Songs that are hard to sing that you wish you could sing?

What are some songs that tropers wish they could sing but can't because they're so hard?

edited 12th Jul '12 2:49:43 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

"Somebody to Love". Freddie, for most people you can either stay in key or try to go all over the scale with some crazy high notes. But NOOOOO, you had to go ahead and do both thus making it impossible to sing along to a song that expresses a sentiment I would LOVE to sing about!

"Somebody To Love" is hard to sing? Mine would have to be "The Sabre Song" from The Desert Song. "Something is tearing my heart/Is it fate/To love him whom I hate? Sabre bright and gleaming, ever by his side/Dare I tell my dreaming/Dare my heart confide?" It's impossibly high, especially on the last note "He may call it love!". Unfortunately I'm not a coloratura soprano.

edited 12th Jul '12 2:57:49 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

It's not so much the composition of the melody (admittedly, there are plenty of songs that go much higher), but the way it's sung. Not really sticking to a specific speed at which one delivers the lines and having the backing vocals sing half the lines so you don't understand who is supposed to sing which part makes it so hard to sing along to without your own singing eventually turning into a babbling mess.

Oh, that's why.

Admittedly, I probably should've said that in the first place.

BTW, looking at the score for "The Sabre Song" reveals that some of the notes are above the staff. There are some in French Military Marching Song" too. There's a high C in there. I can only sing "The Song of the Brass Key" in the female songs from that show (written for a mezzo). And I'm a soprano (according to my most recent singing teachers).

edited 12th Jul '12 6:52:23 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

Well I'm a terrible singer, but here are some that I find even harder than normal to sing:

Somewhere Over the Rainbow - The first two notes are an octave jump. Way to ease me into it. **** you Harold Arlen. This is my third favorite song ever.

Summertime - This is an astonishingly hard song to sing, at least for me. It's not because of any crazy octave range issues, but just because the character and slow pulse are so hard to get right. It's not hard to hit the notes, but it's still hard to make them sound good. Screw you, Gershwin. This is my second favorite song ever.

The Star Spangled Banner - It jumps a TENTH and then goes up another third when it modulates to the new key in the bridge. What on earth were they thinking when they made the one song that every single person in our country would have to sing on a semi-regular basis so f*#&ing hard to sing? Really ill-conceived plan, guy who decided this should be our national anthem. This is most definitely nowhere near my favorite song of all time.

I'm sure I'll think of others soon.

I know a girl who can sing Somebody To Love fantastically, though as a mezzo-soprano she actually struggles with the lower notes if anything

Friend For A Foe's singer has a similar voice type to me but oversings horribly, real pain to sing along to. Also pretty much anything by a high enough tenor is hellish for me, not necessarily because of the height of the notes (by now I've learned how to sing high notes pretty comfortably) but more because of the way the melodies are written - they're consistently at the top of or above my tessitura and often cross awkward zones of my voice such as passagi. I don't even attempt to sing along to stuff like Rush's Anthem (I can hit those E5s if I used enough head tone, but Geddy's are easy, chesty and immediately slide up to some ridiculous soprano note).

edited 12th Jul '12 9:15:58 AM by AsTheAnointed

"I Will Always Love You". Yeah I know Whitney Houston's version is a cover, but hers is the most well known, so that's the version I want to sing. I can't sing anyway, but even people that are otherwise good singers mess that song up.

edited 12th Jul '12 10:45:04 AM by wuggles

@Cthulboohoo: I emphathise with you on Arlen and Gershwin. The thing is, I love Romberg and Herbert, but periodically go into "Screw you" mode. That note in "French Military Marching Song" "We're heroes bold and brave is a high C (C6) and Margot is a very high soprano. (In Sabre Song she sings a high C sharp and high B flat, and a high A in the opening scene of the sequence.) In "Ah Sweet Mystery of Life" from Naughty Marietta, Marietta has some incredibly high notes, same as in "Italian Street Song", where she has to hold a really long high note and sing a succession of high Cs. Weirdly, the only song from any operetta I can pull off is "Song of the Brass Key", written for a mezzo-soprano. And possibly "Neath The Southern Moon."

EDIT: "Song Of The Brass Key", according to posters on another forum I frequent, is hard to sing. And I find it easy.

edited 14th Jul '12 8:03:25 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

"Schwarzer Sarg" by Yousei Teikoku, but for a different reason. I can sing it just fine whenever I have the romaji at hand, but the whole REASON I want to sing along in the first place is that godly freaking epic choir that sounds vaguely German aaaaaand... what, no lyrics for the choir published? None? @!$# you, Yui. How can you sing something this epic and then DENY us a proper sing-along?

Oh, and guess what: apparently she's so bad at actual German that even German speakers don't have a clue on what is she singing! That's double the pain.

As for songs that are hard without being out of my range (like "Down, Down to Goblin Town from "The Hobbit" cartoon OST — there's no way for me to go that low), I'm voting for "Rain When I Die" by Alice in Chains. Again, most of the song is quite simple for me, but the whole REASON I want to sing along is that badass part where everything does a slow, repeated pitch-bend and then the singer follows it. I can actually do that... but I run out of air long before he finishes. Especially when he does it again at the end, where it's super ridiculously long.

edited 13th Jul '12 2:50:36 AM by Muzozavr

"Weird Al" Yankovic's "Hardware Store" would be one of my favorite songs to sing if I could do the bridge section even slightly competently, breathwise or memorywise. As it is, I have to settle for "Your Horoscope For Today".

Also, I was a countertenor pre-pubescence, so I've lost a lot of songs I used to enjoy singing, including most of the repertoire of Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons.

edited 13th Jul '12 5:47:37 AM by FalconPain

I've got a pretty fair range, so can sing nearly any song decently. However, there's virtually no popular song I can sing quite comfortably or unaffectedly: my natural range is Basso Profondo, shading into the subterranean "oktavist" territory, and it's a rare song that isn't recorded at least an octave or two above where I'd choose to pitch it.

And trust me: nobody's ever brightened his day by humming Crash Test Dummies to himself.

I was just listening to Dirty Projectors' new album and "About to Die" came on. Man, I would like to have Dave Longstreth's vibrato that he pulls out on the chorus. and I'm aBOUT to DIIIiiiiIIIIiieEEEEE

edited 13th Jul '12 11:39:13 AM by Trillhouse

Dear Lord "Hardware Store" I was able to do all of ONCE in my life and haven't been able to get it right since. I saw a Runaway Guys video in which Emile and Tim started singing that part and I was pretty damn impressed.

As for the Four Seasons...Frankie Valli, you're a jerk for being able to sing higher than a man should physically be able to sing.

Wuggles: "I Will Always Love You". Yeah I know Whitney Houston's version is a cover, but hers is the most well known, so that's the version I want to sing. I can't sing anyway, but even people that are otherwise good singers mess that song up.

So you want to scream and belt and shriek and otherwise ruin Dolly's beautiful lyrics?

If I wanted to belt and stuff, I'd save it for parodies and do it as over-the-top as possible.

One song I'd like to be able to sing along to is Randy Travis' "If I Didn't Have You". The low notes are way too low for me.

edited 16th Jul '12 12:44:04 PM by Twentington

Take on Me by a-ha and near anything by Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons, due to lacking the vocal range for those songs.

Same could be say for lots of Goyte's songs. "Hearts a Mess" and parts of "Somebody I used to Know" being the most fustrating.

I actually can sing not only Weird Al's Hardware Store, but I've also mastered R.E.M's "End of the World as We Know It". I'm thinking of trying out "Smells like Teen Spirit" to see how well I can remember the lyrics. So, I can do something, yay.

edited 16th Jul '12 5:25:00 PM by PippingFool

Well I don't like country, so I don't really like Dolly's version. I don't see why you felt the need to insult the song like that, but okay.

"Take Me On" I've actually found that if I really try, I can hit that high note. I just need to work up enough air in my lungs. And, apparently, I also need to be in the shower.

"Somebody That I Used to Know" I have no trouble with. And "Smells Like Teen Spirit" I can do, but it kills my throat for hours afterwards and it's such a cliche to do that song these days anyway.

My vocal range can't handle falsettoes at all. Even Michael Jackson songs are troublesome for me.

edited 17th Jul '12 2:35:58 AM by PippingFool

Blind Guardian- New Order. I don't know what about it makes me fuck that song up, but I do. Always.

Sorry. I just think that Whitney Houston's version is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over the top. Parton's versions (she released the song at least 3 times) have very little that could classify them as country — they're really just pop with a tiny bit of twang. And I appreciate how restrained all of her versions are, compared to the histrionics of Whitney's.

Back to the original topic, I'm at the higher end of baritone/lower end of tenor, but Rascal Flatts songs are generally so damn high that I have to drop them two octaves before they're in my range. I am surprised at how many RF songs go up into the A5 range, and I think at least one has gone even higher than that.

Songs with a lot of fast lyrics really trip me up too because I don't enunciate and have a bit of a stutter. Even with the lyrics in front of me, I can't even get through the chorus of "One Week".

edited 17th Jul '12 2:42:22 PM by Twentington

I'm not great with fast lyrics. I can keep up with them pretty well when I hear them, but singing them? Sorry, no. Hence, I really wish that I could do renditions of "Modern Major General" and "It's the End of the World As We Know It" with fidelity to the songs original paces, but the former especially is way out of my speed range (mocking the fact that it is solidly in my vocal range).

I can probably do a really fast song if I practiced/listened to it/memorized the lyrics (all three things), but I haven't really done that, like, much at all.