Vocal Evolution / Music

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Alternative/Indie

• Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock used to sing in a high-pitched pop-punkish manner, not unlike that of Dexter Holland. Thanks to a combination of heavy alcohol and drug use, his voice became quite a bit deeper and huskier as the years went by. Listen to The Lonesome Crowded West and then listen to We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. It's hard to believe this is the same guy singing on both albums!
• Craig Finn started his career in Lifter Puller with a very rough-hewn, motormouth, speak-singing style relying on wordplay and alliteration. After starting The Hold Steady, he increasingly moved more towards straightforward singing, culminating in taking formal singing lessons circa Heaven Is Whenever, which he demonstrated on Teeth Dreams and his solo albums.
• Daniel Johnston's voice became rather hoarse by the late '90s, due to him being a chain smoker.
• Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker's vocal delivery changed drastically between the early pre-album demos and the released stuff. The early songs had a more booming and slightly nasal quality with lots of vibrato before evolving into the current more resonant and higher-pitched vocals.
• Singer Adam Turla's voice seems to get lower on each Murder by Death album; the most noticeable difference is between their second and third albums, Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them? and In Bocca al Lupo when his singing voice drops almost a full octave.

Alternative Rock

• Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys started out with a rather gritty Blues-Rock voice, which has lost most of its bluesy tone over time. Listen to The Big Come Up from the Keys, and then Dan's solo album Waiting on a Song and the change is very obvious.
  • He'll veer back into old-school off-key and snotty territory if he's downed a few before a performance, regardless of which band he's playing with at the time.
• Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Audioslave boasted a four-octave range at his peak during the early '90s and could regularly belt out very high notes like they were nothing. After Soundgarden disbanded for the first time, Cornell underwent a dark period involving heavy substance abuse that most certainly affected his voice and made him decide to sing in a generally lower, more soulful manner, a style he kept using for the rest of his life. By the time Soundgarden reunited, years of singing, aging, and drug addiction reduced his effective vocal range. While he was still able to hit high notes, he wasn't able to do so with the control he had in his prime.
• Daniel Johns of Silverchair has shown heavy changes from 1995's Frogstomp to 2007's Young Modern. Half of this can be due to the fact that he was only 15 when the former was recorded (granted he already sounded like a grown man when singing) while the other half is due to the band's stylistic change.
• Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis used to mostly rap and occasionally sing. These days, he mostly sings and occasionally raps. Kiedis has also developed a much softer singing style since the time of Californication, but especially starting with By The Way. Many fans feel that he does not put enough energy into his vocals anymore.
  • Alternatively, it seems that Anthony Kiedis puts all of his energy while singing into staying in tune, as he still raps the way he did back in the 80s.
• Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan's singing voice transitioned from garage-y sneer to a deeper, fuller baritone starting with the band's 1989 album Buzz Factory, with the ballad "Grey Diamond Desert" from 1988's Invisible Lantern teasing that direction.
• Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday has one of the most notable vocal evolutions in emo music, partly also because of the band's musical shift. The first two albums has him mostly shouting in a high, nasal voice with inflections typical of what emo music had back in the day. Louder Now would find Adam deepening his voice (along with adapting a grittier tone to his voice), along with actually singing. Starting with New Again his voice would become more and more reminiscent of a Perishing Alt-Rock Voice (along with inflections similar to that of a heartland rock band or an eighties singer), to the point where today it seems hard to believe that this is the same guy that sang "Cute Without the E."
• Local H frontman Scott Lucas sang in a much higher register and did a lot of screaming in the band's recordings, but after his vocal cords were damaged in a 2013 mugging in Russia, he started singing in a considerably lower voice and, while still capable of some impressive screaming, toned down his delivery in general.
• Trent Reznor's singing voice has gotten noticeably lower over the years, especially in the slower songs. Compare him doing "Hurt" in the mid-'90s to him singing it 10 years later and you'll see a huge difference. He also does less of the screamy parts as time goes on, to the point where he practically leaves the chorus of "Head Like a Hole" to the backing band.
• Coheed and Cambria: Claudio Sanchez's vocals sound much higher pitched in the first album (and some of the second) compared to what comes later on.
• Scott Stapp of Creed was infamous for his nonstop yarling during the band's heyday. After the band's second breakup, he toned down the yarling and started to use other expressive ways of singing.
• R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe was known in the early '80s for his murky singing voice, which made him notoriously indecipherable when combined with his affinity for Word Salad Lyrics. During production of Lifes Rich Pageant, producer Don Gehman got Stipe to start singing more clearly, and the result is that his voice got more articulate and higher-pitched with each successive album; he sounds substantially younger on 2011's Collapse into Now (released when he was 51) than he did on 1983's Murmur (released when he was 23).
• Christian Post-Grunge band Kutless's lead vocalist Jon Micah Sumrall had a much scratchier, lower voice, and sounded a lot like Scott Stapp from Creed on the band's debut album. He sounded like Scott to a point where if you were half-asleep, you'd mistake the two (the chorus for 'Tonight' is a good example). On the second album and beyond, his voice was higher and much smoother, probably because he wanted the Creed comparisons to stop.
• Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder was the Trope Codifier for Yarling in the 90s and also used to sing in a scratchy way similar to Kurt Cobain during that decade. Beginning in the mid-late 2000s, he no longer yarls like he used to in favor of mostly singing with his natural baritone voice, which became deeper and slightly hoarse due to years of smoking, and he can no longer hit very high notes without audibly straining himself.
• Scott Weiland's vocals on the Stone Temple Pilots debut Core was pretty much straight up a low baritone yarling style perfectly matching the heavy sound of the album. Purple contained this with a few exceptions. When their third album came along though, he noticeable developed a much higher voice, which also occurred in Velvet Revolver. He still occasionally came back to the old style though (mostly on their 4th album).

Comedy

• Jim Bellmore of Da Yoopers got considerably deeper and older-sounding over time. Compare "We're Still Rockin'" (1995) and "Coffee wit da Boys" (2018).
• Ray Stevens originally sang in a high, goofy, somewhat nasal voice in the 1960s. By the 1970s, he still used the nasal voice on novelty songs and used a more traditional delivery on ballads that still came across as rather strident. Come the early 1980s, he dropped all affectation and just sang both serious and silly material in a smoother baritone.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic originally sang in a nasal, grating shout most of the time, but his delivery noticeably toned down and matured over the years without completely losing its "silly" edge. Some of this was due to him taking vocal lessons from Lisa Popeil after he noticed that he kept wearing out his voice in concert.

Country

• Trace Adkins originally sang in a somewhat restrained baritone and even went falsetto a few times (such as "Lonely Won't Leave Me Alone"). Starting with Chrome, it evolved into a bass-baritone with a more varied delivery, most notably a macho swagger on his up-tempos and a lighter delivery on his ballads.
• Gary Allan was a lot less raspy on his first few albums. Around the release of Tough All Over (a Creator Breakdown fueled by his wife's suicide), his voice became more gravelly, and he began using falsetto more often.
• Jessica Andrews, who was 15 when she put out her first single in the late '90s, sounded reasonably sweet and girly throughout her first two albums (the second of which included her only big hit, "Who I Am"). But as early as 2003, she started to develop a huskiness, which was especially evident on her 2006 single "Everything".
• Rodney Atkins started out singing in a smooth voice with heavy vibrato, similar to Roy Orbison, on his 1997 single "In a Heartbeat". After a long hiatus, he returned in 2003-2004 as a dead ringer for then-labelmate Tim McGraw on Honesty. Following a second hiatus, he came back again with a higher, more gravelly delivery from If You're Going Through Hell onward. The change in tone over time has also coincided with him finding himself artistically.
• The Bellamy Brothers' voices were a lot higher on their early songs, such as "Let Your Love Flow", in which they also seem to slip in and out of a quasi-Latino accent ("Let your love fly, like a bird on the weeng…") Only three years later, with "If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me", their voices dropped into their more familiar registers.
• Lee Brice's voice has gotten softer and less forceful over time. His Breakthrough Hit "Love Like Crazy" had him belting a few high notes with considerable force, but this gradually softened on I Don't Dance and especially on his fourth, Self-Titled Album.
• Mary Chapin Carpenter's voice got a lot softer and more weathered in the 21st century. The change is evident as early as "Almost Home" in 1999.
• Johnny Cash's voice got a lot more ragged and shaky after he developed Parkinson's in the late '90s.
• Kenny Chesney is a pretty extreme example. He started out with a high, twangy voice as was common for most male country singers in the mid-1990s. By the end of the decade, his twang was starting to relax, and his voice became mellower. Since about No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems, it's very mellow and almost completely devoid of twang (although he still sings out of his nose, and often sounds as if he has a really bad cold). Just listen to the re-recordings of his mid-90s songs "The Tin Man" and "Fall in Love" on his first Greatest Hits Album in 2001 versus the originals, and the change even in that timespan is noticeable.
• Billy Ray Cyrus did a lot of yarling on his earlier albums but toned down his delivery around Trail of Tears.
• When Radney Foster decided to re-record his 1992 debut album Del Rio, TX 1959 in 2012, he found that many of the songs were too high for him to sing, and thus lowered the key on a few. He told Country Weekly that he noticed his voice deepening once he hit his 40s.
• Given that Billy Gilman released his first single when he was only 12, the change was only inevitable. Compare "One Voice" (recorded in 2000) to "Everything and More" (2005) to "I've Changed" (2009). He's still a tenor, but the change from a typical childlike voice to the more mature delivery he developed in his 20s is very striking.
• Alan Jackson also became deeper and less whiny throughout the 2000s. He's also lost a fair bit of range and sounded rather weak on "Long Way to Go" in 2011.
• George Jones has had both evolution and decay. His voice was much higher on early songs such as "White Lightning", and got gradually deeper and warmer over time, even as early as "She Thinks I Still Care" in The '60s. With his hitmaking days pretty much behind him in The '90s, his voice became less expressive and more weathered, thanks to both old age (he died at age 81 in 2013) and drug and alcohol abuse at the peak of his career.
  • According to this interview with Billboard, he noticed a second change when he gave up drugs and alcohol in 1999: he could no longer hit lower notes like the ones on "The One I Loved Back Then", but he could once again reach the higher notes he sang on earlier songs.
• On his first four albums (barring his first release "Indian In-Laws" b/w "Swingin'"), Cledus T. Judd usually sang in a slightly off-key, nasal twang that one critic described as "Junior Samples on helium". Around the release of Just Another Day in Parodies (his first album for Monument Records after leaving Razor & Tie), he began using his normal voice more frequently, while the more twangy affectations became more subdued and stayed in-key.
  • Judd also parodied this trope on "My Voice", a spoof of Child Popstar Billy Gilman's "One Voice". In the parody, his voice gets deeper and deeper throughout the song (the last verse by way of studio tweaking), and he laments that he can no longer sing in the childish upper range.
• Wynonna Judd started out with a sweet, girlish alto when she was one-half of The Judds. By "One Hundred and Two" (the Judds' last Top 10 hit, in 1991), her voice had started getting a little deeper. When she went solo a year later, she began singing in a much fuller, throatier, husky contralto. Her voice still managed to get even deeper yet in the late '90s-early 2000s, adding Elvis Presley-esque quavers and growls that often result in her sounding like a man.
• Tracy Lawrence's voice got noticeably higher and thinner around the release of his Self-Titled Album in 2002, eleven years into his career. It's most obvious on the re-recordings of his greatest hits on Then & Now: The Hits Collection in 2005.
• Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts has always had a very high and nasal voice, but on their first three albums, his delivery was a lot lighter and more relaxed. Once Dann Huff took over as their producer on Me and My Gang, Huff's notoriously bombastic production all but forced Gary to become equally bombastic just to be heard over all the noise. As a result, he quickly devolved into extremely whiny, high-pitched, melismatic delivery that sometimes spilled into an an ear-splitting screech (most notoriously the Title Scream on "Bob That Head"). Starting with their move from now-closed Lyric Street Records to Big Machine, the production finally dialed back down a bit, while Gary's voice more-or-less toned down to where it was before.
• Martina McBride started out with an above-average soprano, only belting when the song called for it (most notably on "Independence Day"). Starting with "A Broken Wing", her sound became increasingly pop-oriented, and she began relying more and more on bellowing out melismatic Incredibly Long Notes that showed off her upper range á la Céline Dion. While she's since reined in the belting a little bit, she did another very odd switch in mid-2011 with a chirpy, thin, almost Taylor Swift-esque delivery on "Teenage Daughters" (her first release for Universal Republic after 19 years at RCA) even though the rest of the corresponding album (Eleven) has her singing in her usual style. Concert footage from The New '20s shows that the belting has finally taken its toll on her voice, reverting her to a softer delivery more akin to her early albums.
• Mindy McCready's voice was very soft and weathered on her 2010 album I'm Still Here compared to the sharper, more youthful tone of her heyday. This was most likely due to years of drug abuse.
• Richie McDonald of Lonestar changed from a fairly average tenor voice to whiny over-singing once the band shifted its sound from solid country-pop to Power Ballads and strident "family"-oriented songs starting with "Amazed" in 1999. Like Rascal Flatts above, they, too, were brought to their sound by way of Dann Huff.
  • Former bassist and occasional lead singer John Rich started out with a high, somewhat twangy voice, as heard on "Heartbroke Every Day" (the only single on which he sang lead). After he was fired from the band in 1998, he became much more breathy and less twangy on the solo album Underneath the Same Moon, which he cut in 1999 but did not release until 2006. After he and Big Kenny formed Big & Rich in 2003, he kept the breathy tone for ballads, but his voice on up-tempos is still noticeably lower and less twangy than it was in Lonestar. Given that singing in Big & Rich requires him to harmonize with the crooning bass-baritone of Big Kenny, it's likely that he changed his vocal tone on purpose.
• Similarly, Reba McEntire became increasingly melismatic and theatrical throughout the late '80s-early '90s, developing a very twangy, vowel-bending style. Around 1996, she began singing in a softer, more straightforward voice and almost never stretches out single words into twenty-some syllables. This was likely a deliberate choice to reduce vocal strain.
• Tim McGraw's singing voice became lower and far less whiny starting with Set This Circus Down.
• Ronnie Milsap's voice started out more gritty and bluesy, suitable for the R&B music he did early in his career before undergoing a Genre Shift to country-pop. Around the release of his Breakthrough Hit "Pure Love" in 1974, his voice hit its usual tone and largely stayed the same even as late as "Summer Number Seventeen" in 2013. This occurred a second time on his 2019 album Duets, where his renditions of his previous hits show a considerable age-induced weakness.
• John Michael Montgomery's voice was a lot higher on his debut single "Life's a Dance" before settling into his familiar baritone. Starting in the 2000s, his voice continued to deepen a little. The change is most noticeable on his 2008 album Time Flies, where he sounds almost identical to his brother Eddie (of Montgomery Gentry).
• Craig Morgan has gotten increasingly loud over time, starting with "Little Bit of Life". This song also started his bad habit of exaggerating his twang ("A little bit of me and yeeoooooouuuu doin' all right"). "Love Remembers" has a nearly operatic Incredibly Long Note at the end, and nearly all of "International Harvester" and "Bonfire" are shouted instead of sung.
• Joe Nichols' voice was a lot higher on his little-known 1996 debut album, recorded when he was 19. By the time he released "The Impossible" in 2002, it had deepened to the range it is now.
• Buck Owens' phrasing became very slurred after he had throat cancer removed in 1993.
• Robert Ellis Orrall's voice was somewhat thin on his 1983 pop single "I Couldn't Say No", but became more gruff on his only country hit, "Boom! It Was Over" a decade later. On the latter, his singing voice sounds a lot like Huey Lewis.
• Over time, Brad Paisley's voice has gotten much softer and lower, also losing the slight twang. Time Well Wasted seems to be the approximate turning point.
• Eddy Raven had a more quavering, Elvis Presley-esque delivery on early songs such as "Good News, Bad News" before developing his more relaxed, Cajun-flavored delivery in The '80s.
• This happened to Marty Roe, lead singer of the Country Music band Diamond Rio. Starting in the early 2000s, the other band members began noticing that Roe had a terrible time staying on-pitch. Things got so bad that they tried employing pitch correction software, lowering the key of certain songs, and even having keyboardist Dan Truman sing lead a few times, but all of this was unsuccessful. The issue was later determined to be caused by him over-compensating for minor hearing loss, but a vocal coach was eventually able to restore his voice more-or-less to where it was in the '90s.
• As the lead singer of Boy Howdy, Jeffrey Steele had only a slightly gruff voice. By the time he went solo in the early 2000s, his voice became a lot more raw, and he began shouting a lot more.
• As the 18-year-old performer of the novelty track "Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor," Joe South sounded every bit his age. He would switch to a lower singing voice in the early '60s as a country singer, adding some soulful swagger to it in the late '60s as he broke out on the pop charts with songs like "Games People Play" and "Walk a Mile in My Shoes."
• Aaron Tippin began with an almost comically heavy, nasal twang. But starting with "That's as Close as I'll Get to Loving You", he began singing in a deeper, less nasal register with vibrato that made him sound somewhat like Marty Robbins. Even when he does go back into twang mode (e.g. "Kiss This"), it's still way deeper and less exaggerated.
• Randy Travis sounded a lot more swaggering and forceful, almost like a cross between Conway Twitty and Waylon Jennings, on his 1978 album Randy Traywick (his real name). By the '80s, he evolved into the deep, reedy bass-baritone for which he would be forever known. His voice also started sounding more weathered and aged at the Turn of the Millennium, which was evident as early as "Three Wooden Crosses" in 2003.
• Shania Twain started to sound more strained on the new songs on her 2004 Greatest Hits Album. She later revealed that this was due to a combination of Lyme disease and dysphonia (personal stress tightening her vocal cords so much that she couldn't sing or even speak). As a result, she went on a long hiatus which also resulted in her sorting out a lot of personal issues. After she relearned how to sing, she still sounded very strained on "Today Is Your Day" in 2011, and 2017's "Life's About to Get Good" has her using a more sleepy delivery with vast amounts of Auto-Tune.
• Conway Twitty was always a natural baritone but had often sung in a higher pitch during his time as a late-'50s rock 'n' roller. ("Only Make Believe," "Mona Lisa," etc.)
• Carrie Underwood has gone from belting everything to a more dynamic range. Some songs have her singing more softly (e.g. "Temporary Home" and "Mama's Song"), and she uses a raw, growling tone on "Good Girl".
• Hank Williams Jr. already sounded like a grown man even at the age of 14, but his voice grew much deeper and more swaggering over time. Compare the smoother delivery he takes on "Eleven Roses" in 1972 to his later reputation for macho party anthems such as "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight".
• On her first two albums, Gretchen Wilson occasionally lapsed into an overdone, screeching tone (most notably on "All Jacked Up"). She became a little more relaxed on her third album, then became noticeably more raspy on her fourth album (which was self-released).

Electronic

• The Frozen Autumn's Arianna, otherwise known as Froxeanne, has evolved to a deeper, Siouxsie-esque voice in their more recent material.
• Decoded Feedback's Marco Biagiotti original performed Harsh Vocals in the tradition of the Hellektro subgenre, but on their recent material, he has mostly changed to a darkwave/futurepop influenced sound.
• When she was in S'Express, Sonia Clarke (Sonique) sounded like a typical black Euro-house diva; it wasn't until she went solo in the mid-late 90's that she shifted to her signature raspy contralto voice.
• Jocelyn Enriquez sang in an average "girl next door" freestyle voice on her first two albums, then shifted to the deeper range on her third.
• 100 gecs' early works have extremely heavy Auto-Tune and Nightcore-style pitch-shifting on every song, a stylistic choice motivated by Laura Les' voice dysphoria due to being transgender. The Snake Eyes EP and 10,000 gecs LP go significantly lighter on the vocal effects, resulting in vocals sounding closer to her natural voice. She's mentioned that this is due to her having taken voice lessons, making her more confident in her own voice.
• Lights used a cutesy Moe voice for her first three albums. By her fourth album, Skin and Earth, her voice had fully matured, bordering on soulful in some tracks.
• Little Boots's voice deepened and matured significantly between Nocturnes and Working Girl.
• Salt Ashes sang in a high girly voice until the single "Go All Out", where she adopted a much more mature tone.
• On Covenant's first two albums, Eskil Simonsson was mostly bass-baritone, but afterwards, he shifted towards the higher end of his range.
• Project Pitchfork's Peter Spilles used a fairly normal gothic-accented baritone-tenor voice up until the early-mid 2000s, whence he switched to his present death growl style.
• On Black Moth Super Rainbow's debut album Falling Through A Field, vocalist Tobacco usually sings in a whispery Perishing Alt-Rock Voice with a distortion effect, with only a few tracks featuring the vocoder that would soon become his trademark - this is because the album is part new material, part tracks from the album the most wonderfulest thing by the band's previous incarnation satanstompingcaterpillars.

Hip Hop

• MCA of Beastie Boys had a noticeably raspier voice later on in his life.
• Eminem never really settled on a consistent voice for his Anti-Role Model Heroic Comedic Sociopath character, Slim Shady.
  • On Slim Shady EP, aside from the initial Enemy Within-Rage Against the Reflection skit in which he's a pitched-down demon, Slim speaks in a high pitch, but with a softer voice tone with a stereotypical Detroit projects accent - fitting the more Gangsta Rap tone of the material on the album.
  • The Slim Shady LP debuts an iconic new voice for Slim - an exaggeratedly nasal voice with a cartoony high pitch and an audible grin. Due to the massive popularity of "My Name Is", on which he uses this voice, this has become the voice fans most associate with Slim Shady. Slim also changes to speaking in a more general Midwest accent. The LP also contains some remixed EP songs using the original Slim voice tone - it can be quite jarring to go from the squeaky sociopathy of "Guilty Conscience" to the poetic gangster of "If I Had..." Eminem also used this voice for other collaborations around the same time, such as his feature for Missy Elliott on "Busa Rhyme" and for Dr. Dre on "Forgot About Dre". In his book The Way I Am, Eminem admits he has no idea where the voice he was using for Slim came from and regrets using it because it sounds stupid. In some of his early promotional appearances, he even maintained the squeaky voice while speaking as part of kayfabe, which his manager Paul Rosenberg later joked made him "sound like he's on helium".
  • On The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem blends the two voice tones he was using together, creating a new voice that is shared by Slim, Eminem, and Marshall. In "Stan", Stan is voiced with a higher-pitched voice that is intended to be reminiscent of Slim; Marshall's reply at the end is in a deeper voice closer to Eminem's own natural voice pitch and accent. The voices he uses on this album remain pretty much his voice palette for The Eminem Show, by which time Slim is so integrated with the other personas that he isn't making appearances as a specific character separate from the real Marshall anymore (apart from on "Without Me", which is squeakier than the rest of the album).
  • Throughout Encore, Slim starts speaking in a Shifting Voice of Madness with a variety of accents, including a deeper voice with a slurred, arrogant delivery influenced by the then-popular Southern Rap flow, a sort of carnival-barker-showman voice, Crunk flows, and an impression of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
  • Slim returns in the Horrorcore concept album Relapse, where he now speaks in a peculiar accent inspired by dancehall music. Eminem claimed the accent was to allow him to rhyme things that wouldn't rhyme in his normal accent, but it also makes Slim feel less familiar, suiting his Darker and Edgier take on the album. Slim's voice on this album is generally deeper in pitch than usual, but he uses a squeaky voice tone similar to the tone on "Without Me" (albeit with an accent) on "We Made You".
  • On The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Eminem uses a variety of voices for Slim, mostly a sort of passive-aggressive half-whisper and a growl, using a lot of Stop and Go and Suddenly Shouting. He also goes into parodies of various 80s rap flows and - a couple of times - the original, squeaky Slim Shady LP voice.

Metal

• As a general rule, Death Metal vocalists pitch up over time as the genre's signature Harsh Vocals gradually cause damage to the vocal cords. The most jarring example is probably David Vincent, who commonly gets accused of having completely blown chords because of how different he sounds today versus in 1991-when he first started using deep growls, but it's practically everywhere among Death Metal veterans.
  • There are exceptions - Ross Dolan, John Gallagher, and Dave Davidson have actually gotten deeper with age. It's probably more a matter of technique than anything else - Dolan has always had a very smooth, relaxed vocal style that is not at all taxing on his vocal cords, allowing for him to preserve his voice into middle age, while the same is probably also true for Gallagher and Davidson (though the latter is much younger - Dolan and Gallagher are 47 and 44, respectively, while Davidson is 30).
  • Sven de Caluwe is an interesting case. His early vocals (circa The Purity of Perversion) were more gurgly and his highs were more mid-ranged; as the years went on, that gurgle smoothed out into a distinctive bellow, while the highs became less grindcore-esque and more of a howl. Compare, say, "To Roast and Grind" with "The Extirpation Agenda" and you'll notice a clear difference in approach. The easiest way to describe it would be to say that he moved his approach sideways while most of his peers were moving it up.
  • Chris Barnes' guttural vocals gradually became more decipherable and a little more throaty starting with The Bleeding, since his extensive marijuana usage combined with age made him lose a lot of his range over time, while his screams have become much higher pitched with time, eventually evolving into a banshee-like shriek and later a pig squeal. His voice changes are especially obvious live when he performs old songs, as his vocal cords have been so affected that he has to change some sections since he can't hit some of the notes anymore.
  • Martin van Drunen completely changed his vocal style on the second Pestilence album Consuming Impulse. This one is especially obvious since he's sounded more or less exactly the same since then.
  • David Vincent started out with a gravelly mid-ranged shout on Altars of Madness. Shortly after that album was released, he quit smoking, and his voice deepened considerably into the deep, rumbling growl that was becoming the standard for death metal.
  • LG Petrov started with a mid-ranged growl that was pretty standard for death metal at the time, but starting with Wolverine Blues, his vocals gradually became much higher with time, eventually becoming a hardcore-esque shout by Morning Star. Then, by the time of his comeback with Entombed A.D. and Firespawn, his voice was significantly different, being deeper and more bellowing than it had ever been to the point that his approach in the latter band made him sound almost unrecognizable.
  • Christian Alvestam started off with a LG Petrov-esque bark on his first album with Unmoored before gradually evolving into his signature Chris Barnes-esque roar, while his clean vocals were much lower in pitch in his younger days to the point of being almost gothic metal in nature until his range became higher over the years, his soaring tenor not being set in stone until Holographic Universe.
• Pantera: Phil Anselmo started out sounding like a cross between Rob Halford and Justice-era James Hetfield (with hints of a Southern accent). Thanks to the effects of heroin addiction and screaming/growling on a regular basis, his voice became deeper and more gravelly throughout the '90s. This is especially noticeable when comparing his clean singing voice on older ballads like "Cemetery Gates" to his voice on later ones like "Floods".
• Although he is rarely seen as vocalist (especially after the '80s), Jens Arnsted (also known as Yenz Cheyenne or Yenz Leonhardt) is also an example. These are two songs he recorded with Brats in 1979 and 1980 respectively. As Brats were a Punk Rock band (although they started bringing Heavy Metal elements on the album, of which the second song comes), Yenz voice was also a slightly lazy punk-accented snarl. Later, in the middle of the '80s, he sang for a short-lived band Geisha and his voice was notably different: he sang in higher pitched than in his Brats days, and also his voice was sharper, more suitable for Hard Rock or Heavy Metal. He also had that voice on a song he recorded with the band Zoser Mez in 1991 (that band also included two of his former bandmates from Brats, namely guitarists Hank Shermann and Michael Denner).
• Chuck Billy of Testament, his voice went from a high-pitched punk-inspired shout in the '80s and early '90s to a low bellow in the mid-90s.
• Ryan Clark from Demon Hunter started out using Slipknot-esque shouts on their debut album, but, after only one album, switched to an angrier, more nasal, deeper, and more sludgy style of harsh vocals. Compare his screams on "Screams of the Undead" to his screams on "Storm the Gates of Hell".
• Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack De La Rocha's voice on Rage's 1993 debut album was higher and sounded teen-like, however through the late '90s and early 2000s, his voice got a lot deeper as he aged.
• Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden started with a high voice that was capable of doing an Incredibly Long Note at a very, very high pitch. Now his voice is still powerful and operatic but it's noticeably deeper. Most easy to notice when he performs the songs from the eighties (which he did then in a higher voice).
• Metallica's James Hetfield, compare his vocals on Kill 'Em All to The Black Album.
  • Even more jarring: Compare his vocals during the band's live shows in the '80s to those of their live shows during the '90s. Particularly in 1993-1994, his voice really struggled with the high notes he used to effortlessly sing in the '80s. And his voice, during the '90s, became quite a bit deeper and huskier due to a combination of heavy smoking and many years of constantly screaming off the top of his lungs (which eventually led to his voice blowing out while recording Metallica's infamous cover of "So What" during the Black Album sessions). In fact, his gradual Vocal Evolution is cited as the main reason why Metallica started tuning their guitars down half a step after Woodstock '94.
• Myles Kennedy has an incredible range and can sound different from one song to the next, but on the first Alter Bridge album, One Day Remains, he tended to employ a sort of post-grunge yarl that was a bit cleaner but still reminiscent of Eddie Vedder or Chris Cornell. In later recordings, starting with Blackbird, he kicked it up into a sort of Metal tenor and sounded more like Bruce Dickinson. Just compare "Open Your Eyes" to "Ties That Bind" or "Cry of Achilles".
• Pekka Kokko of the Melodic Death Metal band Kalmah has over time shifted his vocal style from a high-pitched shriek to a deep guttural growl.
• James LaBrie started off with a high, boyish tenor with a very subtle vibrato, as evidenced on his stint in the late 1980s with Winter Rose. By the time of his first release with Dream Theater in 1992 his voice had become stronger and more soulful with a much more pronounced vibrato, as heard on "Surrounded". By 1994 his voice was deeper and more masculine in the lower end but he still retained his powerful high notes, and he had a gruff rasp that he could turn on and off at will, as on "Caught in a Web". Later in 1994 he ruptured his vocal cords vomiting after contracting food poisoning while on vacation but went back on tour, where he would spice up the songs with additional Metal Scream at every opportunity, against doctors' orders. However, he found himself struggling with high notes, and the band's signature epic "A Change of Seasons" was rewritten for the 1995 EP release in such a way that all the vocal lines were significantly lower. When the band returned in 1997 with their new album Falling into Infinity, LaBrie's voice had completely changed. His Queensryche-influenced operatic wail was now replaced with a much more modern rock style voice, the vibrato was all but gone, the soft voice he used on ballads was not as warm, and his high range was severely reduced, as evidenced on "New Millennium". By the mid-2000s he had regained some of his old range (often with the help of falsetto, which he had almost never used before), but his voice became increasingly nasal, as evidenced in the 2006 version of "Innocence Faded". Since then his voice has remained more or less the same (except for his range starting to contract again due to age).
• As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis used a wheezy-sounding rasp that was nearly impossible to understand on the first three albums. Starting with An Ocean Between Us, his screams became deeper in pitch and easier to decipher.
• Cristian Machado of Ill Nino. His screams were higher-pitched on the band's first 4 albums, but on Dead New World, his screams were close to a higher death growl.
• British singer Tony Mills of TNT and Shy fame has a voice that evolved from extremely high in the 1980s to a Queensryche-like lower tenor in the '90s and 2000s.
• On Black Sabbath's debut album, Ozzy Osbourne's voice is noticeably different; it's harsher and less melodic than later releases. Made particularly noticeable since he's sounded pretty much exactly the same from Paranoid (Album) to the present day (over forty years).
• Mike Patton on his first Faith No More album The Real Thing used mostly a nasal voice, which ironically given the rivalry between the two somewhat resembles Anthony Kiedis'. He dropped that afterwards and starting with Angel Dust began his whole Man of a Thousand Voices thing.
• Elias Soriano of Nonpoint's singing voice seems to get edgier and edgier with every album. Compare his vocals on the album Miracle to his vocals on Development.
• Geoff Tate of Queensrÿche. In the '80s, he had a high, operatic wail similar to Rob Halford or Bruce Dickinson. Starting with 1990's Empire, however, his voice became deeper and huskier, and he lost the ability to hit the notes, due to a smoking habit that had started in high school, leading him to shift to a deeper range. He completely lost his bright head voice register around the time of 2009's American Soldier, shifting to a mid-range sound, and performs most of the old material in lower keys.

Pop

• Europop diva Amber shifted to a deeper and more nasal vocal tone starting with her second album.
• Rick Astley's voice got deeper and more soulful since his "Never Gonna Give You Up" days. This live recording makes it the most evident, as he sings the song in a lower key, and changes the melody somewhat so that he doesn't have to hit the higher notes.
• From about "Mistletoe" onward, Justin Bieber's voice finally began to deepen a little as he progressed through puberty.
• This was the case for David Cassidy during his stint with The Partridge Family. A variant of the puberty trope above, his singing voice started out somewhat nasally throughout season one of the series and gradually matured into a lower, more smoother baritone style by 1972. His voice was also slightly sped up on the first two albums, giving the impression that it deepened even more.
• Charlotte Church once recorded a 'duet'- actually a blend of two tracks, both of herself- one aged twelve, the other being a harmony line to the same song that she laid down aged seventeen. Obviously her voice had developed and 'darkened' considerably in those five years... but it was also clearly damaged, mostly with overuse while still growing (though smoking and her famous Ladette lifestyle probably didn't help.) However, it was now more interesting and suited to the pop tracks that she wanted to move to anyway, as when she came of age she was allowed to choose her own songs.
• Kelly Clarkson's singing voice is higher in her early albums while the ones released a decade later where it sounds lower and huskier. Part of it is probably the natural aging of ten years. Compare "Since U Been Gone" and "Stronger" recorded seven years later, two songs with the same theme. While the former sounds like a girl is singing it, the latter is a woman.
• Miley Cyrus:
  • Puberty obviously affected her singing voice over the years, as her voice became lower, more raspy, and lost a bit of her strong Southern twang. She also seemed to project more around the time of Can't Be Tamed. "We Can't Stop" is certainly very raspy and lower-pitched. She's taking to belting, and even some Melismatic Vocals more since Can't Be Tamed, and in particular on Bangerz.
  • Due to damage from screaming and smoking, Miley developed Reinke's oedema in 2019 and the vocal surgery to correct it resulted in her voice becoming much deeper and more gravelly. Miley embraced this and switched genres into an 80s rock sound on her album Plastic Hearts, and even claimed that she liked the way it allows her to sing in a style unlike the way women are expected to.
• Fellow Hannah Montana star Emily Osment sang with less projection or control and more of a high-pitched voice (granted, she was very young) in the "I Don't Think About It"/"Once Upon A Dream" phase of her career, but gained much more technique and projection by All The Right Wrongs. She still naturally has a high-pitched speaking and singing voice, but it has gotten more mature, deep, and projecting over the years.
• Jason Donovan first had a youthful, but low-pitched speaking voice when talking, but sounded older and huskier as he grew older. Same goes with his singing voice: back when he was a heartthrob singer working with Stock Aitken Waterman, he used a baritone-sounding singing voice that sounded a little deeper than his normal voice. As his career went by, while his singing voice still sounded low-pitched, he sounds more like his normal speaking voice.
• Sandy Farina had a youthful, crystal-clear voice when she starred in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - cut to a few years later when she sang 'Body Talk' for The Toxic Avenger, by which time her voice had become a rough rasp.
• An obvious example is Barry Gibb, who until 1975, always sang in his natural voice. He discovered his falsetto ability while recording "Nights On Broadway," and made it a trademark of nearly every song.
• Conversely, Barry's brother Robin sang in a surprisingly low voice in his 1984 solo hit, "Boys Do Fall in Love". Compare this to the traditional nasal Bee Gees delivery in songs where he sang lead for the band, such as "I Started a Joke".
• Michael Jackson. Though fans are quick (read: immediate) to hand-wave the change as proof of an impostor, the truth is that his voice became noticeably weak and strained in the near-decade between Invincible and his inevitable death as drugs took an increasing toll on his health, paired with known respiratory and dental issues that caused him to pronounce words oddly - most evident on the live recordings from Michael Jackson's This Is It, particularly "Smooth Criminal". The noticeable change in his voice is often pinned on the use of a vocal impersonator named Jason Malachi, whose voice is similar (but not exact) to the voice heard on Michael's later recordings; the biggest difference being a nasal quality, almost an exaggerated whine, that Michael never had. Later on in his life, particularly on "2000 Watts" and "Hollywood Tonight" Michael began singing in a much lower register than usual - said by some to be indicative of his actual, private speaking voice.
• Cyndi Lauper rose to stardom in the '80s, mostly sounding like a 15-year-old girl despite being in her early 30s, and still sounding younger than her age in ballads like "Time After Time" and "True Colors". When she released "I Drove All Night" as the first single of her 1989 album A Night to Remember, she was singing in a considerably lower register than usual, though this may be largely on account of the fact that the song was originally written for the deep-voiced rock 'n' roll legend Roy Orbison.
• "Mr. Las Vegas" Wayne Newton, a natural tenor, lowered his singing and speaking voice from the clear, androgynous falsetto that made him famous as a young man to an increasingly raspy croon as part of his efforts in the late '60s and early '70s to reform the boyish image he was aging out of.
• Madonna's voice was much higher on her earliest recordings and has deepened over the years. The most noticeable change happened when she was cast in the film adaptation of Evita. As the play's songs were slightly outside her range she had to undergo vocal training for the part that permanently expanded her range.
• Frank Sinatra's singing voice evolved through his long career. From a mellifluous crooning sound in the '40s to a cool swagger when he led "The Rat Pack" in the '50s and '60s to a maturity in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.
• Tiffany, one of the first teen pop icons back in The '80s, has long since matured to a rough, Grunge-sounding contralto.

Punk

• Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong started out with a heady and slightly strained voice with a bit of a slur in the late '80s throughout the '90s. From American Idiot onwards, his voice gradually deepened and mellowed out. Compare these two performances of the same song in 1997 and 2019 respectively.
• Descendents lead singer Milo Aukerman was 19 at the release of their first album, and his vocals mostly consisted of raspy, nasal half-singing not unlike many other punk singers of the early 80s. He kept this tone for much of the '80s, but since 1998's Everything Sucks and beyond, his voice is much clearer and he almost always fully sings.
• Tom Delonge of blink182 has a rollercoaster case of this. His voice on blink albums has got slightly higher and more nasal through the years until Neighborhoods came around, having mellowed out to the level he usually sings at with Angels & Airwaves. Ditto for live shows.

R&B/Soul

• Whitney Houston, in the 2000s, as drug abuse and personal problems began taking their toll, leading up to her death in 2012.
• Brazilian singer Tim Maia is a good example of how age and a wild lifestyle makes a voice deeper and more gruff. Just compare this song to a performance two decades later.
• Due to the paralysis, brought on by a near-fatal car accident, Teddy Pendergrass, a man once known for his gruff and commanding gospel-esque style of singing, would be forced to resort to a more gentle and crooner-like approach, once he finally returned to the studio a few years later. While Pendergrass was still critically hailed as a competent vocalist, it was clear that his voice had been weakened due to his injuries. This became more evident not only once he returned to touring in the early 2000s, but also when he released a collection of remakes of his older hits; most of which are recorded (or performed, in the case of his live shows) in a significantly lower key, and he either struggles to hit those old Gospel-like runs and high notes or avoids making an attempt altogether.

Rock

• David Bowie's voice noticeably started to deepen around 1973-74, beginning with Aladdin Sane. He'd resurrect his younger, reedier voice every now and then on certain songs, sometimes exaggerating it when necessary, but in general he stuck with letting his voice deepen as time went on. His voice also grew huskier during the 2000s and 2010s, thanks to the natural effects of age.
• Captain Beefheart's voice was a spot-on Howlin' Wolf impression for most of his career before it degraded to hoarse screeching for his last two albums. This is Harsher in Hindsight because he had multiple sclerosis at the time of those last two albums and didn't tell anyone about it. This disease led him to retire from music and eventually killed him.
• Phil Collins: He used a mellow, Peter Gabriel-like singing voice in his earliest days as Genesis' lead vocalist. From Duke to his solo album No Jacket Required, he used the now-recognizable high, slightly nasal voice; sometimes even utilizing a "shouty" style. From ...But Seriously and We Can't Dance onward, he changed to a smoother, more easy-listening voice.
  • Starting with the Invisible Touch tour, he had taken to singing many Genesis songs, including those from the album he was promoting like "Invisible Touch" and "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight", in lower keys than he had recorded them in, as his voice deepened in the middle of the tour.
• Roger Daltrey! There's a huge difference between his voice on Tommy and Who's Next. (And bear in mind there's only a two-year difference between the albums' releases.) While hinting at this in earlier songs like "My Generation," his tenor became richer and more powerful in the 1970s and beyond.
• Marianne Faithfull stands out as a prime example of this trope. In her famous 1964 rendition of Jagger/Richards-penned "As Tears Go By" she exhibits her already pretty deep, but gentle and varied contralto voice which bears little resemblance to the alto croak she developed after years of substance abuse. Her later re-recordings of the song provide a perfect comparison, as does her 1979 comeback album Broken English.
• Peter Gabriel, like most male singers, saw his voice become deeper, huskier, and somewhat more strained as he got older. Because his studio albums have always had increasingly long gaps between them, this change is particularly more noticeable than with other artists when one goes through his backlog in chronological order. Compare his voice on So to that of his following album, Us, and the six-year difference is already like night and day.
• The Hanson brothers' voices started out high-pitched (they started out in the mid-1990s when they were still teenagers), and have considerably deepened over time.
• Mick Jagger is another pretty noteworthy example. Early on, he didn't have quite as shrill of a voice, and could somewhat alter his singing voice occasionally when the song called for it, (as most noticeable in the soft tone of ballads like "Ruby Tuesday" and "As Tears Go By") but over time, the signature throaty and guttural "roar" became Mick's default style of singing. Smoking, and to a lesser extent, age have done little to help, and by the time Jagger quit smoking some time around the '80s, tobacco had already clearly taken its toll.
• Elton John's voice evolved and changed a number of times. He had a quite clear singing voice as a youth, occasionally slipping into his trademark falsetto. Eventually, at the height of his fame, it became more nasal/throaty and expressive, with focus on his high range and falsetto singing. It got smoother, deeper, and twangier by the late 1970s and early 1980s, though falsetto was still used. His throat surgery in 1987 to remove non-cancerous polyps in his throat (antagonized by his bulimia, drug abuse, and vocal misuse), led to him turning baritone, with little or no falsetto at all. The voice only deepened with age, particularly by the 2000s.
• Though he still has a very impressive range and vocal power for a man in his sixties, Billy Joel has admitted to transposing some of his songs into lower keys in concert — something made easy by his use of a digital piano instead of a traditional one. Fast-forward to 45:25 for a demonstration.
• Brian Johnson was able to hit impressive high notes at the beginning of his tenure with AC/DC; however, at some point in the mid-80s (most notably since Blow Up Your Video), he would devolve into the raspy, not-so-high voice newer fans know him for.
• Simple Minds' Jim Kerr started off with a sort of punk yell, before moving onto a deeper, more angry voice inspired by Ian Curtis, and eventually moving onto a crooning voice which has picked up a sort of Celtic burr. Many fans would say Simple Minds lost their unique appeal when his voice changed.
• Rush's Geddy Lee notably has undergone several. In the early days, his voice was very raw and screamy, and he could hit some amazingly high notes, his voice was naturally an "astoundingly high" tenor. See the fourth movement of "2112" for proof of how dynamic his voice was in those days. However, around 1978-1979 during the Hemispheres tour, his voice deepened considerably, and he lost his raw, screaming power (Compare these two performances of "2112" for the shift), likely due to over-touring, which led to him singing in a much lower range starting with 1980's Permanent Waves. His voice then shifted to a lower, more "normal" sounding voice starting with 1982's Signals. With 1996's Test For Echo, his voice got a lot thinner and more nasal. Most recently, with 2007's Snakes And Arrows, he started singing with a fuller, less nasal sound again, albeit significantly deeper than before. Naturally, fans are split over what era is his best.
• Meat Loaf began with a soaring, operatic tenor equally suited to soft and hard rock tunes when he sang on the Bat Out of Hell and Dead Ringer albums and although he struggled with voice loss and substance abuse issues during the 1980s, it was more or less intact when he recorded Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell and Welcome To the Neighborhood in the 1990s. After that, though, his voice deepened noticeably with age and he had developed a bit of a proclivity for using a lot of melisma when he performed live. When his concerts were reviewed, the thing they'd always question was whether or not he was still up to the task of tackling his older songs.
• Freddie Mercury's voice was youthful and almost ethereal in the early '70s; his voice gradually became heavier, and he started smoking in 1980, which caused his voice to gradually turn huskier. However, when he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1987, he stopped smoking, and his voice lost a little huskiness and became somewhat angelic again, although still very mature.
• Pat Monahan of Train became a lot higher-pitched around the time "Hey, Soul Sister" came out.
• Due to substance abuse, Jim Morrison's voice took on a more ragged and worn tone when The Doors went to record L.A. Woman. Oddly enough, it fits quite well with the album's bluesy mood.
• Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant experienced this as the years went by. In the band's early career, he could reach high notes without fail. However, after surgery in 1973 to remove vocal nodes, he experienced difficulty in getting to those notes again whilst changing how he vocally approached songs.
• Elvis Presley had a much higher-pitched voice on his earlier 1950s rockabilly recordings, compared to the deeper voice of his later hits. The latter is the voice with which most associate Elvis (e.g., the deep-voiced "aw, thank ya, thank ya very much").
• Axl Rose has gone through so many that you can tell what individual year any given performance is from. As part of Hollywood Rose, his voice was extremely high, fast, and uncontrollable. Once he formed Guns N' Roses, it had become more controllable and he used much more octaves while singing. From 1988-1990, his voice was powerful and could do just about anything. In 1991, throat issues caused him to sound like he was gargling glass and he could barely actually sing, instead sounding like he was yelling while spitting up blood. In 1992, his voice returned more to the "classic" Axl sound. In 1993, his voice started getting weaker, with him using a cleaner, less raspy voice more often than in the past. At a one-off appearance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, his voice was noticeably weak and soft. After returning in 2002, he sounded nothing like the Axl of old, altering his style to have no rasp and singing mostly in falsetto. 2006-2007 had a return to form, sounding closer to 1993 than any other era. Then came the 2009-2010 tours, where he was back to 100% razor blade rasp at all times, though most more controlled and in tune than 1991. Due to respiratory issues and possibly from damaging his voice in the 2010 tour, he has reverted back to the 2002 style of very little rasp, sticking mostly to falsetto and generally sounding weak. The GNR reunion tour (along with the one where Axl sung for AC/DC) in 2016 had his voice improving closer to the 2006 levels, be it for rest and preparation or just because he had more breath from standing still, as a broken foot forced Axl to sing in a chair. Still, the strain from those tours was taking its toll in the following year, with Axl's voice weakening again.
• Bob Seger's voice began to deepen in the mid-1980s due to aging, smoking, and vocal strain. The change is noticeable as early as The Fire Inside and he deepened even more by Face the Promise to the point that he is no longer able to do the raspy shouting that he was known for and to compensate, his classic songs are pitched lower when performed live these days.
• David Sylvian of Japan started off singing in a high-pitched cockney voice which was supposed to be his punk imitation of David Bowie. By the band's third album he'd switched to a melancholic baritone, which got deeper as it went on. In the 2000s he frequently sings in a croaky whisper.
• One extreme example came entirely by accident: Bonnie Tyler originally had a fairly average singing voice as heard on her early hits such as "Lost in France", but vocal cord surgery in 1976 left her with an extremely husky and raspy delivery, as exemplified on her Breakthrough Hit "It's a Heartache" and especially on her Career Resurrection hits in the 1980s, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding Out for a Hero".
• Aerosmith's Steven Tyler deliberately modified his own singing voice for most (though not all) songs on the first two albums (Aerosmith and Get Your Wings). His voice for the song "Dream On" (from Aerosmith) is very different from the more raw singing voice he used for, say, "Walk This Way" (Toys In the Attic, just two years later). He can still turn the trick (live performances of "Mama Kin" and "Dream On" sometimes have him briefly switch back to the modified voice), but unlike the early years, it's no longer his default singing voice.
  • Even stranger is hearing Steven Tyler's vocal style with his little-known pre-Aerosmith band Chain Reaction (whose single "When I Needed You" appears on the Aerosmith box set Pandora's Box): Not only does he sing in a lower, smoother voice similar to the one used for much of the first two Aerosmith albums, but he also has a bit of a Fake Brit accent, seemingly imitating Keith Relf of British blues-rock band The Yardbirds.
• Roger Waters' voice degenerated ENORMOUSLY between 1983's The Final Cut (still with Pink Floyd) and 1987's Radio KAOS (fully solo), remaining a painful rasp to this day. For his long-running tour of The Wall beginning in 2010, he underwent vocal training to try and improve his abilities, but portions of vocals requiring a flawless and powerful voice (such as "In The Flesh?") were pre-taped while other songs (notably "One Of My Turns") were lowered in key to enable Roger to sing live as much as possible.
• The smooth, pitch-perfect voice of Brian Wilson, heard on The Beach Boys' early hits, had turned into a gruff smoker's rasp by the late Seventies. He's spent the last couple decades working to overcome this, restoring a fair bit of range - but his tendency to speak and sing out of the side of his mouth corresponding with his hearing ear is more and more evident.
  • And, truth be told, he does enjoy his Auto-Tune. Fans, on the other hand, don't.
• Brian's brother Dennis Wilson didn't sing on too many Beach Boys songs, but years of hard living had taken their toll on his voice when he released his solo debut Pacific Ocean Blue in 1979. At that time, he was singing in a deeper, rougher tone than he did in Beach Boys songs such as "Forever" (1970) and "Never Learn Not to Love" (1968). Clips of Dennis singing circa 1983, just months before his drowning death, are especially sad to watch, as his voice - speaking and singing - had been reduced to an old man's croak, again due to his penchant for drink, drugs, and cigarettes.
• Frank Zappa's voice dropped by a third of an octave, following an incident in late 1971 when he fell off the stage and sustained various injuries including a crushed larynx.

Singer/Songwriter

• Kate Bush tended to use the upper range of her voice in her earliest recordings but later shifted to a more natural, mid-range voice. Compare the original version of "Wuthering Heights" to the re-recording used for her greatest hits album The Whole Story.
• Bill Callahan aka Smog started out much higher-pitched than he would end up; this is from his first album as Smog and this from his last under that name.
• When Leonard Cohen started making recordings, his voice was somewhat normally pitched. It was only during the early to mid-1980s that his trademark basso profundo voice came into being.
• While Bob Dylan has more-or-less always had the famous nasal gruffness, there have been some subtle changes over the years. On his first two albums, Bob Dylan and The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, he has a Woody Guthrie-influenced drawl. On his other pre-electric albums he almost shouts a lot of the lyrics. On his first two electric albums, he went with a plain but forceful way of singing, emphasizing certain syllables. On Blonde on Blonde (1966) he exaggerates that style almost to the point of self-parody. On John Wesley Harding (recorded late 1967) his timbre begins to sound like that which pervaded his '70s work: a sharpness in his louder sections, a hoarseness in quieter ones. A major departure from that was his crooning voice on Nashville Skyline (1969). Bootleg tapes confirm that this was very similar to the voice he used when he first started playing folk clubs in his Minnesota college days, so it was a deliberate change on Dylan's part. Dylan went so far as to hang a Lampshade on this with his version of "The Boxer" on Self Portrait, done as a duet between Classic Dylan and Skyline Dylan. The close of the '70s gave us a wavering, sneering quality to his singing voice, raspy as ever. Starting in the late 80s he developed a strange slurring style that led to all the jokes about him needing a translator. Since Time Out of Mind in 1997 his voice is more noticeably hoarse, so he's adopted a softer style of singing to compensate.
• Joni Mitchell's voice in the 60s and early 70s was a clear, high soprano, but years of smoking and vocal nodules gradually changed her voice to a raspy contralto.
• Van Morrison originally sang in quite a high register and even went falsetto on a couple of songs. From the early Eighties, he began to sing lower down to take it easy on his throat and started sounding like he does now.
• Joanna Newsom started out her career (on the albums The Milk-Eyed Mender and Ys) with a creaky soprano voice prone to cracking and squeaking that was a major source of divisiveness among indie-folk fans. In 2009 she developed nodules on her vocal cords that she had removed, which, starting with 2010's Have One On Me, left her with a voice that was similar in pitch but much smoother and reminiscent of Kate Bush. While many of her fans embraced this change, a vocal minority cried They Changed It, Now It Sucks! since Newsom made her name in the "freak folk" movement and her original voice was certainly freaky.
• Harry Nilsson lost his glorious original voice when he seriously injured his vocal cords during a drunken "primal screaming" contest with John Lennon, although general drinking and drug abuse didn't help.
• For his first few albums, Tom Waits' singing voice was low but somewhat soft and mellow, part of his "late-night bar pianist" vibe. He's become more and more of a growler ever since. Try comparing "I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You" to "God's Away On Business".
• Elvira T's singing technique has greatly improved over the years. While she has always had a beautiful and distinctive voice, she initially did not have as much strength in her technique, and had some trouble holding her notes at live concerts. By 2016, her technique had become more refined and her ability to hold her notes improved significantly.
• When she first started doing covers on YouTube in her early teens, Lera Yaskevich's voice was much higher and more nasally, and her singing technique was still rather unrefined. By the time she hit her mid teens, her voice deepened due to the natural aging process, and both her range and singing technique greatly improved. Most notably, this is when her signature vibrato truly started to shine through.
• Neil Young started as a quite conventional '60s folk singer but after a series of small, subtle changes, he had found his own distinctive high tenor voice on 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Averted since then, his voice famously hasn't changed at all.

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