This is a topic that has come up a lot for me and for clients over the years, but it feels even more relevant recently. This is not just about picking the right songs, but also extends to vocal development, tessitura/range that best shows off your voice, and where your personaly wants you to sing.
What is a “personality mismatch”?
In the simplest sense, this is when a singer is trying to sing in a way that doesn’t fit the overall balance of their attributes.
To be clear, we’re not talking about their technical facility (i.e. can they even hit the notes or do they have a nice tone on the song). We’re talking about whether we’re talking about them and how well they as a complete person, personality, and voice matches the songs they are trying to sing.
Think of it like fashion in a vocal sense, and the insanity trying to cram oneself into clothes that simply do not suit them.
Rock singers…
Let’s imagine a singer is a very laid back, low energy-output, easy-going type of person at heart. For such a singer, it is not necessarily the best idea for them to aim to sing aggressive hard-rock music, primarily because that genre requires the exact OPPOSITE set of personality traits to pull off.
Rock is typically an in-your-face, high energy-output, never-going-stop genre, and people with a personality that don’t like to stress themselves out are never going to find the songs of that genre easy to sing, nor will they come across as well as other genres.
The opposite can also be true
sometimes I get clients who are frenetic personalities with oodles of energy and attitude, but they are trying to sing more easy-going music such as laid-back jazz… and they often don’t get it or gel with it.
Such singers often try to do too much, or they forever feel restrained by the idiosyncratic markers of that genre. They can’t fully express themselves, or they are being asked to express something they don’t feel or relate to.
As easy as it would be to say “well why don’t these singers swap genres?”, trying to convince singers they’d be better off singing another genre entirely is a very tricky thing to do.
What about another genre?
Let’s take another example – what if a singer desires to play the strapping hero in a musical. They have the personality, they have the sound… but they don’t have the build or physical appearance that the audience expects. We expect heroes in musicals, movies, TV shows, you name it, to be of a certain build, physique, attitude, appearance etc.
If said singer doesn’t fit that type – whether small and slight-frame, or immensely tall and a huge-build, or some mix – they are unlikely to get the part. Whilst that might seem unfortunate, it’s our own social expectations that determine that outcome, and those cultural/biological preferences are centuries in the making.
This is what we mean by a mismatch
Whether that’s in terms of personality mismatching between singer and selected song, or other attributes and the kind of person we expect to be singing the song. Think of it like picking clothes to flatter your physique rather than trying to force yourself into something that really should be worn by someone else.
NOTE: One extra dimension to this is that often people’s instruments belong in one register, but their personality draws them to another, e.g. a heavier voice wishing to sing in a higher tessitura, or a voice that is designed to sit higher but being wielded by a more masculine personality that would otherwise tend to sing lower/with greater gusto in the lower registers than is optimal for that voice.
Know yourself
The take-home message here is to realise singing songs well is more than just knowing the words, hitting the notes, and meaning what you sing. You’ve got to know YOURSELF. You’ve got to recognise what your strengths and weaknesses are, not just technically but personality and emotion-wise. We’ve got to acknowledge when there is full on mismatch, or when there’s maybe just mild tension between what is and what should be.
By getting really sensitive to what you “get” and what you don’t, you’ll find it easier and easier to hone in on songs that “just plain work” in your voice with barely any effort. This in turn will mean you are fighting your voice far less, and working against your personality and other attributes far less as well.
Think about which songs you are trying to sing. Ask yourself “if I was watching someone on stage singing this song, what kind of personality would I expect them to have? What would they even look like?” and you’ll start to answer your own questions. From there you can start to evaluate and assess the songs in your repertoire and either tweak or swap them out for more suitably matched songs for you and your attributes.
Best of luck with it! It’s a tricky concept to take on board, but it’s well worth persevering with!
Learn More: Related Articles
If you want to learn more about performing and improving your own performances you may enjoy these related articles:
Performance Anxiety: What is it, where does it come from, what can we do about it
Performance Workshop with Rhonda Carlson: Part 1
Performance Workshop with Rhonda Carlson: Part 2
Performance Workshop with Rhonda Carlson: Part 3
5 Simple Tips to Improve Your Performances
Pacing yourself: Micro- and macro- rests in songs and sets