Sexy voice, sexy talk

[intim8]

Other female singers that came to mind while I was having dinner, in ascending order of sexiness. And yes, I'm dating myself.

Edie Brikell
Tanita Tikaram
Johnette Napolitano
Norah Jones

Edit: Damn, I just listened to the last one in full, and I'd forgotten how much it always melted me. Who are those other ones on this list again?

 

[nice90sguy]

Joni Mitchell, who famously charmed every guy around her into falling in love with her, has a voice that makes my hair stand on end. But that's different to me than being sexy.
High, pure soprano "angelic" female voices are beautiful, but I guess I like a bit of dirt or huskiness in the voice. Norah Jones has been mentioned - I'd add Joss Stone, Carole King, Laura Nyro, Monica Zetterlung, Dusty Springfield.

I was on a beach in Andalucia (not the touristy part), and there was a young flamenco singer in a beachside cafe there, with a guitarist. She wasn't your typical gypsy type, just some local Spanish kid, there with her schoolfriends. When she started to sing, I gasped. I started to shake and shiver, and was locked in place, utterly riveted, throughout the gig. Her voice sang the whole human history of desire, lost love and longing. When she released me from her thrall, and the gig ended, I turned to my wife who said to me, "nice voice". I couldn't tell her how shattered I felt from that, because to her, it was just a "nice voice".

 

[StillStunned]

Tanita Tikaram

Totally. Soft, smoky, sensual, full of emotion. "I Might Be Crying" is one of my favourite songs ever.

In a similar vein: Toni Braxton.

 

[Mastered_again]

Totally. Soft, smoky, sensual, full of emotion. "I Might Be Crying" is one of my favourite songs ever.

Climbing in the Wayback machine, give Etta James a spin. Not the silky At Last, which everyone has heard (and if you don't swoon, you're emotionally bankrupt), but her more melacholy tunes:
I'd Rather Go Blind (Than to See You Walk Away From Me)
or
All I Could Do Was Cry

 

[ElectricBlue]

k.d. lang and Sharlene Spiteri (Texas) probably make me go oooo more than any other female vocalist.

 

[StillStunned]

k.d. lang and Sharlene Spiteri (Texas) probably make me go oooo more than any other female vocalist.

Sharleen, definitely oooo! Particularly her speaking voice with that Glaswegian accent.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Sharleen, definitely oooo! Particularly her speaking voice with that Glaswegian accent.

I saw her (with Texas) in a small gig a couple of years. My God, she has a potty mouth!

And I should know how to spell her name by now.

 

[StillStunned]

My God, she has a potty mouth!

I thought that was covered by "Glaswegian accent".

 

[TheRedChamber]

Tanita Tikaram

I don't know if her voice is 'attractive sexy' but, after growing up listening to her just released first album in the car on journeys with my mum and dad, I was surprised to find out only last year that she hadn't been a chain-smoking alcoholic for thirty years before recording it, but was a rather perky nineteen year old. Who would have guessed?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Oh, and speaking of singers, how could I forget Peter Steele and Tatiana Shmayluk?

 

[wittykitty99]

I refuse to post here until I hear some audio clips (for my science research)...

I didn't become conscious of how sensitive I am to women's voices until I noticed that I can be attracted to "ugly" women with nice voices, and put off "beautiful" women with harsh ones. How damn shallow, I know...

I have to agree here, even if I may also seem somewhat shallow. A voice, if particularly unappealing, can undo attraction for me. Maybe it is purely because of the level of satisfaction I get from aural stimulation?

 

[wittykitty99]

To tag on, I would also say that it is not simply the voice (male or female) that can whisk me away to fantasy. It is the inflection, varied tone, volume, speed, all of it. The true art with a voice is knowing how to use it. That can be construed to insinuate some level of manipulation, and I am sure it happens intentionally or unintentionally quite often.

 

[MillieDynamite]

So Nina Blackwood in the 1980s had a sultry, sexy voice, lower than most women, which worked well on radio and TV. Now she sounds like she gargles with acid. She was a DJ in the late 70s and early 80s in Denver, and Dad said he knew guys who claimed to masturbate to her voice if she did a long monolog. Sultry, sexy women's voices are great, but apparently, they don't age well.

 

[wittykitty99]

So Nina Blackwood in the 1980s had a sultry, sexy voice, lower than most women, which worked well on radio and TV. Now she sounds like she gargles with acid. She was a DJ in the late 70s and early 80s in Denver, and Dad said he knew guys who claimed to masturbate to her voice if she did a long monolog. Sultry, sexy women's voices are great, but apparently, they don't age well.

Maybe she was doing other things that caused her voice to deteriorate further? This is why hydration is so important, people! Hydrate or die-drate!

 

[MillieDynamite]

According to Dad, she smoked about 3 packs a day when she lived in Denver. Dad's voice is raspy these days, and he smoked from 1971 until 1991, which I'm sure didn't help.

Maybe she was doing other things that caused her voice to deteriorate further? This is why hydration is so important, people! Hydrate or die-drate!

 

[wittykitty99]

According to Dad, she smoked about 3 packs a day when she lived in Denver. Dad's voice is raspy these days, and he smoked from 1971 until 1991, which I'm sure didn't help.

That makes a lot more sense!

 

[MillieDynamite]

By the time she left Denver, Dad was only doing weekend gigs as a DJ.

That makes a lot more sense!

 

[Britva415]

Joni Mitchell, who famously charmed every guy around her into falling in love with her, has a voice that makes my hair stand on end. But that's different to me than being sexy.
High, pure soprano "angelic" female voices are beautiful, but I guess I like a bit of dirt or huskiness in the voice

Have you heard Joni Mitchell in the last 15-20 years or so? Her voice completely changed and it's no longer remotely shrill or even soprano at all anymore.

Not saying you're going to like it, just wondering if you had any idea that she doesn't sound like she did in the 70s anymore.

 

[Britva415]

The voice itself is something people can't really change

There's an awful lot which can be done in this regard, but it usually calls for expensive professional coaches and lots of work. Of course there are physical limitations but some people are real chameleons, and most people are capable of a lot more variation than they even know how to employ.

A lot of people with fucked-up speaking voices are unconsciously tensing their body in a huge variety of ways which affect the voice. It's really difficult to become aware of these things, and it's even more difficult to resolve the underlying things which cause it: Social conditioning, physical and emotional traumas, coping mechanisms, defense mechanisms, actual physical ailments in parts of the body which aren't necessarily near the voicebox.

However, change is possible. You're right that everyone's voice is unique and most people aren't going to be able to just make their voice sound any old way they want, because we're all different, but, most people are also not aware of the things they do which alters their natural, effortless, unadulterated vocal color.

I don't have the link to it at my fingertips right now, but yesterday or so, I contributed a comment to a thread with a tangent on the subject of voice. I should find it and link it here, because of how relevant it is to the topic. That post described how, one time, someone with a particular distinctive way of speaking unconsciously revealed their "real voice" in front of me.

Something caused them to momentarily let go of something which was unconsciously causing them to speak in an unnatural way. It was the only way I had ever heard this person speak, before the moment. It had probably been their permanent way of sounding, for years and years and years. I wasn't necessarily aware that it was unnatural for them, until I saw the real, unconstrained, natural voice emerge briefly, but previously it had indeed seemed strained and uncommon.

When they were surprised into speaking naturally for half a breath before resuming their reflexive unconscious façade, that was when I became aware that their constant state was unnatural, physically constricted, and energetically taxing. Something had conditioned them to present theirself a certain way, and the voice was a major part of that presentation. It was contrived but also uncontrived - they weren't doing it on purpose, but they were doing it. Constantly. It was "their normal," even though it was costing them their physical energy and their authenticity.

That's kind of an extreme example. Not everyone has this veneer concealing their real voice. Everyone has a range of sounds they're capable of making, and of course it's different for different people. Miles Davis could never sound like Ella Fitzgerald, and vice versa, with all the coaching and training in the world. But people's voices are much more changeable than most people realize.

You're completely right, of course, that "what your voice sounds like" is totally different from "what you say and how you say it" and from what attitude you project when interacting with someone. These ideas are connected, though, in that it's probably just as hard for most people to change their interpersonal presentation as it is for them to change their vocal timbre. It could be easier in that people are at least used to the idea that you can act different at different times, while the idea that their voice has a lot more range than they're using is a foreign one. But it's also hard because everyone is stuck in conditioned habits, and most of us have a pretty narrow range of interpersonal reflexes we're comfortable with.

The TL;DR is that sometimes a naturally sexy voice can be obscured by an unnatural veneer created by someone's conditioning, but just like anything else which conditioning can do to a person, it's possible to reverse it and re-condition one's voice. An accent is one narrow dimension where I think we can all recognize that this is true, but pitch, timbre, tempo and the like are more what I'm talking about.

 

[Britva415]

Edie Brikell

She's a technically talented singer, however I find her "sound" to be throaty but not in that good way. More like, kind of strangled. To me, not sexy.

But don't let me yuck your yum

 

[Britva415]

I don't have the link to it at my fingertips right now, but yesterday or so, I contributed a comment to a thread with a tangent on the subject of voice. I should find it and link it here, because of how relevant it is to the topic

Found it