Country star Carrie Underwood has high standards when it comes to singing, recently admitting she doesn’t respect artists who sound different in concert than they do in recordings.
The 39-year-old “American Idol” alum made the comments during an interview with Rolling Stone. “I love to sing, and I’ve always taken pride in the work I’ve put in on my vocals. I do want to sound good,” Underwood explained.
“Growing up and going to concerts or seeing my favorite artists on TV, if they didn’t sound like they were supposed to sound, it was always so deflating,” she continued. “I’d lose respect for them. Or when I’d go to a concert and hear them drop keys, I was like, ‘You can’t hit the notes! Why’d you record them if you can’t sing them?’ That stuff is important to me.”
While many fellow recording artists didn’t live up to these standards, Underwood said one singer consistently exceeded her expectations and became a role model for her career.
“I’ve been covering Guns N’ Roses my whole life, pretty much, and definitely onstage for the past 15 years at least,” the “Before He Cheats” composer revealed. She went on to say she’d been trying to get lead vocalist Axl Rose to go onstage with her for years. That finally became a reality this spring at Stagecoach Festival in California.
“We had a couple almost maybes, where it almost maybe would have happened but for various reasons it wasn’t the right time,” Underwood told the publication. “But [for Stagecoach] I asked. I sent him an email and said, ‘We’re so close to you,’ and explained the why and what he meant to me.”
She said Axl Rose’s vocal range made a significant impression on her as an up-and-coming star.
“The way I learned how to sing was I would pick really hard vocalists to try to emulate, and his voice always mesmerized me,” the singer told Rolling Stone. “I was like, ‘How is he doing the things that he’s doing?'” So I told him all that…and he came!”
Large vocal ranges are highly coveted in the music industry, with four and five-octave ranges being the most idolized. Some popular artists with four and five-octave ranges are Ariana Grande, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey. Axl Rose has a five-octave range as well.
Underwood has somewhere between a strong two-octave and three-octave range.