I thought I would start a new thread to clearly explain part of the technical reasons, which could quite possibly be why his voice is different now.

Firstly his voice on the crush record was drastically different to anything before. I'm not gonna say it was bad but it wasn't as powerful i nthe upper registers and he was resorting to singing deeper notes to get body and warmth in the tone of the voice.

Th tour that followed crush as someone said..should not have been recorded the vocal performance was not really that good.

Now with the OWN tour his voice was much better, he had had tour years almost of being back in the game after five years of quitting almost cold turkey. You see BJ did take five years off almost and in that time I'm betting Jon didn#'t sing any of the classics very much.

This brings me to my point. What would happen if richie didn't pick up the guitar very much for five years, or never refreshed the solo's to some of the older songs they hadn't played in a while. He'd be rusty thats what.

Now I believe that after These Days, Jons focus shifted an awful lot, and keeping his voice was the last thing he was worrying about. He did a solo album (with very nice but different volcas on) got into whole load of acting, had more kids, smoking again...and to top it al off not a lot of practise.

The singing voice is a MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, and like any other musical instrument it has to be trained, and the singer has to practise to keep it at the level they are on. I believe that Jon didn't really do much in those years to keep his voice at the level it was, In fact he did things to seriously worsen it, as well as getting older.

The history of Jons voice (for me) goes like this:

Early years: very immature finding out how to do it.

SWW + NJ: staples some of the sounds he will use for ever much stronger

KTF: The 2nd best vocals on his albums

THESE DAYS: Quite simply the most amazing rock vocals ever I think. Im talking about the high notes, but the power and quality of the high notes. It is astounding, and I still cant believe how he did it. Listen to These Days (single) and at the end his voice is up in the stratoshphere but retains body. Likewise with My Guitar... That starts deep and gravely and then for the final chorus god he lets rip.

THe whole album is just fantasic vocals, but the BEST SONG IS "Something TO Believe In" That song has the most amazing sustinaed, singing, growling, emotion, power, tone. The last chorus where he sings "Somethhhhiiiiinnnnnnggggaaagghh dont beliieevve in" He is almost screaming into the mic but in such a musical and powerful way it can bring me to tears!

The tour that followed (Again as someone said above) was the best live tour they ever did. I'm so so glad it was captured. He was on such a role off of that album, the tour was just amaznig. ALWAYS live from london..i thnk is the best rock ballad performance ever, the additional lyrics and screaming at the end are phenomenal.

Now I dont think that Jon will ever be able to do what he did on These Days again, or SWW for that matter. Because people voices do change as they get older somewhat. But I think that it is because he is seriously out of practise and focus.

The vocals on bounce I have to say are not as good as they thought they were gonna be with 2 years of touring under his belt again and it doesn't make sense. THere are some magic moments...but really they are only on par with crush. Perhaps this is something to do with the production of BJ being totally different these days

What was very intersting though, is the SBE gig had some clear moments where his tone of his voice was very similar to the old days, something i hadn't heard for a long time. Yeah there were some really off bits..but I think when he hit it....he hit it just like he used to.

Hopefullly he still has some stuff left in him, and he can pull out better perfomance live over the next few years and definately on the next studio album.

You can tell he definately has changed, as the keys of the songs they write in are really differnt. Something like thankyou for loving me would have been written in E major 10 years ago.

He voice isn't bad now, but it used to be a lot lot better.

track7