Bohemia Bunny

Honesty Burns

March 7th, 2007 by lynnylchan under My Life

I’ll never sing again.

Every year I make a fool out of myself singing in front of an audience. This year, song dedications went ok, but Jam Aloud didn’t. Not only did we not rank among the top 3, but when I watched the video for our original song, it was one huge cringefest after another.

After the performance, my bro Albert told me I was a bit screamy and pitchy. I see now why he said so. Honestly, it’s terrible! Videos here.

And I was running a search for one of the other bands in the competition, and came across this. You have to scroll down to where it says “Jam Aloud”. I was hoping to find out more about the other bands, and maybe I shouldn’t have finished reading the post. But morbid curiosity got the better of me, and while the author’s opinions are hugely negative and still irk me a bit, I have to admit that wasn’t one of my better performances. (On the other hand, let’s see you get up on stage and work it without falling apart like a shaken jelly, beeyatch.)

Sometimes I feel guilty that where it all fell apart was my vocals. To be frank, I never really felt very comfortable singing that song. I love rock music, but it’s true that my voice is too “pure” and choir-ish to really bring across the growl of rock n’ roll. But I guess you can’t please everyone. On the one hand, I get feedback that my sweet voice doesn’t blend well with the rock feel of the song and the lead singer’s vocals, and on the other, when I try to rockify it, it just gets out of control, which is what someone else said. Sigh. There’s really no pleasing everyone.

Thank goodness I’m not as emotionally fragile as Pete Wentz who, despite being a platinum-selling rock star worshipped by teenagers, still stays awake at night fuming over negative LiveJournal entries. Ok, so I was just looking for an excuse to mention him. But there’s an important lesson for us all, aye? Can’t let people get to you.

But I’m still not going to sing that kind of song anymore, really. My new rule of thumb is - if I have to scream it, it’s not meant for me. Of course, my choice of songs to perform are limited by the people I’m performing with, and I’m incapable of accompanying myself, so… it’s either I give in, or risk a huge fight over artistic differences.

I should just stick to playing an instrument la.