Soprano and Gravel

A distinctive vocal style that appears, oddly enough, in both symphonic metal and "club" or "dance"-style music, particularly in groups from Europe. One singer is a woman, frequently a childlike soprano, while another is a man with a deep, gravelly voice. They will either sing alternating lines, or one will predominate while the other performs a counterpoint to the first's melodic line, sometimes in a format similar to traditional call-and-response.

In symphonic metal or heavy metal, the girl may be replaced by another male singing with a clear tenor or falsetto.

Another form of this trope is having the verses screamed or growled and the chorus sung, either by one vocalist or two alternating vocalists. The inversion, having sung verses and a screamed/growled chorus isn't unheard of either. This style is most common in Metalcore, harder Nu Metal and Alternative Metal, some Groove Metal, some Melodic Death Metal, and occasionally Black Metal.

This also happens quite a bit in Hip-Hop and R&B, when a gritty hardcore rapper with a raspy voice performs a duet with a silky songbird, either with her singing the chorus in his song or him dropping a verse or two in hers. ^note Or both. Many collaborations between rappers and singers are of the "Appear in my song and I'll appear in yours" variety.

The gravelly male/soprano female combo is usually referred to as "Beauty and the Beast" in the symphonic/gothic metal scene. In this case, the male vocals are usually of the "extreme metal" variety. Finally, it can occasionally work within a dual harsh vocal context, with one person having a low grunt and the other having a higher rasp or howl.

This trope is arguably the musical equivalent to Ugly Guy, Hot Wife or Odd Couple, especially when the singers look like what their voices imply (though this isn't guaranteed).

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Examples:

Dance and Pop Music

• An example where the male and female roles are inverted: Aretha Franklin and George Michael's "I Knew You Were Waiting".
• The finale of AURORA's "It Happened Quiet" and parts of "Churchyard" back her ethereal soprano voice with a deep men's choir.
• Aqua are the Trope Codifier for dance-pop music. Lene sings in a smooth voice that's sometimes ludicrously high-pitched, while René has a deep, rough singing voice. See their Signature Song "Barbie Girl", for example.
• The song "Killer", by Italian artists Baby K and Tiziano Ferro, is an example. Baby K has a high voice, Tiziano Ferro has an ultra-low voice, and they duet in a call-and-response way.
• Bingo Boys
• Bleachers (aka Jack Antonoff) is the gravel while Grimes is the soprano on "Take Me Away."
• Blue Amazon have "Searching", featuring Vicky Webb and Danny Campbell.
• The 1970s pop group Boney M may have been the progenitors of this sound with several of their singles, such as the song "Rasputin".
• La Bouche.
• Britney Spears in "Big Fat Bass" with will.i.am. Lampshaded with the lyrics being "I can be treble, you can be the bass".
• Bronski Beat's cover of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" has a duet remix featuring baritone Marc Almond alongside falsettist Jimmy Somerville.
  • Jimmy Somerville also provides a gender-flipped example in the Communards as he was often paired with singing partner Sarah Jane Morris, whose deep contralto was a stark contrast to his voice.
• Captain Hollywood Project (often confused with the Real McCoy).
• Captain Jack.
• Euro-techno act East Beat Syndicate featured soprano lead Regi Gedeon against gravel-voiced rapper Eran Ginzburg.
• E-ROTIC
• Many Eurobeat songs, especially those produced by Hi-NRG Attack; e.g. "Super Euro Flash".
• Faith Assembly gender flip this trope on"Redemption", where Leigh Bailey sings in a lower register than frontman Mark Stacy, but play it straight on most other tracks.
• Faithless paired gravel rapper Maxi Jazz with soprano songbird Dido on "One Step Too Far".
• On Front 242's 5:22:9:12 OFF album, guest vocalist Christine Kowalski sang both the gravel and the soprano parts, although Jean-Luc de Meyer also did gravel vocals on a few tracks.
• Fun Factory.
• Gigi D'Agostino's signature song, "L'amour Toujours (I'll Fly With You)", alternates between a childish-sounding female soprano and the baritone-voiced Gigi.
• Gorillaz: "Iss cummin' oop, iss cummin' oop, iss cummin' oop, iss DARE!"
• The eminently campy Gunther does this all the damn time. See for yourself.
• Hayley Stewart (later Florence Bullock) and Jared Nickerson of the dark synthwave band Dead Astronauts.
• Swedish soprano ionnalee, AKA Jonna Lee of iamamiwhoami, duets with the smoky-voiced Jamie Irrepressible on "Dunes of Sand", and the aforementioned TR/ST on "Harvest".
• Italo Hi-NRG artist Mike Mareen is a one-man example, alternating between bass-baritone and countertenor, although actual female backing vocalists have occasionally been used.
• Gender-inverted in both the original "If You Leave Me Now" by Jaya feat. Stevie B., and its remake by Stevie B. feat. Alexia Philips.
• Jennifer Warnes duetting with Joe Cocker on "Up Where We Belong" and then later with Bill Medley on "Time of My Life".
  • Not to mention with Leonard Cohen on "Joan of Arc" from Songs of Love and Hate and pretty much any of his more recent albums.
• JoJo in her duet with Jordan Gatsby called "What You Like." Soprano and Bass.
• Kate Bush used it in 1985 with "Waking the Witch". In this case, she provided both voices: one track is her natural voice, the other is a drastically slowed-down demonic growl.
• Parodied, along with a lot of other Eurodance cliches, by comedian Kyle Gordon's song "Planet of the Bass". Gordon, in character as DJ Crazy Times, performs the gravelly rap vocals himself, while the alto-level singing is supplied by the pseudonymous Ms. Biljana Electronica (singer Chrissi Poland).
• "Steal My Sunshine" by LEN, a band led by a brother-sister duo from Canada (the band is just down to the siblings, Mark and Sharon Costanzo, now, but at the time included other members, particularly Brendan Canning). The song is memorable not only for its bouncy hook (borrowed from Andrea True) and indecipherable but probably depressing lyrics, but for the contrast between Mark's raspy, wheezy vocals and Sharon's sugar-sweet, delicate vocals.
• Lime.
• A bizarre example is the Loco Loco comedic dance music project, starring CG characters: a big burly man with a fairly deep voice tormented by two mosquitoes, actually male singers whose voices are unnaturally high-pitched thanks to electronic effects.
• Londonbeat's "I've Been Thinking About You" has a duet remake in this style with Fragma lead singer Damae, who is a Moe soprano, in contrast with the rough soul voice of Jimmy Helms.
• German synthpop group Masquerade, fronted by singer Drafi Deutscher, sang both the high and low-pitch vocals in 1984's "Guardian Angel".
• Massive Attack have worked with Shara Nelson, Tracey Thorn, Nicolette, Sara Jay, Elizabeth Fraser, Sinéad O'Connor, etc.
• Early '80s, postmodern Matia Bazar does this occasionally: you have Antonella Ruggiero's refined soprano harmonizing with Carlo Marrale's brassy, earthly voice (Fantasia) or dueting with Giancarlo Golzi's scat singing (Sulla Scia). More notable live (e.g. Live in Munich 1987 and the Mèlo tour 1987), where Golzi will sometimes go entirely bananas with the scat.
• The doujin circle NJK Records has 3L and maria♂polo, who duet on the Touhou remixes "Last Moments" and "WARNING!".
• Perfume Genius inverts this with "Sides," where he sings in falsetto and Weyes Blood sings in her lower register.
• Another Gender Flip: "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" by Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield. Dusty, already famed for her low, sultry voice, had a noticeably rougher edge to her voice after years of smoking and sang the low part alongside Neil Tennant's boyish, nasal tenor. Likewise, the re-recording of "West End Girls" features contralto backing vocals by Helena Springs.
• Porcelain Black (AKA Porcelain and the Tramps) is a one-woman example. She alternates between a clear voice and a guttural voice in most of her songs.
  • Porcelain Black and Jeffree Star's "Prisoner" is an interesting take on this. Porcelain's part is raspy but very high-pitched. Jeffree's part is in a clear, but deep, voice.
• Italian duo La Rappresentante Di Lista enjoyed great success at the beginning of the 2020s, with a few multiplatinum singles beautifully sung by the delicate Veronica Lucchesi. But Dario Mangiaracina's gravelly, raw vocals are a staple of the band's live shows.
• Real McCoy
• Rick Astley, famous for his deep soulful baritone voice, dueted with Lisa Fabien on "When You Gonna", and Kylie Minogue on a live medley of his "Never Gonna Give You Up" and her "I Should Be So Lucky".
• The Scissor Sisters.
• Late '80s/early '90s duo Shakespears Sister was an all-female example, featuring Marcella Detroit's very high soprano and Siobhan Fahey's low growl. Mocked mercilessly in a sketch by The Mary Whitehouse Experience, in which Siobhan's voice was replaced by a ship's foghorn.
• An early example can be found on Mr. Rainbow, a 1974 track off Casablanca Moon by Slapp Happy. Some parts are sung in a very coarse voice by Peter Blegvad, the others in a mellow childlike voice by Dagmar Krause.
• Squeeze's Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, respectively; it's never hard to tell who sings what.
• The title track of Systems in Blue's Out of the Blue features an uncredited soprano guest backing the gravel-voiced male lead.
• Surveillance, a side project of Assemblage 23's Tom Shear, has "Husk", featuring soprano Mari Kattman against Shear's signature husky vocals.
  • As the singer of the short-lived duo Day Twelve, Kattman performed both clean and gravel vocals.
• t.A.T.u.. Lena was the soprano while Yulia's raspy screaming often made this sound to their music. This is most evident in "Not Gonna Get Us" and "Prostye Dvizheniya."
• Tom Jones and The Cardigans' version of Burning Down the House.
• Gender-swapped in Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse's duet of "Body and Soul;" Tony is actually the soprano in this case.
  • In most other cases, Tony Bennett is normally the gravel. To name one example, his duet with Lady Gaga on the album "Cheek to Cheek".
• Danish pop duo Toy-Box.
• Trip-hop forerunner Tricky has frequently collaborated with delicate-voiced Martina Topley-Bird.
• TR/ST's sophomore album, 'Joyland' is full of these, especially songs like "Rescue, Mister", "Lost Souls/Eelings" and "Joyland". But, in this case, Robert Alfons (the man behind TR/ST) sings both Soprano and Gravel. His first album had an actual female vocalist, Maya Postepski, but she left afterwards to focus on her main band, Austra.
• For Was (Not Was), this was best exemplified on "Walk the Dinosaur", with Sir Harry Bowles and Sweet Pea Atkinson, respectively, in these roles (both also a case of Vocal Dissonance).
• An all-male example is Wild Beasts, who are fronted by the Vocal Tag Team of falsettoist Hayden Thorpe and baritone Tom Fleming.
• German darkwave duo X-O-Planet, consisting of angelic soprano Manja Kaletka and demonic basso Goderic Northstar, duet in this fashion on "Passengers", "Remember" and "Vice Versa".
• The xx is a Downplayed example, as Remy is an alto rather than a soprano, but her breathy voice is still a sharp contrast to Oliver's deep, gravelly baritone voice.

Symphonic/Gothic/Doom Metal

• The sung version of Apocalyptica's song "Bittersweet" plays with the trope by way of guest vocalists Ville Valo from H.I.M. and Lauri Ylönen from The Rasmus): both are male, and Lauri's higher tenor voice is actually the graveled one in comparison to Ville's velvet-smooth bass. It makes an interesting effect when Ville suddenly slides up into the same range as Lauri.
• Atargatis. However while the main vocalist Stephanie Luzie never changed her operatic voice male growls were present in their demo and first EPs, while their two LPs featured instead cleaner male voices.
• Ayreon occasionally uses this; for example, "The Sixth Extinction" has Jonas Renske (Katatonia) growling and Floor Jansen (After Forever) in operatic mode singing the same lyrics.
• Battlelore goes with a female clean singer and a male harsh singer for pretty much every song.
• Celtic Frost has occasionally used this, most notably on their comeback album Monotheist.
• Subverted by Cradle of Filth with their cover of Heaven 17's "Temptation" (which played this trope straight). While the male vocalist uses a harsh raspy tone (fitting the trope), his female co-singer (Dirty Harry) breaks tradition by having an aggressive, almost evil tone to her voice that occasionally transitions into an aggressive roar. In other words instead of beauty and the beast, we have evil witch and the beast.
  • But they play it straight in any song where Sarah provides vocal parts, and in the title track of "Nymphetamine".
  • Actually, one could argue that they've used this style for a long time: the lead vocals often scream like a harpy/little girl. Example: Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids in the first half-minute (after the introduction).
• The Dark Element normally avoids this, with the men usually simply singing harmony to Anette Olzon (when they sing at all). However, "Dead to Me" includes a few moments of Epica-esque roars from guest vocalist Niilo Sevänen.
• Dutch Symphonic Metal group Delain tends to have lead vocalist Charlotte Wessels sing in clean soprano, and whenever a song requires harsh vocals, a guest vocalist (or, in the case of April Rain, ex-guitarist Ronald Landa) steps in (See the tracks "Tragedy of the Commons" and "Hands of Gold" for a guest spot for Alissa White-Gluz). Also, once or twice an album she does a duet with Marco Hietala, known for doing this in his usual gig as part of Nightwish. Charlotte herself has also provided harsh vocals on occasion.
• Swedish Big Band-metal group Diablo Swing Orchestra will occasionally incorporate growly male vocals with classically-trained female operatic soprano lead vocalist.
• Dimmu Borgir started using this when ICS Vortex was in the band (they had also used it earlier, with "Over bleknede blåner til dommedag" from For all tid and "The Night Masquerade" from Enthrone Darkness Triumphant).
• Draconian.
• Evilion uses one female vocalist performing cleans, and another performing growls.
• Fleshgod Apocalypse has bassist Paolo Rossi's clean vocals contrasting with lead vocalist/guitarist Tommaso Riccardi's death growls.
• Giant Squid is an interesting example because the female vocalists always do somewhat soothing/operatic vocals, while Aaron Gregory switches between equally operatic and harsh vocals throughout the songs.
• Kamelot's Epica (which came before the band) and The Black Halo do this with only one person. The lead singer, Roy Khan, sings in an operatic voice to represent the Faustian character, Ariel, and a considerably harsher, more distorted, and altogether creepier voice to represent Mephisto.
  • The Mephisto voice on The Black Halo, but not Epica, is actually Shagrath of Dimmu Borgir (Snowy Shaw of a million and a half different bands in the live version found on One Cold Winter's Night.)
  • In further support of the trope, the Helena character is sung by guitarist Thomas Youngblood's wife, Mari.
  • Since Tommy Karevik became their singer, this has shown up at least once on each album. Unusually, the Karevik-era examples feature female growlers (Alissa White-Gluz on Silverthorn and Haven, Lauren Hart (Once Human) on The Shadow Theory, Melissa Bonny (Ad Infinitum) on The Awakening), while Tommy sings cleanly.
• Lacuna Coil
• L'Âme Immortelle.
• Lacrimosa.
• Mark Jansen has performed this style with two bands, with After Forever opposite Floor Jansen (soprano), and since 2002 with Epica's Simone Simons (mezzo).
• Nightwish, arguably the biggest act in Symphonic Metal, used this from day one. "Beauty and the Beast" from their debut album has founder and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen growling opposite Tarja Turunen's operatic soprano. It has become a fixture of the band's songs since bassist-vocalist Marco Hietala joined the band, though unusually for the trope he tends to favor a Metal Scream style. Sometimes inverted since Floor Jansen took over as lead vocalist in 2012: the chorus of "Yours Is an Empty Hope" has Floor growling (using the technique she developed for ReVamp) and Marco providing clean vocals.
• ReVamp's second (and final) album Wild Card has an interesting case of a soprano vocalist bringing her own gravel: Floor Jansen learned to growl like Angela Gossow at some point after their 2011 debut. A good example is "Precibus", in which Floor sings the verses in operatic style, the chorus in her normal rock-singing voice, and the bridges in a growl.
• Septicflesh mixes Spiros Antoniou's harsh vocals with Sotiris Vayenas' cleans.
• Theatre of Tragedy was the Trope Codifier of soprano girl/grunting man. Paradise Lost and The Gathering had done this before, but Theatre of Tragedy was the first to make it popular. ToT lost the "beauty & the beast" vocals with the album "Aegis" and has been exploring other styles since then. Vocalist Liv Kristine later started Leaves' Eyes with her then-husband, Alexander Krull of Atrocity, in 2003, and then was fired from ToT a couple of years later. Kristine and Krull divorced in 2016 and she left Leaves' Eyes as well, to be replaced by Elina Siirala.
• Therion indulges into this very heavily on their 2012 "Les Fleurs du Mal" album, with new singer Lori Lewis going into the high-pitched Castafiore-type operatic register, while Thomas Vikström sings in a usual growling metal voice. (They are even listed as "Soprano" and "Tenor" in the line-up, respectively!)
• Tristania. This is somewhat unique in being a three-part version, combining female vocals, clean male vocals, and death growls.
  • Sirenia (though this is not surprising as they are a spin-off group of the above).
• Within Temptation:
  • "Enter" only.
  • The bonus track "Jane Doe."
  • "Our Solemn Hour," "Silver Moonlight," and in "What Have You Done?" with a guest vocalist.
  • Rapper Xzibit features as the "gravel" half of "And We Run".

Other Heavy Metal Subgenres

• 3 Inches of Blood again uses two males, one with a Halfordesque high-pitched scream and cry while the other uses a very throaty hardcore growl and snarl.
• Æther Realm's Lead Bassist Vince Jones can switch-hit between cleans and harshes at will, with guitarist Heinrich Arnold providing backing cleans.
• The Agonist, due to Alissa White-Gluz' ability to sing both clean and growling vocals.
• Arkona's Maria Arkhipova performs both by herself.
• Amaranthe has a harsh singer, a female clean singer and a male clean singer.
• Amorphis has employed this style ever since Elegy, formerly with guitarist Tomi Koivusaari doing harsh vocals and former vocalist Pasi Koskinen doing clean vocals. As of 2005 their current vocalist Tomi Joutsen performs both.
• As I Lay Dying has the lead vocalist with deathlike growls and their bassist with clean vocals.
• Battlecross mixes shrieky highs with low bellows more along the lines of Barney Greenway's vocals than those of their fellow Michiganders in the entry right above this one.
• Behemoth's layered vocals could be considered a serious subversion of this, particularly on Demigod, where Nergal would double-track nearly every line on the album, recording himself screaming in a very high pitched black metal style scream, and then bellowing over it with a low roaring voice.
  • A similar effect is achieved live, with Orion and Seth (bassist and rhythm guitarist) providing backup vocals. Three armour-clad dudes doing death growls in unison. It is somewhat intimidating.
• Between the Buried and Me's Tommy Rogers does both by himself, although he usually does the harsh singing and uses his clean voice to soften certain parts of the song. His cleans became more prevalent during and after the Colors era.
• The Black Dahlia Murder's lead vocalist, Trevor Strnad, pulls off both shrieking and guttural death growls. Rhythm guitarist Brian Eschbach provides both when doing backing vocals.
• Blind Guardian has done this sort of thing on occasion, usually without hiring extra vocalists.
  • In other words, their singer has about a four-octave range and does everything from clear singing to very harsh, almost growled vocals, though the rough/clear changes aren't always related to the low/high changes.
  • Hansi Kursch is the Frank Welker of singers. The entire vocal section of A Night at the Opera consists of him and four sparsely used choir vocalists.
• Blood Stain Child, especially as of Epsilon, contrasting bassist Ryo's death growls with (former) vocalist Sophia's clean female vocals. They seem set to continue this trend with the addition of female vocalist Kiki, who was in part chosen due to her ability to handle both screams and clean vocals.
• Cattle Decapitation is an interesting case; while Travis Ryan does use clean vocals, they are NOT your standard clear-cut melodic ones; his are more of a nasally screech that serve less to provide a counter to the harsh vocals and more to create a feeling of unease, as they're VERY unnerving. "Kingdom of Tyrants" is the closest you'll come to traditional cleans, and those are still more in the vein of abrasive post-punk.
• Chimaira occasionally does this. While most of their songs feature mainly screamed vocals, sometimes Mark Hunter will throw in some melodic lines in a drastically different voice than he usually performs with.
• Progressive death metal band Cynic uses this in pretty much every song...sort of. Instead of mixing soprano vocals and gravelly vocals, they mix vocoded robot vocals and growled death metal vocals.
• Asagi from D is another one-man example of this trope—one of the distinctive features of the band's music is his ability to switch between his regular clean vocals, Harsh Vocals, and his strong falsetto.
• DEADLOCK may be the best example. Johannes Prem performs really harsh (for melodeath) growling vocals, while female vocalist Sabine Scherer performs in a very clean, girlish melodic voice. Props to being one of the few non-Gothic Metal examples.
• Deftones' Chino Moreno alternates between ear-piercing screeches and soothing, tenor clean vocals that, due to the style, aren't that easy to understand.
• Demon Hunter has pretty much made a name for themselves using this style. Long before it was fashionable, they combined melodic choruses with screamed verses. Most of their songs feature this formula.
• D'espairs Ray's singer HIZUMI is an example of a Beauty and the Beast version, interestingly all on his lonesome - much of the band's sound focuses on his ability to switch from fiercely raw growling to an achingly smooth clean singing voice at the drop of a hat.
• Devin Townsend, in almost all of his work, combines at least six different varieties of growling with clean vocals. For a better example, check out the album "Ziltoid the Omniscient", and then check the liner notes. Yes, almost every single voice on the album was ONE GUY.^note Except for the Omnidimensional Creator and the narrator.
• Dir en grey does this with one guy as well. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to a man by the name of Kyo. This man can do death growls, screams, clean vocals, shrieks, bellows, you name it; he can do everything.
• Disarmonia Mundi does it with growler Claudio and clean singer Ettore. And then there's former member and occasional guest vocalist Speed from Soilwork, who uses both harsh and clean singing, resulting in a quite beautiful vocal mess.
• Death/sludge metal band Disbelief has singer Karsten Jäger, who alternates between John Tardy-esque tortured growls, Spoken Word in Music, and a gothic metal-style baritone.
• In a rare case of both the higher and lower voices being sung by the same man, this effect was used by David Draiman of Disturbed to tell the story behind "Down with the Sickness", seamlessly switching between the melodic but sombre 'human' side and the violent monster slowly rising to the surface. The song occasionally has Draiman move between the personas in the course of a single phrase. (it seems you're having some trouble / in dealing with these changes / living with these changes)
• On Dragonforce's third album "Inhuman Rampage", Herman and Sam's former bandmate "Behemoth" from Demoniac provides backing black metal screams and growls on several of the band's songs.
• DRAGONLAND on their album Astronomy.
• Dream Theater arguably uses a modified, three-part male version, with lead singer singing soprano through tenor on much of the music, the guitarist singing the occasional detached tenor phrase (beauty and the ghost?), and the drummer doing everything from falsetto to shouting to tenor back-up. (Beauty and the shapechanger?)
  • The song that best fits the duet dynamic, though, is The Dark Eternal Night.
• This is the dominant style of Eluveitie's newer albums.
• Elvenking, on their debut album, regularly used a Tenor And Gravel style, their original bassist Jarpen being able to produce death metal style growls. Seasonspeech, what is considered their best song, combined this with two different female vocal styles - one a delicate soprano as described in this trope, and the other an alto. Jarpen left the band after that first album, and Elvenking still hasn't recovered.
• Ensiferum uses the double male singer variant. One guitarist uses a mid-ranged rasp, while the other uses a very manly-sounding tenor.
• Fear Factory have made the one-man version their signature.
• God Forbid does it with two guys. Lead vocalist Byron Davis performs the screams/growls, while other members, usually guitarist Dallas Coyle, perform the clean vocals.
• Hacktivist has two sopranos and one gravel, all male. Rappers Jermaine "J" Hurley and Ben Marvin can contrast between the former's clean rapping with the latter's harsh rapping and screaming, while guitarist Tim "Timfy James" Beazley can come in and sing clean vocals for more contrast and/or to deliver a chorus.
• The Halo Effect's frontman Mikael Stanne normally sings purely with Harsh Vocals, but on "In Broken Trust" and "A Truth Worth Lying For" he sings the refrains in clean baritone.
• Another good example of the same thing is Ukrainian prog-death/djent band Jinjer and its vocalist Tatiana Shmailyuk, who does growl and clean vocals without a hitch.
• iwrestledabearonce did it with its frontwoman Courtney LaPlante, who could use death growl and then switch to more traditional singing in the middle of a song (usually on a single syllable).
• ill niño's Cristian Machado is another one-man example. He tends to use several voices rather than just two. He usually alternates between his distinct clean vocals and his signature mid-pitched screams but is also heard doing a whisper-like voice, rap-like speaking vocals, and even lower-pitched growls among others.
• In Flames and Dark Tranquillity have both experimented with this when having guest vocalists on their songs.
  • In Flames has a particularly shining example with their collab song with Pendulum, "Self vs Self". Pendulum vocalist Rob Swire sings highly melodically and polarly contrasts with Anders Friden's mid-range death growls.
• Issues contrasts the smooth, poppy R&B (and occasionally rapping) vocals of Tyler Carter with the harsh, aggressive screaming of Michael Bohn.
• James Hetfield provides a single-artist version on "Unforgiven". He growls the verse in his usual Harsh Vocals but sings the chorus with a clean and clear tenor.
• Maria Brink from In This Moment does both by herself as well.
• Insomnium does this on many songs, layering guitarist Ville Friman's clean vocals with lead vocalist Nillo Sevanen's death growls.
• Killswitch Engage popularized the use of this trope in metalcore.
• King Diamond is the patron saint and ur-example of this trope in another one-singer case, combining harsh semi-growly vocals with extremely girly falsetto vocals as early as the first Mercyful Fate album in 1983, and continuing to do so for all of his career till present. Some of his latest albums also contain actual female vocals.
• KMFDM's male vocals are usually either guttural or distorted, while the female vocalists sing clean.
• The French electro-industrial metal duo Krystal System.
• Australian deathcore band Make Them Suffer has lead vocalist Sean Harmanis, who does all the harsh vocals and death growls, while keyboardist Louisa Burton provides light female vocals in contrast.
• Manilla Road's vocal style alternates between Orc (rough, low, and heavy) and Blood Elf (high and clear).
• Megadeth: Dave Mustaine used layering to achieve a similar effect in the song Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! He sang it in a low register and then in a high register, and put them together. Don't ask him to sing live, unless you really want to be disappointed. Played straight with their remake of "A Tout Le Monde", which had Dave collaborating with Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil.
  • Mustaine also used a sort of Gravel and Sharp Bed of Rocks in the end verse of Five Magics, where he sang in his normal singing voice and then in an even sharper growl.
    • The growl was originally done by bassist David Ellefson but the remaster replaced his vocals with Mustaine's.
• Motörhead and Girlschool qualify anytime they collaborate. I mean, voices don't come much more gravely and raspy than Lemmy's, especially when compared to Kelly Johnson's smoother voice on their collaborative version of "Please Don't Touch".
• Chad Gray, lead singer of Mudvayne, typically switches between a melodic Perishing Alt-Rock Voice, a raspier singing voice, and a harsh roar.
• Australian Progressive Metal band Ne Obliviscaris are an interesting case in that, since they have two vocalists, they frequently have the soprano element overlaid with the gravel. Most non-Gothic Metal metal bands that use this trope use one at a time.
• Nonpoint is a strange example. Vocalist Elias Soriano alternates between harshly rapped vocals, screaming, smooth clean singing, edgy clean singing, and fast R&B style delivery. Whether he does it in a whole song or for one word depends on whatever mood the band is in.
• Onmyouza, a Japanese Prog Metal band that sings Entirely in Middle Ages JapaneseAoki Dokugan, or Lone Blue Eye He's singing as rough as he can.
• In a single singer example, Opeth's frontman Mikael Akerfeldt alternates between deep growling vocals and clear, clean singing.
• Otep has Soprano and Gravel vocals...both done by the lead singer, Otep Shamaya. Who is a woman.
• Ozzy Osbourne, while not having a particularly deep or gravelly singing voice, still provides raspy male vocals to compliment smoother female ones in at least two songs: "Close My Eyes Forever" is a duet with Lita Ford, and Ozzy and his daughter Kelly did a cover of the Black Sabbath ballad "Changes" and changed the lyrics to make the song about a father/daughter relationship as opposed to a romantic one. And it is heartbreaking.
• Queens of the Stone Age features Mark Lanegan, a singer who solely contributed vocals to albums such as Rated R and Songs for the Deaf. His gravelly tone even makes Josh Homme's voice sound smooth.
• In another male-and-male example, Rhapsody of Fire's CD-single release of "The Magic of the Wizard's Dream" featured a duet version of the album track between singer Fabio Lione (tenor) and Christopher Lee (bass—yes, that Christopher Lee)—in four different languages!
• Scar Symmetry does it with two male vocalists.
  • They started off with a single vocalist doing both the growling and the clean singing.
• Sculptured has the two-male variant of this going on in all of their albums. The leader of the band, Don Anderson, wanted to do vocals as well as guitar, but can't sing, so he has hired other vocalists to do clean vocals, which tend to be in the tenor range, and much more melodic than his growling.
• Shadows Fall achieves this on a number of songs, such as What Drives The Weak, Redemption and Still I Rise. Singer Brian Fair provides the harsher growling lead vocals, and guitarist Matt Bachand adds clean vocals, usually to the chorus.
• Slipknot's Corey Taylor switches between clean singing and hardcore shouting à la Phil Anselmo in most songs.
• Soilwork's Bjorn Strid alternates between smooth clean vocals and screams. He can pull off death growls, too, but rarely is heard doing it.
• System of a Down features the gravelly singer Serj Tankian and the smoother, softer guitarist Daron Malakian. Their vocal interplay is especially prevalent of Toxicity. On later albums such as Mezmerize/Hypnotize, Malakian stepped up to record his own songs while Serj provided occasional backing to those songs.
• Related to the Nightwish example above, Marco Hietala's band, Tarot, occasionally uses Marco's gravel with Tommi Salmela's gravel, making for a sort of echoing beast sound.
• Tengger Cavalry is a Folk Metal band that makes heavy use of throat-singing instead of normal Harsh Vocals, and frequently pairs it with cleans.
• It isn't their usual style, but Turisas do this in a few songs (e.g. Midnight Sunrise).
• The song "Gates Of Glory" by Twilight Force does a male-with-male version where Sabaton's lead singer, Joakim Brodén, uses his guttural voice to contrast with Christian Hedgren's much higher pitch.
• Early albums by Underoath had drummer Aaron Gillespie back up frontman Dallas Taylor's screams with spoken-word segments while occasionally throwing in screams of his own. In The Changing of Times, he graduated to actual singing, which he would continue after the replacement of Taylor with Spencer Chamberlain. Chamberlain would throw in some clean vocals of his own, eventually taking over both roles for Ø.
• Unexpect has three vocalists, all of whom contribute both clean and harsh vocals, but there is much interplay between Leilindel's ethereal soprano and the two guitarists' growling and shrieking.
• Unleash the Archers is an unusual example. They're a female-fronted Power Metal band, but singer Brittney Slayes is a contralto with a decidedly non-operatic register. They accent this with Harsh Vocals from her male bandmates.
• In an extremely rare example, Why She Kills features two women, one using harsh death growls while the other with an operatic soothing voice.
  • All-girl metal band Kittie does this as well. Lead vocalist Morgan Lander used to do mostly screaming, but then settled into both clean and guttural vocals.

Punk and Hardcore

• Davey Havok of AFI manages to achieve this himself on certain songs, such as Kill Caustic, Dancing Through Sunday, Death of Seasons and Miss Murder, and certain live performances of Totalimmortal and The Leaving Song Part II.
• "Baby I'm An Anarchist" sees Against Me! adding soprano vocals to their normal gravelly ones.
  • "Borne On The FM Waves Of The Heart" does this again, with Tegan Quin (Half of Tegan & Sara) providing the counterpoint to Laura Jane Grace's vocals.
• Alexisonfire uses the double male variant with one using a hardcore scream and the other with extremely melodic and soft voice.
  • In fact it's a triple male variant. The pretty voice, the psychotic voice, and the "really punk, but not screaming" voice of the lead guitarist.
• Atreyu have a harsh screamer for the lead vocals and their drummer provides the clean pop voice for their choruses.
• "And Then Came To Kill" by The Chariot has the frantic, psychotic scream of Josh Scogin placed alongside guest vocals from Paramore's Hayley Williams.
• The Clash, at the height of their creative power, featured Joe Strummer's growly, raspy baritone and Mick Jones' clear, reedy tenor often at interplay with each other.
• Commonly used by Fucked Up, whose main singer Pink Eyes has a guttural growl that contrasts with melodic tenor backup vocals from Concentration Camp or female guest vocalists. Used extensively in the Rock Opera David Comes to Life for duets between the two main characters, David and Veronica.
• Funeral for a Friend perfected this contrast in their song 'Red Is The New Black'. The intro has the singer on his own, the verses and middle eight have contrasting screaming and singing and then the chorus is pure singing with the rest of the band providing harmony. The chorus is so successful because it comes across like a breath of fresh air after the heavy verses.
• Hatred Surge has a variation with female high-pitched screaming and male growls.
• Hüsker Dü stood out with Bob Mould's raw, more punkish screaming and Grant Hart's tamer, more melodic singing.
• Both Jimmy Urine and Steve, Righ? of Mindless Self Indulgence exhibit large vocal ranges, with Urine in particular often jumping back and forth from a piercing falsetto to harsh growls in a matter of a few seconds.
• Protest the Hero has the lead singer using a high-pitched power metal style croon (which he will sometimes turn into a harsh scream or a falsetto) with one of the other members supplying backing death grunts. Also, in Kezia, an alto woman will do a lower harmony while Rody sings HIGHER than her.
• Inverted in the Punish Yourself song Dead White Skin, which features clean male vocals and the "gravel" coming from female growling vocals (provided by Candice from French metal band Eths).
  • X had a similar situation, with John Doe having a croon reminiscent of a '40s/'50s singer, and then-wife Exene Cervenka having a rough, punk growl.
• Rolo Tomassi: Eva Spence is a one-person example of this trope, as she can both scream and sing rather sweetly.
• Skillet uses this with the lead singer and the female drummer during their songs "Hero" and "Awake and Alive."
• Dancepunk/industrial duo Xibling consist of semi-ethereal, semi-seductive soprano Moriah West (who occasionally also does Harsh Vocals) and Darth Vader-esque basso Julien Thieme.

Alternative Rock

• A rare male example/inversion: one of the defining characteristics of Alice in Chains is the interplay between guitarist Jerry Cantrell's rather smooth voice and Layne Staley's famous strangled, nasal whine. They also play this straight on the songs "Got Me Wrong" and "Am I Inside" from the Sap EP, where they collaborate with Ann Wilson from Heart.
• Barenaked Ladies offered another double male contrast with Ed Robertson's subdued, straightforward vocals and Steven Page's eccentric, sometimes quasi-operatic tones.
  • From their holiday album Barenaked For The Holidays, they perform a medley of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "We Three Kings", joined by Sarah McLachlan, whose sweet clear voice contrasts nicely with Steven Page.
• Ritchie Blackmore usually doesn't sing in Blackmore's Night, but when he does, his voice contrasts with Candice's just right for this trope.
• Canadian rockers Calicose occasionally have their female lead singer aided by backing screams from their bassist.
• Ex-Chiodos frontman Craig Owens is/was most known for singing in a high falsetto, to then switch to gut-wrenching screams mid-song.
  • Their new frontman, Brandon Bolmer, is a less extreme example.
• Evanescence did this with their breakthrough single "Bring Me to Life" which contrasts Amy Lee's icy voice with Paul McCoy (of 12 Stones)'s more traditional rocker style.
  • She did this again with her duet with Seether on "Broken" where again her icy voice is contrasted with the extremely gravely and angst-filled tone of Shaun Morgan
  • The demo song "Lies" is another example of this style, where Amy is contrasted against the deep, ominous singing/growling of male vocalist Bruce Fitzhugh of Christian Metal band Living Sacrifice.
• Fightstar have on occasion used the breathy and strained voice of frontman Charlie Simpson with a much softer tone that is provided by the other guitarist Alex Westaway.
• FM Attack's "So Blue" features backing vocals by Shawn Ward's then five-year-old daughter Stella.
• The Harry Potter Heavy Mithril band Ministry Of Magic. Most notable in "Lily", which makes sense, seeing as it's about The Lost Lenore.
• "Beware of Light (Version 2)" by Helalyn Flowers featuring Chris Pohl of Blutengel.
• H.I.M. have played with this on occasion. Notably with their cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper".
• The Horrors' version of "Still Life" featuring Florence Welch invokes this trope. See for yourself.
• "Sometimes Always" by The Jesus and Mary Chain. The usual raspy sneer of William Reid is paired with the purer-sounding voice of Hope Sandoval.
• Peter & Leah from July Talk. Peter's gravel is especially coarse.
• Linkin Park have at times contrasted the smooth and rhythmic voice of Mike Shinoda with their lead singer Chester Bennington who uses an angst-filled scream and croon.
• German goth rock band Mono Inc. have guttural bass-baritone lead vocalist Martin Engler and soprano backing vocalist Katha Mia, the latter often using One-Woman Wail. "Boatman", featuring Ronan Harris of VNV Nation, is a trio variant.
• Neon Horse: Mark Salomon alternates between guttural and falsetto vocals (and a few other styles). On a few songs, thanks to overdubbing, he sings both at once.
• Pato Fu offered a very unusual case of this when their concerts had two Muppets, one deep-voiced and another high-pitched, as backing vocalists - or on lead once!
• Peter Gabriel's done this trope on more than one occasion; with Kate Bush in "Don't Give Up", Sinéad O'Connor in "Blood of Eden" and (in a male-male example) African vocalist Youssou N'Dour in "In Your Eyes". His live album "Secret World" features Paula Cole ("Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?", "I Don't Want to Wait") doing backup vocals for the whole concert.
• The Pixies used this trope with Black Francis' yowling and yelling vocals and Kim Deal's feathery voice.
  • A lot of Pixies songs do an instrumental version of this by contrasting Black Francis's acoustic or clean-sounding rhythm guitar with Joey Santiago's far more distorted and abrasive lead.
• Project Pitchfork's first few albums had Patricia Nigiani backing lead Peter Spilles, with whom she also founded the side project Aurora Sutra.
• A Skylit Drive does this with frontman Michael "Jag" Jagmin's high-pitched, ambiguously female-sounding voice, and bassist Brian White's guttural growls.
• Starflyer 59, after Jason Martin started singing deeper, all his backing singers have been falsetto.
• Stone Temple Pilots is a very rare example where there's one singer who does the contrasting high and low vocals. While generally Scott Weiland uses his loud, gravelly voice and high, smoother-sounding croon for different songs, in a couple of them (such as "Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart"), he uses both styles for a contrasting sound.
• Swans is another example. Michael Gira, with a dull monotone, and Jarboe, with operatic soprano, alternate lead vocals for different songs (although Gira leads in most of the songs). In some cases, they record different versions of the same song, with Gira singing in one version and Jarboe singing in another.
• U2 do this at least twice. "The Fly" contrasts between Bono's low, growly sorta vocals and The Edge's falsetto chorus. Inverted for "Numb": The Edge's droning Piss-Take Rap contrasts with Bono's high-pitched "fat lady vocals".
  • In 1993, Frank Sinatra and Bono recorded a new version of "I've Got You Under My Skin", with Bono in his high-pitch mode.
  • Later on, U2 recorded a new version of their hit song "One" as a duet with Mary J. Blige, her clear tenor vocals contrasting nicely with Bono's low growls.
• Vandal Moon's "Boy Drinks Girl" pairs soprano guest vocalist Nicollette Vaughn (of Nico & Grey) with deep baritone lead singer Blake Voss. Ditto "We Live Forever", featuring Leanne Kelly of New Spell.

Hip Hop and R&B

• DMX with any female singer who isn't Mary J. Blige. The two best examples are "You Don't Have to Go Home" with Monica and "Come Back in One Piece" with Aaliyah.
• Variations turn up with Eminem, as he's often rapping in a Creepy High-Pitched Voice. When he has softer-sounding women singing his hooks, they're usually lower-voiced than him.
• A number of Ja Rule's songs fit the bill, such as "Between Me and You" with Christina Milian, "Put It On Me" with Lil' Mo, and "Always On Time" with Ashanti.
• Janet likewise duets with Busta Rhymes in "What's It Gonna Be?"
• Jennifer Lopez's remix of "I'm Real" is completely reworked as a duet with rapper Ja Rule.
• Mariah Carey arguably codified this trope's presence in urban music with her remix to "Fantasy", a duet with Ol' Dirty Bastard. "Don't Stop" with Mystikal and "The One" with Bonecrusher invoke this trope as well.
• Mýa teamed up with both Pras of The Fugees and the aforementioned Ol' Dirty Bastard in "Ghetto Supastar".
• "Luv Me Luv Me" by Shaggy feat. Janet Jackson (replaced by Samantha Cole in the 2001 remix).
• Thalia and Fat Joe in "I Want You".
• Tia Thomas and Sir Mix-A-Lot's rendition of Gary Numan's "Cars".
• Timbaland in "Are You That Somebody?" and "Try Again" with Aaliyah, "Promiscuous" with Nelly Furtado, and "Return the Favour" with Keri Hilson.
• The duet version of Whitney Houston's "If I Told You That", featuring George Michael, is another gender-flipped example.
• Wyclef Jean in a number of songs, such as "Two Wrongs" with Claudette Ortiz and "Coast to Coast" with Angie Martinez.

Country

• The Ink Spots had this as their Characteristic Trope. Their songs were known to always start with a short country guitar intro, followed by a high tenor singing a swooping melody, followed by a gravelly deep bass doing a spoken word version of the melody of the first singer. Their Strictly Formula nature got them extensively parodied at the time, but they also sold enormous amounts of records.
• Johnny Cash did this quite a bit. First off, any time he sang with June Carter. Second, there are many, many songs on a number of the American Recordings albums with much smoother female vocalists (e.g. Field of Diamonds, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Father and Son, maybe a few others?)
• Any song featuring Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton qualifies, most famously "Islands in the Stream".

Other Styles

• Abney Park have an album, Aether Shanties, with numerous examples of this, such as "The Clockyard".
• The Band would occasionally pull this off with Levon Helm and Richard Manuel, the latter singing in a ghostly falsetto.
• The Beautiful South sometimes do this, depending on exactly who is singing.
• Beyond Good & Evil has the DomZ Leitmotif Dancing With DomZ. One half is sung in a mostly monotone female voice (though some parts get downright operatic,) the other half is chanted in a deep, snarling Voice of the Legion.
• Big & Rich has this, as Big Kenny often sings in a deep, theatrical bass while John Rich sings in a high wispy tenor.
• Chibi from The Birthday Massacre, while not reaching the level of gravel that most guys get to, manages to do this on her own in Blue pretty darned well.
• Celldweller, Blue Stahli, Subkulture, Voicians, Varien(sometimes), actually.... pretty much every artist on Klayton's label FiXT are one man examples of this, if they're not instrumental, alternating from ear piercing screams to soaring theatrical cleans.
• Chicago original members Terry Kath (gravel) and Peter Cetera (near-falsetto), particularly on "In The Country" and "Dialogue".
• The Communards' cover of ''Don't Leave me this way'' is a gender-flipped version of this trope, featuring the glorious falsetto of Jimmy Somerville of Bronski Beat fame, and the deep contralto of Sarah Jane Morris.
• Crash Test Dummies frequently uses this trope, with gravelly lead vocalist Brad Roberts contrasted by the much clearer Ellen Reid. Notable examples include "Superman's Song" and their version of "Good King Wenceslas" from their Christmas Album "Jingle All The Way".
• The Decemberists: Genderswapped as well in The Hazards Of Love, whenever William and the Forest Queen interact — for example, "The Wanting Comes In Waves / Repaid".
• Don Henley and Stevie Nicks in Leather and Lace.
• An entire album-long example is found in Lovage: Music to Make Love To Your Old Lady By, with Mike Patton and Jennifer Charles of The Elysian Fields singing duets on every track. Bonus: The album is produced by Dan the Automator. In live performances, they also tended to cover "I'm Real" by Jennifer Lopez and Ja Rule, which already fit this trope... and subverted expectations by having Mike Patton take Jennifer Lopez's part while Jennifer Charles took Ja Rule's.
• Industrial group Fockewolf consisted of soprano seductress Severina X Sol and baritone Rob Wilhelm, though they never actually dueted.
• The children's album Free To Be...You and Me has "Parents Are People" by Marlo Thomas and Harry Belafonte. The former sings the "mommies" verse with a clear Innocent Soprano voice, the latter sings the "daddies" verse with a raspy baritone, then the two sing together for the finale.
• Grand Funk Railroad: Don Brewer (gravel), Mark Farner (soprano).
  • Master mimics Triumph copied this, down to the respective roles being taken by the drummer and the guitarist.
• Happy Rhodes often sings both parts herself. Perfect example: 'Til The Dawn Breaks (which, incidentally, is not a duet by Kate Bush and Annie Lennox).
• Heilung play "amplified history". With two grades of gravel! Maria Franz provides clean female vocals, Kai Uwe Faust does harsh male vocals and throat singing.
• The Hillbilly Moon Explosion featuring Sparky My Love For Evermore.
• Home Free, with Tim Foust's basso profundo, vs. Rob Lindquist's and Austin Brown's high tenors.
• Humanwine does this on a number of their songs, such as Rivolta Silenziosa.
• This trope was probably the whole point of Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan working together in the first place.
  • Well, Mark Lanegan can do that to ANYBODY's voice. Song for the Deaf from the album Songs for the Deaf comes to mind. And this is Josh Homme singing, one of the perennial badasses of Alternative Rock. And Lanegan makes HIM sound like a baby...
• In some of Johann Sebastian Bach' s cantatas, there are duets consisting of a soprano (a soul) and a bass (the Vox Christi, or the voice of Jesus). Usually, the soprano part is sung by an adult woman, but occasionally a child singer may take up the soprano part. One example of this soprano-and-bass duet can be found in the third movement of J.S. Bach's cantata Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 140). As noted on the Call-and-Response Song entry for the cantata, this movement consists of a call-and-response structure.
• Another Gender-swapped example comes in the Joni Mitchell/Peter Gabriel duet "My Secret Place", where her voice is noticeably lower than his.
• Genderswapped in Whenever I Call You Friend with Kenny Loggins and Stevie Nicks. It's Stevie who has the deeper voice than Kenny.
  • Stevie tends to have a deeper voice than most of the males she sings with. For instance, Lindsey Buckingham and Tom Petty.
• The KLF's collaboration with Tammy Wynette in Justified and Ancient.
• "We Share Our Mother's Health" by The Knife: With the aid of studio effects, Karin Dreijer sings both the soprano and gravel parts.
• Lee Hazlewood (growly Oklahoma drawl) and Nancy Sinatra (innocent and pure, in contrast to the tough girl persona she adopted on her solo records) did a whole series of these duets in The '60s that are now considered Cult Classics.
• Louis Armstrong recorded an acclaimed series of jazz duets with Ella Fitzgerald. Possibly the Ur-Example.
• Man Man uses this on "Loot My Body" and "Whalebones", where Honus Honus' rough voice contrasts with the female backing vocals.
• Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne of The Move and Electric Light Orchestra. Wood sang with a clean operatic tone while Lynne sang with a slightly gravely rock style.
• Nephew's song "Blå & Black" offers a Male/Female inversion. The female singer has a very clear example of the Perishing Alt-Rock Voice, compared to Simon Kvamms's slightly higher and more emotional singing.
• In the climactic verse towards the end of Joanna Newsom's sixteen-minute epic "Only Skin," Newsom harmonizes with the baritone Bill Callahan.
• Nick Cave occasionally uses this, though the female voice is not always, strictly speaking, a soprano. When he plays "Where The Wild Roses Grow" on tour, he occasionally pulls out guitarist Blixa Bargeld to sing the female verses, and the contrast between the two voices is... less striking but rather more interesting.
  • Inverted on his cover of "What a Wonderful World" with Shane MacGowan.
• Played for Laughs in The Nostalgia Critic's and The Nostalgia Chick's "gender battle" song. The Sissy Villain is trying to be more masculine so he makes his high-ranged voice lower, and The Lad-ette is pretending to be feminine by thinning her voice out.
• Pretty common with The Oak Ridge Boys, where Joe Bonsall's high tenor contrasts with Richard Sterban's basso profundo. This is especially evident on their Signature Song "Elvira", which has Bonsall fronting the Vocal Tag Team and Sterban providing the song's iconic "oom papa mow mow"s.
• "Genesis of Destruction", a remixed version of the Final Boss theme from Final Fantasy IV composed by the OC Remix community, incorporates this in its stupendously awesome Rock Opera style.
• Gender Flipped with Patrick Wolf where he sings a duet with Eliza Carthy. He has the high parts while she gets the gravel on the song The Bachelor. This is the second time he does this as he also had a duet with Marianne Faithfull on his previous album.
• Pink Floyd would do this occasionally. While David Gilmour (with keyboardist Richard Wright on a handful of songs) would sing in a clear tenor, Roger Waters would sing in an intentionally abrasive or even threatening tone on some songs as contrast. This is heard most on The Wall, but is not heard on every song or album. The bulk of the vocals on The Dark Side of the Moon, for example, are clear and melodic often with Gilmour, Wright, and Waters singing harmonies.
• The Pogues' rendition of "Fairytale of New York". And while you're at it, make that "soprano and drunken gravel".
• The best way to tell the Reid brothers aka The Proclaimers apart is through their singing voices. Craig (the usual lead vocalist) sings with a clean tenor voice, whilst Charlie (the guitarist) sings with a nasal growl.
• Queen does this from time to time, especially with their more operatic songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" from A Night at the Opera and "Seven Seas of Rhye"; with lead singer Freddie Mercury alternating between a harsh, growling tenor and a clean, piercing falsetto paired with the much smoother-voiced Brian May.
  • The starkest example would be Mercury's duet with Montserrat Caballé in "Barcelona".
  • Roger Taylor's raspy husky voice paired with Freddie also counts. Note that Roger has also sung way higher and softer than Freddie sometimes, therefore inverting the roles.
• Ray Charles and Betty Carter's duet on "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is a perfect example. Charles's low growl and Carter's ethereal, floating, ultra-high voice are in stark contrast. Interestingly, Carter was known for having an extremely wide vocal range.
• Rod Stewart's "Every Picture Tells a Story". Stewart has a pretty high voice, but he is the gravel when he duets with soprano Maggie Bell on the song.
• The Rolling Stones (Band): "Gimme Shelter" features Merry Clayton is the female vocalist.
• Sarah Brightman does this in a lot of her earlier duets. Mostly the ones with Chris Thompson.
• "Haunted", performed by Shane MacGowan and Sinéad O'Connor (or Cait O'Riordan, depending on the recorded version). Less Soprano And gravel and more like "Soprano & Rusted Pig-Iron". And, above, with his duet with Nick Cave.
• Gender Flipped with Shiny Toy Guns with the first track of their second album, "When Did This Storm Begin?".
• The Street & Babe Shadow employ this with Paige Stark and Luke Paquin, although not as much on the only song of theirs on YouTube.
• "Land of Roses" by Suicide Commando feat. Charlotte Nuytens is a rare aggrotech/hellektro industrial example.
• Supertramp's lead vocals during their peak of popularity were provided by the bluesier, lower-pitched keyboardist Rick Davies and the high tenor vocals of guitarist/keyboardist Roger Hodgson. When Roger moved to a solo career in 1984, auxiliary guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Mark Hart provided Roger's parts live (and sometimes the second lead vocal parts in the studio), but in a lower-pitched (and raspier) voice, but one still higher than Rick's.
• Tendon Levey manages to do this on his own for most of his discography, pairing together his ethereal and androgynous high tenor and his sinister baritone to unique effect.
• Tom Waits does this when he duets with pretty much anyone who doesn't have throat cancer. In particular, he duets with Bette Midler on "I Never Talk to Strangers" from Foreign Affairs and has an entire album dueting with Crystal Gayle on the soundtrack to One from the Heart. Heck, his duets with Keith Richards even qualify.
• Twenty One Pilots used a one-man example in songs where Blurryface appears, such as Stressed Out. Tyler sings both normally and has a deeper, distorted tone to represent Blurryface.
• Peter Hammill of Progressive Rock band Van der Graaf Generator pulls this off all by himself.
• Played for Laughs and combined with Harsh Vocals in the Vocaloid song "The Highschool Girl Next to Me".
• Sir Harry Bowens (near-falsetto) and Sweet Pea Atkinson (gravel), best known for their work with Was (Not Was).
• The amusing contrast between Willie Nelson's nasal drawl and Julio Iglesias's smooth but heavily-accented vocal probably played a major role in "To All The Girls I've Loved Before" becoming a hit.
  • Willie Nelson would later record a cover of Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up" with Sinead O'Connor. She would also perform alongside Van Morrison, singing his hit "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?"

Theatre

• In Anais Mitchell's Hadestown, Persephone is sung by Ani DiFranco, and Hades is sung by folk singer Greg Brown. Particularly apparent in their duet "How Long", but also appears with Mitchell (as Eurydice) and Brown in "Hey Little Songbird", with Brown's voice often coming out as a literal growl. Eva Noblezada and Patrick Page (the original Broadway performers) are also a great example.
• Frequently used in Jesus Christ Superstar with Annas and Caiaphas, especially as performed by Kurt Yaghjian and Bob Bingham in the 1973 film.
• Rampant in Little Shop of Horrors, notably in any of Audrey II's numbers where the R&B baritone-voiced plant duets with tenor Seymour or soprano Audrey, as well as Now (It's Just The Gas), a duet between Seymour's tenor and Orin's usually gravelly baritone.
• My Fair Lady and several musicals following it (The Music Man, Camelot, Baker Street) had a soprano principal actress playing opposite a rough-voiced actor permitted to speak through most of his songs: Eliza and Higgins in My Fair Lady, Guenevere and Arthur in Camelot, and Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street. The closest thing My Fair Lady has to a duet of this type is "The Rain in Spain," which becomes a trio when Pickering joins in.
• Cirque du Soleil's Volta soundtrack pairs Swedish-Finnish soprano Camilla Bäckman with gravel-baritone Broadway actor Darius Harper.
• Wonderful Town has an unusual all-female version in Eileen and Ruth. Eileen is a classic high-voiced ingenue and actually sings coloratura soprano in "Conversation Piece," while Ruth's vocal line sounds an octave lower in some places, being originally written for the gravelly voice of Rosalind Russell.

Video Games

• Disco Elysium opens each day with a dream sequence in which your Ancient Reptilian Brain and Limbic System talk to you. Ancient Reptilian Brain has about the gruffest voice ever, and Limbic System talks in a gasping, high-pitched voice. When you sing karaoke, you can have either Ancient Reptilian Brain do it (in a growling spoken word piece, as a sort of pastiche of Tom Waits), or Limbic System take over (in a wheedling, off-key falsetto).
• Sonic Adventure: Knuckles's Image Song "Unknown from M.E." appears to attempt this with only a male voice, alternating between a gravelly voice whose lyrics describe how tough Knuckles is and smoother, higher-pitched lyrics that describe his mission and milieu in poetic terms.

Other

• Befitting the other musical motifs in Banjo-Kazooie, Chris Sutherland's Voice Grunting for the title duo features warm and jovial guffaws for Banjo's voice and guttural squawks for Kazooie.
• The 1936 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer short "Every Sunday" had the rich, jazzy vocals of a young Judy Garland duet with the classical soprano vocals of Deanna Durbin.
• In the Animated Adaptation of Frog and Toad, the title characters are voiced by Will Ryan, in a high, smooth tenor, and Hal Smith, with a lower, more gravelly tone.
• Brazilian MTV had the show Garganta & Torcicolo, starring two monsters who were this trope in reverse order - sample here - whose names translate to Throat and Wry Neck. And both made by the same voice actor!
• Hazbin Hotel: Angel and Husk's Pep-Talk duet "Loser, Baby" has the bright, high-pitched tenor Angel (the soprano) contrasting the rough and deep voice of Husk (the gravel).
• The Merrie Melodies short I Haven't Got A Hat has this in its title song sung by the twin puppies Ham(Bernice Hansen) and Ex(Billy Bletcher).
• The classic "Mahnah Mahnah" routine from The Muppets is an example, as is The Muppet Show opening theme with the female Muppets singing the first verse and the deepest-voiced male Muppets singing the second.
• "Come Wayward Souls" from Over the Garden Wall has the gravelly voice of The Beast backed up by a high Creepy Child chorus.
• "Anarchy" by Ironmouse and Bubi of VShojo has the former as the soprano and the latter as the gravel. Somewhat zigzagged as some of Ironmouse's lines are squeaky and raspy, while some of Bubi's lines are smooth-toned.
• One clip on World's Dumbest... has a guy trying to do both parts while singing "The Star-Spangled Banner". He fails at both.

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