Best Studio Vocals by Jon - 2000 Onwards

He skips huge chunks in Have a Nice Day, I really feel that one was doctored up.

Probably a bounce b-side like another reason to believe. Or the HAND demo.

Not a bad theory at all. I'm not saying it is exactly like that and that he could nail every single song if it's one per day, but you could see at the last concert last year that if he lets go and doesn't care if his voice will hold up for much longer, he can still go for it...

Didn't they perform it in 2004/2005 somewhere, way before the album was released? I think he didn't skip anything there, so why would it have to be doctored up (not saying it wasn't, as just about any song ever recorded has been )?

Aloha !

Yeah, it became obvious especially when they played it live for the first time. He struggled a lot with the vocals once the chorus kicked in. Have a look for yourself; The way he sings it with that flat nasal sound in his voice shows how much they doctored his vocals to get him to sing the song in the right key on the record.

No he can't. He's just not as horrible as he usually is when holding back but in no way is he actually giving good vocal performances. It's only decent because it was much worse during the HAND tour, and for some reason everyone seems to think that if it's better than the HAND tour. Yet there's no way he'd ever be able to deliver a performance of It's My Life in which he's actually pronouncing the right words as opposed to straining into what he thinks might just be the right key.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Like Seb said, even then it was all over the place. After a while they switched it so Jon wouldn't sing both the "ohhh" and the "iiiii" parts, it'd be one or the other. Hell, I saw some shows where was neither.

Listen to the 5.1 vocals only Bells of Freedom, the note right before the solo is a copy and paste of two different takes and it's way obvious. I'm not saying John Shanks is the first producer to do this, nor do I mean he's the first time the band has done it but Jon sounds less and less natural every time he produces the vocals. Lost Highway wasn't band but the rest has been weird sounding.

But that's a problem we have with every off-tour performance. He needs to work on his vocals during that time, otherwise he struggles with every high note and blames it to a cold afterwards.
Did anybody count how many times he had "a cold" when they performed off-tour shows? I'd guess 9 out of 10 times.

Interesting! And No, Shanks is not nearly the first producer to do this. Even back when the Beatles and Elvis recorded music, they used to do it by hand. They would literally cut the tape and then use tape to combine the recordings together.

I don't mind studio tricks especially if a good producer could make it sound right. They've been using them since inception.

First off, I think Shanks does a way better job then Ebbin. I can't stand Jon's voice on Crush and Bounce. The problem I believe I have with Shanks is, A. too many digital effects. And B. It sounds like he's combining too many vocal takes.... So instead of Jon singing 17 takes of 1 song and then using one as the master (or combining 2 or 3), it sound like Jon is only maybe singing 5 tops and then Shanks mixes the best notes on each on together. Or he is just making Jon singing each word individually. Either way, you won't get that passion just mixing words together and then using digital effects to clean it all up.

Listen, I think Shanks does an amazing job with Jon's voice because we all know what he sounds like live. (Example LTOR studio verses Live) but I also know the delivery Jon once had and Shanks isn't providing that which hurts the songs IMO because we are not feeling the music like we once did.

Now the live music is a different story.

Part of me wonders if Jon holds back a lot out of fear of totally blowing out his vocals for good. Yes, his voice has definitely changed but this singing technique he has now might not be natural. It might be the way he was taught to sing ongoing to reserve his voice until retirement. I don't know, just a theory.

You're right, I didn't remember it being that "bad". But as someone else already pointed out: that was a one-off performance, while they were not touring or recording, right? That's not a complete excuse, but I don't think Jon really practices between tours, so he's always been better during tours than when not.

I won't argue with that, since the fact is: we simply don't know. You could be right, I could be right, only Jon would know

Most definitely. Someone must have taught him to sing that way, since he always has been a "natural" singer in the 80s and then, starting with Blaze and KTF, his voice became cleaner at first (which I really think is the best voice he ever had) and then thinner and more nasal, which either suggests serious problems with his nose or another singing technique, which he wouldn't have learned by accident...