Another Underwhelming Night for Singing at the Oscars
?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?The 85th Academy Awards, unfortunately, was blemished with problematic singing:
Katherine Zeta Jones was clearly lip-syncing in the Chicago piece. The maneuver should have been a no-no in light of the Beyonce's poor judgement call to lip-sync the "National Anthem" not too long ago.
Despite her large, exciting sound, Jennifer Hudson's screaming-like singing is finally showing early signs of vocal deterioration as her voice when she sings her high notes is beginning to wobble. Unless she undergoes a voice building regimen that rebuilds her vocal muscles, her vocal wobble will become more and more pronounced in the near future. High-larynx singers, like Hudson, often pay a hefty price for this artistic habit. Besides the wobble development, the bane of all singers - "vocal nodules" - sometimes follow close behind.
Hugh Jackman's hyper-nasalized, "overly vibratoed," vowel sound-compromised, and "closed" singing was in full display at the 85th Oscars, clearly indicating very poor vocal training. His vocal muscles are in a state of physical collapse and his future as an artful singer is dubious at best, unless someone guides him to build into his throat a handful of open, resonant vowel sounds.
Adele delivered an "okay," if underwhelming, performance. But at least her singing was not corrupted by vocal problems.
Barbra Streisand's tonally distinctive and charismatic voice always manages to please, even though her best voice did not show-up for her Oscar tribute to Marvin Hamlisch. Her classic "Memories" was marred by pitch issues, hoarseness in a place or two, and generally, an under-dynamic performance.
