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April 21, 2004
Stupid, Pointless Questions
Many years ago, a former girlfriend of mine who was obsessed with the Indigo Girls (and by extension did not understand my own mild obsession with REM) told me, in all seriousness, that when they recorded "Kid Fears," they'd had to put Michael Stipe's voice through a harmonizer because he couldn't hit the right notes.
This never made any sense to me. Sure, I can see having to fix his voice; I love Michael Stipe, but he's no Caruso. But it seemed like if you were going to fix his voice to fit into a harmony, it wouldn't be to send it up or down uniformly, but rather to bring every individual note into the right place separately, and that seemed like a lot of work, when you could just find somebody else to sing the part in the first place. You don't ask Michael Stipe to sing a trio with you when you want absolute perfection.
I can see multiple takes. Hell, I can see them sitting there and sounding out every note with him to make sure he hit it right, for days and days on end. Except that he doesn't appear to be faltering at all in the song, and I've heard him sing many times when he was feeling insecure about his voice, so I know what that sounds like.
I asked Noel about it, he scoffed. That's not what harmonizers are for. Harmonizers are used to bring an entire part up or down to fit into a harmony, not to fix an inability to hit notes.
But it still bothers me. Where would this rumour come from, and why? Did she make it up just to hurt my feelings? If so, why bother trying to insult me via my musical choices. It's not like I like REM because of the incredible qualities of Michael Stipe's voice. I mean, I like his voice, but it's the rawness of it that I like.
There's nothing about it on the web, which leads me to believe it's not a terribly common rumour, because at the very least one person would have mentioned it (of course, now I have, so I'm that one person).
Posted by ayse on 04/21/04 at 7:07 AM