Is Jon choosing to sing differently or ....

Well he had to change cuz nowadays he just can't do better.

I listened recently to Something To Believe In and the scream Jon sounds as if it'd be his last and after he finishes he dies. It seems as if he put all his power,all his energy in just one scream.And actually the vocals on whole These Days go somehow the same way.

I don't care if Jon's voice has changed.All I want is him to put energy and feeling in his voice. He did thaton YGLBN but that's it. I want him to sing as if it'd be his last performance and I guess it'd be enaugh.

what people have neglected to mention here is that there is a hell of a lot of a difference between one or two takes in the studio and every night in a live setting. i'd say jon's voice on the newer studio albums is nearer to his live voice circa 1996 with his 92-93 'live' voice sounding nothing like the studio work. his 'studio' voice has always been a lot rougher and more gravelly anyway.

I was gonna say to me it sounds like he's more nasal, too. I've heard that it's one of the techniques to try to hit the notes in an easier way, even though it's done in a 'wrong' way. But I'm no expert, so I don't really know. But it seems like he's developed a 'survival' method of pushing it out of his nose for some reason...

Just what I was about to say. Also, I have always loved Jon-Richie harmonies, but Richie's voice seems to be so much better than Jon's these days. And Dave has really taken to singing the higher notes, too.

To me it sounds like he worked hard to improve his voice sometime after the NJ tour and Blaze album, let's say early 90's. He couldn't have sung songs like Bed of Roses or Always in 86 as clearly and as powerfully as he did in 92/94, even more so live.
After These Days, he got lazy with his voice. There's nothing vocally impressive on DA or any album after that.
A whisper can be stronger than a scream, but you've got to be a good whisperer, and I don't think he's significantly better than average at it.
He was when "screaming".
Plus when you can do both it's even better, ie, even if some of us don't like the song, As My Guitar Lies Bleeding In My Heart showed his impressive voice range.

If you take the example of another good voice in rock/pop rock, say Bono, the guy got lazy too (and started smoking as well) after the Achtung Baby album and you could hear all that he had lost during the Zooropa and Pop Mart tours. But he worked hard, maybe differently than before, to get his voice pretty close to where it was before, and he did it. Compare a Pop tour dvd with the Slane Castle dvd and you'll see the work done giving great results.

Jon could get most of his 90's voice back if he wanted it and was ready to work for it.

Ponrauil

u r saying its because he is lazy and choosing to smoke, how do u know it is based on that and not because there has been some kind of damage already done to his voice from the early days. Or that if he chooses to scream in the future then damage will occur, I wouldnt expect him to start screaming again if it was going to result in perminant damage.

Dawn

It's just my opinion, I'm not making this a fact.
IMO, if real damage had been done in the early days he wouldn't have been able to sing as he did in the early 90's, when you could hear that he had trained himself to use his voice in a powerfull and secure way.
Actually he'll damage his voice more now that he's not working on it than if he was.

Ponrauil

My mom likes how he sings now more because she says his voice has an "edge" to it.

As for me, I can tell the difference between his 80s voice and 90s voice, but not so much between his 90s voice and his 00s voice. And don't you dare say I'm going deaf, people.