Sing like there’s no tomorrow

In anticipation of this week’s American Idol (and hoping that Jason Castro gets the hell off finally get the boot), I decided to blog this post.

Every now and then, when I get some free time, I like to scour Yahoo! News for strange stories which we don’t often read about – smaller stuff that are never headlines but quite interesting. That’s when I came across this article in USA Today headlined: No Idol advice about what singing can do to your vocal cords.

I suppose from the headline, you’d get the idea that the article is about how singing affects ones vocal cords. And apparently, it affects it pretty bad.

The article, written by Rita Rubin, revolves around the research of a professor of communication siences and disorders at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro Celia Cooper/Hooper (the name appears in both spellings in the article). Apparently, C/Hooper and two grad students wanted to see what goes on in the throats of young singers so they brought together 20 middle-high school students to sing three genre of music – opera, gospel and pop.

And apparently, the pop song was the most stressful on your vocal cords.

The conclusion? Well, without proper vocal training, these people will grow up to have ‘rough’ voices – which I assume means raspy – like that of Kelly Clarkson, Fantasia and Brooke White who was just voted out of Idol last week.

I wonder if that’s how Idol season 7 hopeful David Archuleta previously paralysed his vocal cords? It was well-documented in the early episodes of Idol. But then again, as the video below shows, singing like that as a kid, it’s no wonder your vocal chords are screwed up.

What is most interesting, however, is that pop tunes are the main culprit, over such ‘big’ genres like opera and gospel. Which means that anyone going to the karaoke belting out to Christina Aguilera or Mariah Carey better watch out. Maybe you should sing a Pavarotti song instead.

Maybe it’s time I stop singing in the shower and to the radio when I’m driving. If not to save my vocal chords, but to spare my neighbours with my wailing – or the people in other cars thinking I’m having a seizure.

Tags: American Idol, David Archuleta, Singing