See, I am not a perpetual anti-Siti. She used to have a wonderful biting voice, in the mold of singers like Fauziah Latiff and the young Sheila Majid (the older, more mature Sheila is another thing altogether) and most excellently exemplified by Aishah. She is not a powerhouse singer, never was and never will, but that's okay, the world has enough space for lyric singers. And what she achieved in terms of sheer popularity will perhaps never be exceeded by another Malaysian singer, at least not in this decade (the internet sensation Yuna comes close, but she is a meme at best).
Perhaps the first time I noticed the Siti Nurhaliza instrument was when she sang Mawarku with the boyband 2by2. Looking back, I chuckled at the sheer campiness of the whole thing: the hair parted in the middle, the shuwa-shuwawa voicing, the MIDI oboe. I did remember holding a candle for the male vocalist - ah, youth.
Listening back, one could see how Siti became famous. At that young age she already displayed the propensity for good phrasing and wonderful colouration of her line. Listen to her singing Kau teruna with a staccato mezza-voce on the word kau: it's the vocal equivalent of saying "I know this asshole's bad for me, but look at those eyebrows!" This, and other examples, were especially evident when you juxtapose her phrasing over that of the male vocalist (whose name I've forgotten), who simply sounded amateurish and dare I say bored to be singing this song. Another example: later she employed a slight nasal twinge on pujaan jauhari, where before she had just been singing about pure white roses: she just knew those jewel-smiths are dirty masochists, mistaking thorns for orgasms. Don't blame a guy for making insinuations, I'm not the one putting those huge-ass ropes in the video.
Of course being young she did not really display much variation between her first and second stanzas. After all it was not that difficult; even the climbing scale was essentially an arpeggio. Perhaps this was a conscious decision, after all the premise of this song was basically the seduction of the virgin, so the female part would have to be sung with a more straight approach. There's a very audible register break when she sang the vocalise in the middle of the song, but I guess that's acceptable in popular music nowadays (as in, anything post-Madonna, not that Madonna had ever sang anything beyond her register break). Then there's the issue of her lower range.
My absolute biff with the current crop of Malaysian singers is the lack of a good, working, lower range. I am not talking about the chest function at all, I am talking about having good low notes which are capable of expression without sacrificing the note value, the note place in the harmony, the voicing et cetera. The composer of this song must had had an affair with the guy, when you have an instrument like Siti's, of which the glory is the top range, to give her the lower voicing to sing. What the fuck? It's a crime. It's absolutely a crime. Hear for example when the voicing was reversed, the guy taking the lower part (Senyumanmu yang menawan hati). It's like comparing diamonds to silt.
Of course that was the young Siti, before all the prize, all the gossip and whatnots. The raw material was sterling, and the artist she had developed to today is certainly accomplished if somehow artistically dim. But not everyone can have voice, intellect and the ability to make the hair crawl with a simple gruppetto like Aishah.
Perhaps the first time I noticed the Siti Nurhaliza instrument was when she sang Mawarku with the boyband 2by2. Looking back, I chuckled at the sheer campiness of the whole thing: the hair parted in the middle, the shuwa-shuwawa voicing, the MIDI oboe. I did remember holding a candle for the male vocalist - ah, youth.
Listening back, one could see how Siti became famous. At that young age she already displayed the propensity for good phrasing and wonderful colouration of her line. Listen to her singing Kau teruna with a staccato mezza-voce on the word kau: it's the vocal equivalent of saying "I know this asshole's bad for me, but look at those eyebrows!" This, and other examples, were especially evident when you juxtapose her phrasing over that of the male vocalist (whose name I've forgotten), who simply sounded amateurish and dare I say bored to be singing this song. Another example: later she employed a slight nasal twinge on pujaan jauhari, where before she had just been singing about pure white roses: she just knew those jewel-smiths are dirty masochists, mistaking thorns for orgasms. Don't blame a guy for making insinuations, I'm not the one putting those huge-ass ropes in the video.
Of course being young she did not really display much variation between her first and second stanzas. After all it was not that difficult; even the climbing scale was essentially an arpeggio. Perhaps this was a conscious decision, after all the premise of this song was basically the seduction of the virgin, so the female part would have to be sung with a more straight approach. There's a very audible register break when she sang the vocalise in the middle of the song, but I guess that's acceptable in popular music nowadays (as in, anything post-Madonna, not that Madonna had ever sang anything beyond her register break). Then there's the issue of her lower range.
My absolute biff with the current crop of Malaysian singers is the lack of a good, working, lower range. I am not talking about the chest function at all, I am talking about having good low notes which are capable of expression without sacrificing the note value, the note place in the harmony, the voicing et cetera. The composer of this song must had had an affair with the guy, when you have an instrument like Siti's, of which the glory is the top range, to give her the lower voicing to sing. What the fuck? It's a crime. It's absolutely a crime. Hear for example when the voicing was reversed, the guy taking the lower part (Senyumanmu yang menawan hati). It's like comparing diamonds to silt.
Of course that was the young Siti, before all the prize, all the gossip and whatnots. The raw material was sterling, and the artist she had developed to today is certainly accomplished if somehow artistically dim. But not everyone can have voice, intellect and the ability to make the hair crawl with a simple gruppetto like Aishah.
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