find that deep connection with themselves; it’s about giving people a space to validate themselves and take themselves seriously - to take up the “space” of being worthy; it’s about accepting who they are in all their limits, limitlessness, beauty, and imperfections.

Singing is so special precisely because it is both so vulnerable and personal AND it is so - universal.

A common refrain (okay yeah, pun intended) I hear when people come to me for lessons is that someone, at some point, said something to them about their voice - and that something has stuck with them all this time. I always say that singing is much more of a mental effort than a physical one. And what I mean by that is exactly this scenario: someone says something that leaves you self-conscious about your voice; then, in an attempt to change that Thing, whenever you go to sing you probably do some sort of maneuvering or tensing or straining to try and diminish it. Whatever this may be, whether pushing the Chest Voice up too high to avoid sounding “weak” or pushing the voice down too much to avoid a “nasal” sound, whatever it is - you’re probably doing it, when left to your own devices, wrong. One of the little secrets people don’t tell you about singing but I will happily let you in on is that proper singing typically feels much lighter, more intuitive (if you don’t fight your voice moving the way it wants to) than any amount of physical forcing. Think about when you were a kid. You probably sang along at the top of your lungs to songs you loved, without self-consciousness - you just let your sound out, and you let it go. That’s not to say that kids are “perfect vocal practitioners” however - that sense of allowing your voice to travel out freely, to allow it to move, to get lighter or higher, to make silly sounds, to play - is so much at the foundation of proper singing. As we start to get more self-conscious of our voices, either through puberty and vocal changes, or because of some unsolicited, unkind feedback, we lose this sense of abandon with our voices and instead sort of try to wrangle them into submission. You know that awful, cringe-inducing feeling of a voice cracking from high to low? That’s a yodel. That’s how you yodel (take note, my country sirens and songbirds). So, while perhaps uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong - it’s just a bit unencumbered. But “unencumbered” is precisely the first thing I want for everyone’s voice - from there, from the real, raw materials is where we can then begin the work of refining, honing, finessing, strengthening, smoothing. But only from there.

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Another truth I have come to learn over my years studying and working with hundreds of voices: the people who come into me loudly proclaiming they are “bad singers” or have something “really wrong” with their voices are typically the ones with the most natural ability. So - what the fuck gives?! The common thread that generally ties them all together is - you guessed it! - some asshole from their past saying something mean to them about their voice; or they’re a gay, lesbian, trans, or non-binary person who has a complex relationship with their voice, because it either wasn’t in-line with their cultural (or desired cultural), or gender (or desired gender) identity; or it wasn’t actually safe for them to speak the way they wanted to or naturally gravitated towards, because it might “give them away.” The vocal police really piss me off, but this hits a new level for me: as a cisgendered, heterosexual white woman, I never had to fear for my bodily, social, or emotional safety because of how I spoke. Our voices are our truest form of human expression perhaps after the most primal and honest, touch - to think of someone, anyone, stripping someone of that makes me seethe with a violet-hot rage. Helping guide my LGBTQIA+ students through proper vocal technique to help them speak in a healthy way that also aligns with their identity and gender identity is amongst some of the most important work I can imagine, and it’s a sacred honor to me when I’m entrusted with this.

I have another student, a super just fucking RAD indie-punk girl who plays in a ton of bands. She’s so cool, she’s so talented; she’s so kind and thoughtful and has so much to say. I adore working with her. She’s also come to me after experiencing some scary vocal issues of losing her voice, hoarseness after speaking or singing, and dryness. As we started to delve into and excavate what could be leading to these issues, she mentioned that for years she’s been singing in bands with men who continually asked her to affect her voice in various different ways. My ears perked up at this and I asked her to tell me more. As she shared, and thought about it more, she said that she didn’t think she’d been using her “real” natural voice, just the way she wanted to, for probably close to 10 years. Let’s take a minute with that. The heaviness of this realization descended in the room with us as we sat and just shared a knowing, acknowledging look. As two women in the music industry, we didn’t need any other words at that moment - we both simply just knew. I watched her wrestle with this guilt and shame that had never been HERS to have to hold or wrestle with - the realization that she’d been told, almost every which way for 10 years, that her voice wasn’t good enough as it was. That she had to maneuver it and shift it and shape it to fit a mold that someone else wanted her to fit in. The interesting thing she mentioned is that she actually has quite a powerful voice - but was told, and felt, like she had to pull it back, keep it down, keep it “interesting” and understated and aloof. She realized this is probably what lead to the issues she was dealing with now: and coming face-to-face with the fear of losing the “one thing" she’s ever been really good at” (her heart-wrenching poetic words, my heart leapt for her in that moment) was such a stark and sobering realization.

As a woman in what is still, yes, a boy’s club, it is exhausting in the music industry. Things are far better than they used to be, sure - but sometimes, that’s almost harder to navigate. Musicians are supposed to be the counter-culturalists, progressives, libertines, right? And most of the men in the industry would all overwhelmingly say they are progressive + liberal - they love & respect women, and look, they even have women in their bands! No problem, right? Well… the problem is there is a lot of that pesky internalized misogyny that even they can’t or won’t see or even recognize. Surely they aren’t like that. And yet… myself, and every woman I’ve ever known in the industry has still been subject to all manner of unsolicited opinions, rude or downright hurtful comments that would never be uttered to another of their male contemporaries; having to prove ourselves double to be respected or considered worthy, or to be taken seriously. And those are the mild struggles. My point being: we are tired. We’re tired of having to fit into molds physically & now, vocally.

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I promised I’d also talk about men, because I see this with heterosexual, cisgendered men too. The pressure to sound more “masculine” pushes them into all manner of unhealthy speaking habits; in turn, many of them never break out of the laryngeal tension to sing the way they want to. Culturally, there is this pressure for men’s voices to be deep - and therefore, many men have an aversion to sounding “weak” of course, which naturally prohibits them exploring and learning to access their higher register, or Head Voice. As a result, I see heterosexual men with the most vocal issues more often any other group - because they aren’t allowed to “play” in their voices, or sound “silly” they never tap into healthy speaking or singing habits, and continue to exacerbate unhealthy habits which can lead to serious vocal issues. They, too, are policed - and probably carry a lot of lingering shame from their vocal changes in puberty that never got addressed because we also don’t allow men and boys healthy outlets for their feelings and emotions and struggles. This is of course a larger topic to be addressed - but is yet another example of the ways men are also done a disservice culturally, which further interferes with one of the ways they could alchemize their emotions healthily: music, and their voices.

I just want everyone to stop having their voices be policed, and to stop having to force our voices around into unnatural, uncomfortable places.

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I’ve spent a LOT of time when it comes to voice not just studying + observing it (my own and hundreds of others), but also thinking, pondering, wondering, marveling, probably, let’s be honest, ruminating (as my therapist would tell you I am wont to do!) over one idea that I keep coming back to after all these years: acceptance.

My own singing origin story is one of resistance, fight, and eventually acceptance. Believe it or not (though if you know me, this won’t come as a surprise at all), I grew up earnestly LOVING to sing - but thinking, positively convinced, that I didn’t have a “good voice.” The genesis of this impostor syndrome we can save for another time, but I spent many years wishing for another voice. I never quite felt like I fit in anywhere vocally - I’m certainly not a musical theatre or a classical voice; I’m not a celebrated Soprano but rather an Alto; I was timid and shy and not a boisterous soloist in choir and in fact had a crippling fear of ever being asked to sing in front of the class. I certainly didn’t fit in where I wanted to be, which was in the indie-rock scene. My voice was too clear, too bright, too “sweet” - and I desperately wished it could sound like someone, anyone else. But then something happened that is so textbook and yet is still profound because it had that instantaneous impact on my voice: I heard someone who sounded well, like me. I mean, kind of. But she had a similar tone and way of saying her words - it was sweet, but there was a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, a longing perhaps, which made it more bittersweet. Mostly though, Jenny Lewis sounded like herself - like she was just singing and saying the words from her natural voice, without trying to do or be or sound like anyone else.

It felt honest because it was.

So, I started simply - singing. Just the way I’d enter the phrase, or the notes, not trying to mask or shift or warp my voice. Just letting it reveal itself to me in the process of the unfolding phrase. If you sing, you know the feeling, the relationship, I’m speaking of… there’s this immediate, hard to describe feeling of being both in command of something, and also being pulled into and becoming a part of something, the sound, the vibrations in your body, the resonating on a certain frequency with a sound that is both within and outside of you. It was both me directing it and also surrendering the wheel. Though I didn’t realize it at the moment, that was probably the first step on a long, hard-fought journey of self-acceptance. The interesting thing is, once I surrendered to what my voice was, over the years, I’ve been able to bring in elements of what I always hoped it could be - I’ll never have the fully guttural sound of a Shirley Manson, say - but I have my voice and I think one of the things I love about her the most is that she’s honest + earnest. ———————————-

A friend and longtime musical collaborator of mine once told me that my voice always “sounded like me” and it was something that always stuck with me. In an industry where there is so much pressure to brand yourself, have a persona and stick to it with a mind-bending religiosity; where we’re constantly compared to and comparing ourselves against everyone else; there’s something really freeing about just owning your voice - about knowing its strengths and sweet spots, its limitations, its curves and edges and nuances. As a woman, I have been on the receiving end of so many peoples’ thoughts about my voice, my singing, every goddamn thing. I’ve had producers, to my face, do a side-by-side comparison of my voice and someone else’s whose virtues they were extolling (not that I had asked, mind you - I was being talked AT, essentially) and all I really want to say, to alllll the people who have something to say, about my voice, your voice, or anyone’s voice - the Vocal Police:

We are not robots. We’re human beings, and our instrument is - literally! - a living, breathing, feeling, HUMAN thing. We can’t pluck a string, or hit a note, and have things come out perfectly. Even on the best day, our instrument is dependent on the very human vessel it is within - please, give us some grace.

And lastly: if it’s so fuckin easy, here’s the mic.