Quote:
Originally Posted by Rdkopper
Just the other day I was really trying to pinpoint the time where Jon's voice just shot out to the level of what we have today.
I don't mean struggling to hit notes but to the point of becoming unlistenable.
-He finished 2013 fine
-He did the Red Bank Solo show in 2014 and it was still listenable.
- 2015 was the mini Asia tour. Yes his voice was out of shape but it was still listenable. That tour ended in October.
-2016 early '16 (March) he did some acoustic shows. - again not terrible but definitely a decline. It's also acoustic so it tough to really tell.
2016 - promo shows for THINFS - unlistenable
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We all know Jon has been declining ever since the last couple shows of the 2011 European tour, but to me his vocals really took a massive dive around November 2013, not only in terms of how he suddenly was unable to hit pretty much any of the more demanding notes on songs like Keep The Faith, Always or In These Arms anymore, but also in terms of how the whole sound of his voice seemed to change very rapidly. He started to get this powerless tone on his higher speaking range, e.g. lost his ability to yell properly (just listen to the way he used to shout phrases like "Are you with me out there?" or "Is there a doctor in the house?" convincingly until late-ish '13 and compare them to how they've sounded since then) as well as started developing the thin, originally almost shrill sound on his middle register and began to lose his mid-range power, control and breathing technique step by step at the same time. This was noticeable right from the start on songs like Bad Name, It's My Life, Because We Can, BTBMB, Who Says and Bad Medicine, but he still sounded quite fine whenever he really had to push mid-to-semi-high notes out from his diaphragm to control his tone (e.g. Memory, Captain Crash, Have A Nice Day, I Love This Town). He still had his recognizable vibrato and his low register was fully intact (Lost Highway, Whole Lot Of Leavin', Born To Follow). From time to time even a portion of his higher range was still somewhat functioning (IBTFY, These Days, Never Say Goodbye), albeit on a very inconsistent fashion.
In late 2015 I noticed him starting to try and get some of his range back, if only temporarily by forcing his remaining bit of high register to extreme. He certainly was sounding better on songs like KTF and IML than in late '13. That said, songs like Who Says and Bad Medicine were starting to get noticeably worse than before, probably at least partly due to him pushing his range to 120% during the more demanding songs and thus increasingly blowing out the tone of his middle register. That said, he still didn't have that airy sound on his voice nor was he dramatically out of time, either.
By late 2016-early '17 I first made notice of him changing his technique to the one he's still using today. Up until then he had still sounded like the regular post-2k JBJ pretty much all the time, it was just that the tone of his mid-range was flat/off as well as his high register was f*cked. However, around the release of THINFS I heard him start using this whispery technique on the low and middle notes while still shouting the higher ones, albeit with some regained clarity and strength (I thought so back then). An example of this was Always in Greenville, where he was hitting some of the notes better than ever since mid-'13. That said, his overall tone also sounded way different than at any point before, somewhat more fragile than previously - something obviously wasn't right.
That said, him probably getting too confident on his vocal power(lessness) costed him a fortune again, as even though his tone was arguably better in March/April '17 than it had been in at least two years, him constantly pushing his range to the highest it could go back then (e.g. the choruses of Blood On Blood, nightly long note on LYHOM, etc.) blew his voice out one more time. By the South American tour he had begun to get this "smokey" tone on his voice overall - even the Sao Paulo show suffered from his obvious tonal fragility, although he was still hitting many notes relatively well for the period, and when the North American tour started the following March, his voice was absolutely shot to pieces. In addition to his tone continuing to decrease, it was around this time he ultimately started missing notes here and there in every register, even when singing low. His voice turned monotonous, and he started cracking considerably more often than ever before, especially on the middle register. He also was singing more and more behind the beat and was increasingly out of breath, which had been an occasional issue in the previous year already, but completely exploded in the spring of '18.
In late 2018-'19 Jon lost yet another step vocally. His voice started to simply sound unhealthy; constantly hoarse, cracking, out of breath and therefor out of time as well. Once in a blue moon he managed to hold his own better than usual (e.g. Tokyo, Nijmegen, Dublin night #2 and the electric KOS show in Barcelona), but overall he was showing clear signs of an even worse, completely unrepairable decline. During the second half of the European tour and especially the last South American leg, every single bit of his remaining high(er) register was gone - he was straining and cracking miserably night after night even on Amen, skipping verses and choruses here and there on Bad Medicine and Prayer, letting other band members sing several parts of songs, letting Dave sing ITA in full, etc. His talking voice also got increasingly hoarse and started to occasionally crack even on rather basic speech patterns (e.g. during some speeches between songs in Rio).
Some of the issues explained above might be due to the possible failed vocal cord surgery Jon may have undergone at some point between the 2015 Asian run and the THINFS tour, but at the same time I could think of at least these options:
1) him having simply blown his voice out for good in every way possible
2) developing the early stages of a progressing pulmonary/respiratory disease (presumably due to smoking; e.g. pulmonary fibrosis, could explain the increasing breathing issues - extremely unlikely considering the severeness of these diseases, but we know how greedy Jon can be and what a "fighter" he is)
3) paralysis on the other of his vocal cords.