Basic Trope: Someone sings so badly that it sounds inauthentic compared to actual bad singing.
- Straight: Alice sings the National Anthem of Tropestan at a Calvinball game. She lets out a high pitched wail that makes the crowd hold their ears in pain.
- Exaggerated: Alice's incoherent shrieking is a Brown Note that causes serious injury (or death) to everyone there and shatters glass miles away from the stadium.
- Downplayed: Alice's singing is a realistic portrayal of amateur singing, but with an occasional screech.
- Justified:
- Alice doesn't have much experience singing and does not take voice lessons.
- Alice needs accompaniment to find the right key; she can't do it on her own.
- Alice just has a bad voice in general.
- Alice has smoked for years (whether she still does or not), and that ruined her voice.
- Alice has Stage Fright.
- Alice is dehydrated.
- Alice is trying (or being forced) to sing outside of her voice range (ex. an alto trying to sing a soprano part)
- Alice is sick.
- Alice is deliberately singing badly or just putting in zero effort.
- Alice doesn’t know the lyrics and is reading off a transcript for the first time.
- Alice is singing in a language that she doesn't know very well, leading to her mispronouncing words and not getting the tone correct.
- Inverted: Alice is a great singer.
- Subverted:
- Alice lets out a horrible screech, then clears her throat, and her singing sounds nice.
- Alice is singing a farce song.
- Double Subverted:
- …For a few seconds, only to start screeching again.
- …the farce song isn't meant to be that awful.
- Parodied:
- Alice's singing is terrible, but everyone acts like it's the most beautiful thing they've ever heard.
- Alice is told "you couldn't carry a tune if it was in a bucket". She then goes on to be an excellent singer, as long as she holds her bucket with her.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice's singing is great, sometimes it's not.
- Averted:
- Alice doesn't sing
- Alice is a pretty decent singer.
- Enforced:
- Rule of Funny
- Someone is trying to create a Parody Sue, since a perfect singing voice is one of the most Common Mary Sue Traits.
- Lampshaded: 'Yeesh, she cannot sing.'
- Invoked: Bob forces Alice to practice her voice directly before the big performance, to the point where she is too hoarse to sing.
- Exploited: Alice's signing is used as a Cacophony Cover-Up.
- Defied: Alice takes voice lessons in order to improve her singing before the big day.
- Discussed: "You're a great singer, but that last guy? That voice would make Gandhi want to hit him!"
- Conversed: "No-one sings that badly in real life, right?"
Back to Hollywood Tone-Deaf. Ah! My ears!
