Round 9: Baronessa vs BiDS (337 views)

[Steve]

This is Baronessa v Breakfast in D-sharp in Round Nine of the Clip-Off. You have five days to submit your clips, and until 23:59 EST Saturday, February 18 to vote. February 19 is the Results Day.

Round Nine is the Grand Finale round, in which clips may be up to five minutes long. There are three categories - for the Free Choice category, you can use any of your singers, regardless of if you've used them in the first two. However, as a bonus twist, if you use all of your singers across all three categories and sweep, you get a bonus +1.0.

The categories for Round Nine are:

1. Best Live Performance: A live vocal take done during a live show, a stage show or live in studio, etc.
2. Best Studio Performance: A studio recording of a vocal performance, which may include backing and/or harmony singing.
3. Free Choice: A clip you thought was interesting in terms of its vocal that you just really want to show off; you can use a song here that you were perhaps saving for a category but didn't get to use.

Vote here.

Current Vote Count: 5

[Baronessa]

SPOILER: Click to show

{Best Live Performance: Sade - "Is It a Crime?" Inglewood, California 2001}

2:47 - 3:42, 4:38 - 5:31, 6:28 - 7:47. Sade and the band are taking turns being smooth, taking their time coming together for the ending. This performance shows off pretty much all facets of Sade's voice and they're all very tastefully employed, as is the mode of operation we all know and love her for.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Best Studio Performance: Lee Aaron - "Barely Holdin' On"}

:41 - 2:40, 3:01 - 4:29. Since I used the last verse-chorus for sustained notes last year, I thought it was appropriate to save this song for the final round where you get to experience it in full. Perhaps not so much in terms of range span, but in dynamics, emotion and delivery this is easily Lee's best performance to me. She gets more distorted in her vocal throughout the song, by the end of which she's sounding like Dio on some Strange Highways level shit. It is definitely her heaviest vocal ever, and one of the heaviest short of death growling I've heard by an AFAB singer for that matter.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Free Choice: Alison Moyet - "More"}

:11 - 3:16. Alison spans A2 - E5 - A5 in a more cool, calm and collected style than usual. If I recall correctly this was the clip that got this forum excited about Alison in the first place, so I think it makes sense to use it here as a sort of coming full circle type of moment. Poetic that Celice is also my opponent, as she was the first to share Alison's material with TRP.

[Breakfast in D-sharp]

SPOILER: Click to show

{Best Live Performance}One of the nice things about this tournament is that it can serve as a good introduction to the singers' various qualities, so it would be remiss of me to finish without including an entry from Thomas Quasthoff's substantial classical repertoire.
This gently emotive aria impresses in different ways from his jazz singing, showcasing smooth legato, strong vibrato and subtly expressive dynamics and tones.
O Du Mein Holder Abendstern (Song to the Evening Star) from Wagner’s Tannhäuser
0:36-4:22 (the rest is instrumental)

SPOILER: Click to show

{English translation in case anyone cares}Dusk covers the land like a premonition of death,
Wraps the valley in her dark mantle;
The soul that longs for those heights
Dreads to take its dark and awful flight.
Then you appear, O loveliest of stars,
And shed your gentle light from afar;
Your sweet glow cleaves the twilight gloom,
And as a friend you show the way out of the valley.
O you, my fair evening star,
Gladly have I always greeted you:
Greet her, from the depths of this heart,
Which has never betrayed her,
Greet her, when she passes,
When she soars above this mortal vale
To become a holy angel there!

English Translation © Richard Stokes

SPOILER: Click to show

{Best Studio Performance}It's no wonder that this became Lorraine's signature song, with its extra helpings of pretty much everything she excelled at - the extensive use of melismas, soft start, escalating intensity, quick flips between impassioned raspy wails and clean head voice, dynamics, emotion, range, stamina... all the things. 
Whole song (vocal starts about 0:12). 

SPOILER: Click to show

{Free Choice}Buzz Clifford, from 1969 - they don't make them like this anymore. If you're hoping the song will be as eccentric as the title "Hawg Frog" suggests, I don't think you'll be disappointed (and don't worry if you can't quite make out all the words - I don't think it would make much more sense anyway!) I probably ought to have entered this for the harsh/ heavy/ distorted category (I suppose the weird lows could count as distorted as well as the gritty higher vocals) but I wanted to save it for the final round since his cleaner tones are also cool af, and the whole thing's fun as well as an impressive showcase of range and versatility, but if a perfect category for this existed, I think it would be something like "Best Batshit Bonkers Performance". Enjoy!
Whole song (vocal starts about 0:11)