Hollywood Tone Deaf / Live-Action TV

• The Brady Bunch: In real life, of the younger four, Mike Lookinland was a very good singer, and as Barry Williams (also a very good singer) said, was the most musical of the six kids, but he had two left feet when it came to dancing. On the other hand, Eve Plumb and Susan Olsen were varying levels of tone deaf, but Chris Knight was the most obvious one; by his admission, he cannot sing a note. This worked perfectly into the Season 3 episode "Dough Re Mi," where Peter's voice is going through puberty and begins to crack just as the kids are rehearsing Greg's newly written song. Still, Chris did record an entire album of duets with Maureen McCormick (who is a decent singer) and got a solo on The Brady Bunch Variety Hour (covering The Carpenters' "Sing"). If you are familiar with the lyrics, "Sing" is the perfect song for the worst singer in the group.
• In the "Just Move Your Lips, Sergeant" episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Sgt. Carter, who fancied himself as quite a singer in his youth, decides to coach some of the troops when they're singing, but his voice is so raspy, he thinks that someone in the group is off-key, failing to recognize that he's the one whose voice is so bad, the other Marines go sour whenever he insists on singing along with them, and they try to rehearse in secret without him, until he gets laryngitis and the others have him join the group and lip-sync to cover for his hoarse throat.
• Justified in Grange Hill: When the school auditions for the school play of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, there is a scene of a boy (successfully) singing badly. Later, when Andrew Stanton who normally sings well is rehearsing, Mr Sutcliffe whispers that he's completely flat.
• Little House on the Prairie: Both the Oleson girls. With Nancy, it's funny because her portrayer, Allison Balson, is a very talented singer. Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie, will be the first to admit she is a very bad singer.
• A prime example of this is Madame Edith from 'Allo 'Allo!, who fancies herself a cabaret singer, and insists on singing to the customers of her cafe. (Some customers jam cheese in their ears to avoid the horror.)
• Lilly in Hannah Montana, London on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, a subplot on That's So Raven, Paolo was exposed by Gordo, Isabella, and Lizzie to put a stop to his lip-synching in The Lizzie McGuire Movie....is there a Disney Channel show that hasn't featured this?
• Echo in another Disney series, Mr. Young, is a very off-key singer. Naturally, she believes otherwise, and the episode we find out is, of course the one where her friends try to stop her from embarrassing herself at the school talent show. Though unlike others, Echo doesn't learn she can't sing by the end, even attacking Adam for admitting she can't sing seconds after telling him he could tell her honestly.
• That one episode of Full House where Jesse gives Rebecca singing lessons. Becky is shown to be a horrible singer when she joins Jesse, Danny, and Joey in singing Nicky and Alex to sleep. Jesse attempts to surreptitiously give her singing lessons and Hilarity Ensues. However, it's later shown that she's a wonderful singer when she's singing them actual lullabies.
  • Another example from Full House is Kimmy Gibbler, as exhibited during the 1989-90 season. One episode where D.J. is having trouble with her first babysitting job leads to Kimmy showing up early in the episode where the kid doesn't go to bed and Kimmy volunteers to sing (or more accurately, scream) a lullaby to him. Later that season, after Stephanie somehow backs the car into the kitchen window, she walks in nonchalantly. At that point, we hear Kimmy singing a little bit of the chorus of "Straight Up", sounding much better.
• Hyacinth in Keeping Up Appearances. Fits this trope to a T because Patricia Routledge is an accomplished stage actress with a more-than-adequate singing voice.
• A non-singing example is Klink's violin playing in Hogan's Heroes. His violin playing is hideous but he's the only one who doesn't seem to notice. Of course, in real life Werner Klemperer was a concert-level violinist.
• In an episode of Mama's Family, Mama has to audition to sing the town's anthem "Raytown, O Raytown" for a Founder's Day event and mangles it rather badly before getting the part anyway and refusing it. The actress, Vicki Lawrence, had a #1 hit in 1973 with "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia".
• Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! gives us Casey, who is (or appears to be) a severely mentally challenged young adult, who suffers emotional breakdowns on stage, in addition to having poor singing talent. Note that Tim Heidecker is actually a skilled musician. In fact, most singing on the show isn't that great, but considering Tim and Eric's pool of actors, it's a mystery as to which singers are faking it and which ones are genuinely bad.
• Any show on the "TNBC" Saturday-morning block had at least one episode dealing with someone who's "tone deaf" (and usually a love interest who's lying to them, saying their singing is wonderful.) Fun Fact: The California Dreams episode of this trope (in which the girlfriend of the lead guitarist tried to join the band so she wouldn't be a "groupie") was named... "Yoko Oh No!" (No bands were disbanded, however.)
  • Subverted on City Guys as the gang is concerned Cassie's bad singing will humiliate them at a public contest. They let her go on stage alone...at which point, Cassie reveals she's a great singer and faking being bad in order to get the spotlight solo. Rather than be upset, the others have to give her credit for fooling them and the fact she is the best singer.
• This was a running gag on I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball was a decent, if not quite stellar, singer in real life.
• Beautifully averted in an episode of House, with a little girl singing along — only slightly off-key and off-rhythm — to a CD as she gets dressed in the morning. As a bonus, the fact that she wasn't singing quite right took the scene from overly-cute to realistic and affecting.
• Averted in Peep Show when Mark decides to sing "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" to Sophie, in a romantic moment. He's in tune - he just sounds nervous and as if he isn't putting much breath into it.
• The X-Files: Scully in the episode "Detour", after being cajoled by Mulder into singing despite warning him that he wouldn't want to hear her singing, as she "can't carry a tune".
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Averted in "Once More With Feeling". Alyson Hannigan was a self-admitted poor singer and requested that she be given minimal singing lines in the episode to the point where "I'm Under Your Spell was changed from a duet between Willow and Tara to a solo for the latter. Michelle Trachtenberg also requested that Dawn's singing be minimized, and was given a ballet number to perform instead.
• Angel:
  • "There's three things I don't do: tan, date, and sing in public." When forced to do the last at Lorne's karaoke club in the second-season opener "Judgement", Angel's completely monotone, and badly off-tempo. (Then the outtakes of David Boreanaz that close the episode turn into one huge lampshade of this trope.) This was later lampshaded as being because of shyness and being self-conscious about picking love ballads every time.
    • However, when David Boreanaz sings on Bones, (which he does in a couple of episodes) he has a perfectly respectable voice.
  • In "Disharmony", Cordelia takes Harmony to sing for Lorne. After listening to her butcher "The Way We Were" he comments, "I think your friend should reconsider the name Harmony." (In truth Mercedes McNab sings a bit too well in that scene.)
• Supernatural justified it in "No Rest for the Wicked". Jensen Ackles is known to be a very good singer yet when Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive" comes on the radio, Dean (and later Sam) sings it obnoxiously loudly and badly. Why? Because it's his last day alive and he wants to cheer Sam up like the awesome big brother he is, that's why.
  • Dean seems to alternate between being completely unable to sing a note and not being all that bad. He's not awful doing the REO Speedwagon tune, but when he sings a Christmas carol at one point, he's awful. Jensen Ackles actually said in an interview that he thinks Dean is the kind of character that couldn't carry a note if he tried, so he makes a deliberate attempt to sing badly.
  • Jensen also confirmed at a convention that the writers wrote on his copy of the script, "JENSEN—DON'T SING ON-KEY."
  • Averted by Jared Padalecki, who plays Sam and genuinely can't sing.
    • Not necessarily. Jared may not be the best singer in existence, but he's not tone-deaf.
• Barney Fife had a whole episode devoted to how bad of a singer he is on The Andy Griffith Show, even though he had sung with Andy on earlier shows, and Don Knotts had a fine country tenor voice.
• Averted in an episode of Frasier, featuring someone who is superior to Frasier in many ways but is a somewhat realistically awful singer.
• Played straight in Moesha. Professional R&B singer Brandy has a terrible voice in the show, to make way for the talents of her co-stars.
• Averted in Dexter: When he's singing his girlfriend's children to sleep, Dexter's voice isn't horrible, just a little off-key. In real life, Michael C. Hall's a trained singer and Broadway performer with a very good voice. Jennifer Carpenter, on the other hand...
• Averted in Gilligan's Island: Dawn Wells by her own admission is a terrible singer, so whenever an episode called for her to sing, her voice would generally be dubbed in by a professional singer. However, the episode "The Second Ginger Grant" called for an amnesiac Mary Ann, believing herself to be Ginger, to sing badly. Rather than faking a bad singing voice, Wells, knowing her own restrictions, made an earnest attempt to sing the song properly. The result ended up being just off-key enough to sound believable and fit the plot at the same time.
• Andy Kaufman's Alter-Ego Acting persona Tony Clifton, a Lounge Lizard, averted this. Tony's problem wasn't that he couldn't hit notes, but that 1) his voice itself was incredibly nasally and unpleasant by nature, and 2) he was a usually grouchy Jerkass who picked on his audience. This aversion was probably one of several reasons many people (at least at first) were successfully fooled into thinking Andy and Tony were separate people.
• Subverted by Grace in Will & Grace. In real life, Debra Messing has a perfectly serviceable, if not gorgeous, singing voice. Her character Grace kept to the tunes relatively well, but always started out way too high, and when the key of a song was supposed to change, she changed too far. A lot of poor singers actually do sing this way. Grace was also incredibly loud.
  Grace: (singing) "My baby don't mess around because she loves me so and this I know for sure...HEEEEY YAAA! HEEEY YAAA! HEEE— (phone rings) Hello? ...I'm sorry, I'll stop. Hold on, I have another call...hello? Yes, I'm sorry, I'll stop."
• World's Dumbest... has featured quite a few musicians unlikely to ever get an award:
  • One spot featured a Polish singer mangle the "Star-Spangled Banner" before a boxing match (including a mention of Madonna), coining a word in the process
  And the rockets would glrrr^note Instead of "the rockets' red glare". (subtitled as "glure")
  Danny Bonaduce: "Butterbean"^note one of the fighters weighs four hundred ninety pounds, has an American flag and wears red, white and blue trunks. F**king up the national anthem, bad call.
  • On another occasion, the show had had a song entitled "Goodbye", performed by a young aspiring "rapper" from England. The lyrics were basically out of rhythm, and the singer had serious issues with the Auto-Tune.
  Goodbye to the people who hated on me
  Goodbye to the people who loved... me
• Touched by an Angel has Monica, who is also a bit self-conscious about this, because, as an angel, she loves to sing.
• Averted on Seinfeld, where Broadway star Jason Alexander was able to sound quite convincingly amateurish on George's musical answering machine message in the episode "The Suzie". But played straight when Jerry's girlfriend (Miss Rhode Island) tries to sing in "The Chaperone".
• In an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Broadway actors Avery Brooks and Rene Auberjonois sing "You Can't Take That Away From Me" together. Brooks' character has a good voice, but Auberjonois sings in Odo's gravelly monotone, even though he's appeared on Broadway in musicals like Dance of the Vampire, Big River and Coco.
• Jeopardy! has a recurring category that avoids this: the clues will be the lyrics to a song, which are read automatically by either Alex Trebek himself, or occasionally by The Announcer, Johnny Gilbert.
• 30 Rock has Cheyenne Jackson's character Danny Baker doing this very intentionally during a duet with diva Jenna Maroney in the 2009 Christmas Special so as not to steal her spotlight. At one point, he slips into his natural (and excellent) singing voice and quickly switches back to tone-deaf after a Death Glare from Jenna.
  • Bonus points for knowing that Cheyenne Jackson and Jane Krakowski were both in the stage play of Xanadu before 30 Rock started (though not in the same cast. Jane was in an industry-only workshop performance of the musical with a different actor. Cheyenne joined the show later when the original male lead was injured and performed on Broadway with Kerry Butler.)
• In Degrassi: The Next Generation, Hazel affects a terribly fake "bad" singing voice when she is trying to show off her vocal skills to Paige and Ashley. Further proof that the voice was fake came when Andrea Lewis released a music video on the same channel and sang just fine. In season 9, Fiona auditions for the musical and has a similarly fake failure.
  • This trope was also averted in that same episode with Hazel's "bad singing". When the girls perform at a talent show, Paige sees her rapist sitting in the audience. After this, she grabs the microphone from lead singer Ashley and sings the song (which happens to be about rape) herself. Her singing was a little bit...rough, but realistically so.
• Katey Sagal is a good singer (she got her career start as one of Bette Midler's Harlettes), but her character of Peg Bundy from Married... with Children isn't.
  • She fakes bad again as Leela (see below).
• Parodied in Harry Enfield and Chums. When Lance makes a painfully bad attempt to sing "Who's That Girl Running Around With You", Lee attempts to put him right by inserting correctly-pitched noises such as "bing", "bong", "ding" and "dong" into the melody. Lance begins to get the hang of this, only to revert to his initial attempt when the noises are removed. He then remarks that he's only tone-deaf in English, and not in Italian, proving this by launching into an impressive rendition of an operatic piece.
• Played straight in the Glee episode "Laryngitis", when Rachel gets sick and loses her voice. Kind of subverted earlier in the series when Kurt blows the high F in "Defying Gravity". His voice doesn't slide so much as break, very realistically, even though Chris Colfer really can hit the note.
  • Mike Chang doesn't think he can sing, so when he has to do a duet with Tina, they play this trope for laughs with a rendition of "Sing!" from A Chorus Line.
    • He later proves himself wrong in season 3, when he auditions for West Side Story. His singing is actually not that bad.
  • Let's not forget Sugar's awful rendition of "Big Spender." Vanessa Lengies is a pretty accomplished singer (American Dreams).
• On a Private Practice/Grey's Anatomy crossover episode, Naomi (Audra McDonald) and Sam (Taye Diggs) were heard singing quite badly. - McDonald in particular is a six-time Tony winner!
• The opening to All in the Family. Jean Stapleton could apparently sing quite well in real life.
  • Carroll O'Connor was no slouch, either.
• Galina Sergeevna from Daddy's Daughters screeches through a song in Episode 14.3. Her actress, Liza Arzamasova, can actually sing decently, so to sing badly, she has to caterwaul.
• There was an episode of the TV series "Clueless" where Cher tried out for her school's Holiday play. Problem was, she couldn't sing to save her life (or so we were supposed to believe). Of course, her "bad singing voice" was so fake that it was laughable to anyone who's heard genuine bad singing. This ended up being revised later in the series when the writers decided they wanted Cher to sing in her school's production of Grease. Turned out, she actually had a pretty good voice once she learned the right technique (which was said to be something along the lines of squeezing your buns and breathing).
• In the Korean Drama Twinkle Twinkle, Jung Won loves to sing popular music and trot tunelessly. I mean, really tunelessly.
• Averted in The Night Shift, when Olafur sings for a judge on the Icelandic version of The X Factor. It's realistically weak - generally in tune but a little strained and with a trying-too-hard kind of sound to it.
• Victorious: Tori's sister Trina is a terrible singer compared to her sister and her real singing voice is closely resembling to that of a person shrieking. In fact the main reason that Trina was enrolled into Hollywood Arts was because Sikowitz had drank rotten coconut milk which made him have hallucinations during Trina's audition, and every other judge was out at the time.
• The Orgs in Power Rangers Wild Force are this: They consider human music to be repulsive, yet Flute Org's terrible tunes are music to their ears.
• Averted in The Big Bang Theory, in the episode "The Vengeance Formulation", when Howard is singing a song for Bernadette. He actually sounds like he's trying to sing well, and while it definitely doesn't sound good, it's still possible to understand why he doesn't get that.
  • Played straight in the first season episode "The Loobenfeld Decay" with Penny's painfully awful singing to play as Mimi in RENT. It's implied that it's mostly that she did not have the talent for a boisterous stage solo number, in later episodes she sings a bedside lullaby to Sheldon "Soft Kitty" that, while not pristine, shows a passable singing voice.
• An initial plot point in Nashville is that Juliette Barnes is a bad singer who'd be lost without AutoTune, as illustrated in this clip, but it sounds suspiciously like Hayden Panettiere deliberately singing off-key as called for in the script. Ironically, while the show itself regularly claims Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton) is more talented than Juliette, more than a few people find Panettiere to be the better singer of the two... and it's telling that the show's stopped pretending Juliette sucks.
• Aethelwynne in Pixelface is constantly shown as this, and most of the cast appears to suffer from this in "Rock Star" (the only episode where most of them sing).
• Cleo in H₂O: Just Add Water is revealed to be a horrible singer in the episode "The Siren Effect". Even the dolphins dive underwater for cover when she starts to sing. Rikki parodies the trope later on in the episode when she sings karaoke so dreadfully she's clearly doing it on purpose.
  • The plot of "The Siren Effect" was that under the power boost of the full moon, Cleo's singing enthralled everyone around her. Someone even called a radio DJ who immediately recorded her. After the moon set, even the playback of the performance sounded like tone-deaf scales.
• This godawful rendition of "One Love" by The Daily Show's Stephen Colbert, a very able singer who has performed in musical theatre.
• Gloria from Modern Family after she got a karaoke machine. Her husband Jay once dropped a metal spoon in the garbage disposal in the hopes of drowning her out with a more pleasant noise.
• Summer in School of Rock. Her actress is actually a fairly good singer but in "Cover Me", she is awful.
• Starsky & Hutch: Most of Starsky's attempts at singing sound like this, although he manages to sing on-key in "The Avenger."
• Sesame Street: Downplayed in "The Golden Cabbage of Snufertiti". One of the many differences between Bob and his Adventurer Archaeologist brother Minneapolis Johnson is that Bob loves to sing but Minneapolis prefers adventure and being active. Minneapolis' singing voice on their duet "A Sibling" wavers and is often off-pitch, but it's not unpleasant. He's played by Jeff Goldblum, who is best-known as an actor but is also a professional-quality jazz pianist more than capable of carrying a tune (as the masses found out a few decades later, when he began recording albums with his band after years of concerts in Los Angeles).
• Workaholics: In the episode "Menergy Crisis", Blake has a singing voice more reminiscent of screeching than anything else. His singing is so bad, Ders and Adam end up editing him out of their song.
• What We Do in the Shadows (2019): Laszlo reveals that he had a career as a singer/songwriter dating back to the 1850's, though when we hear his records, he sounds ridiculous. Matt Berry is actually an accomplished singer in real life, and there is a very stark difference between his comedic singing on the show and his actual music career.
• Kirby Buckets:
  • In the episode "The Gil in My Life", it's revealed that Dawn has an absolutely horrendous singing voice which only improves when she is looking at a reflection of herself, especially with toilet water. When she tries to audition to have her voice used in a commercial, the judges instead decided to use the toilet instead of her.
    • She gets another short song in "Battle of the Ballot" when she is happy she no longer has to listen to Kirby's chewing in the cafeteria, and everyone boos her and throws garbage at her.
    • Of course, this trope gets turned on its head in "Queen for a Dawn" when Dawn is treated like royalty in an alternate medieval universe. Kirby tries to get her to sing in order to convince her to return home, but it backfires because she actually can sing in the universe.
    • That being said, Dawn's singing was just fine in "All Hands on Dexter", which predated "The Gil in my Life", when she was auditioning for a spot on a TV talent show.
  • In the episode "The AV Kid", Chip, the titular AV kid, is also a terrible singer with the short friendship song he dedicates to Kirby over the school intercom.
  • The band in Hospital Playlist. Song-hwa is quite tone deaf, while the rest of the band are a much milder example of this, as heard here. The difference is very starkly heard in the album recording.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: Juna and Topan's bad and loud singing in episode 47 sounds like they're trying to hit the wrong note.
• The Regime: At a banquet, Chancellor Elena Vernham performs Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" as a combination of spoken word and singing. Many in the audience are visibly trying not to cringe; Zubak (whose only duty is to walk before her measuring the room's humidity level) stares at her with adoring eyes.

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