The Songs That Taught Me The Most About Singing

I’ve talked before about how some songs are more helpful for the voice, and some songs are less helpful for the voice.

A semi-regular discussion I have with clients is closely related: certain songs don’t just test your voice — they actively teach you about great singing.

Start Simple

When people first learn piano or guitar, they often want to play popular songs — basic three- or four-chord material they can jam along to. That’s helpful for getting started, but it’s usually more about establishing basic competency than understanding the inner workings of music.

As people become more established, they often choose more challenging pieces. The common mistake is pursuing challenge for its own sake, faster, harder, more intense, more complex — without recognising often these songs are just about “MORE”, rather than making you a truly better singer/musician.

By contrast, some pieces appear simple on the surface, but hide complex mechanics underneath. The challenge is covert, not overt. Learning songs like this teaches you why music is written the way it is, and what subtle functions you must observe for it to work. The more skilled the composer, the more advanced musical concepts you get to experience “from the inside”.

The Same Is True for Voice

When I first started singing, I didn’t have much range. I was restricted in what I could sing, so I worked my way up through the material I enjoyed at the time: U2, Sting, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer, and so on.

Nearly 20 years on, I’m not limited by range in the same way. I can attempt much more demanding material by more advanced singers — for example: Stevie Wonder and Ellis Hall.

Here’s the key issue: some songs ask a very narrow question of your voice, repeatedly. A song like Where The Streets Have No Name (and plenty of similar repertoire) largely comes down to one requirement: can you repeatedly jump from a D4 to an A4 with conviction? If you can do that one move, you can sing the song. If you can’t, the song is basically inaccessible.

This is one reason singers get so frustrated when trying to sing favourite songs too early. Their technical competence isn’t high enough, their musicality isn’t high enough, and the songs they want to sing often demand one specific “voice move” with a binary success/fail outcome. That move can sound impressive in that context, but it doesn’t necessarily develop broad, transferable skill.

Over time, I realised that the songs which developed my voice the most weren’t necessarily the most famous or “impressive” on paper — but the ones that demanded multiple blended vocal skills simultaneously.

The Songs That Taught Me the Most

For Your Love — Stevie Wonder

This is not the greatest song in the world. Stevie used it as a vehicle to demonstrate his range and work on his voice. But the way the verses and choruses make different demands on you provides tremendous insight into what good singing should feel like.

The verses demand fluidity and depth in the lower range, but you also must be able to climax with strength on the highest notes of the verses (around F#4 in the first male bridge, in the main). Then you must be able to ascend into the second bridge with ease, which requires a wholly different feel — yet you must make those approaches blend.

From there, the song steps up key by key, testing congruency and continuity across your range. It becomes progressively more climactic — you can’t bail out or go light at any point. It builds stamina within good technique, or you don’t make it.

They Won’t Go When I Go — Stevie Wonder vs George Michael

If For Your Love is overtly hard, They Won’t Go When I Go is the covert one. You have to make many of the same “voice moves” as For Your Love, but the emphasis sits lower — especially in the verses — while still requiring you to climb into a similar range for the climaxes.

On top of that, you have to move repeatedly between the first and second bridge and sound climactic without over-muscling. It’s all the challenge of For Your Love, at pace — and you have to make it sound smooth and easy.

George Michael performed his version down one semitone. That single change significantly alters the demands of the melody. The climactic notes sit differently across the bridges and produce a different overall feel in the voice.

In part, this reflects a limitation and an intelligent stylistic choice. George’s “second bridge” area (around A4) was not his most refined zone. If you go through his catalogue and note the ranges he tends to climax in, you’ll often find that he anchors major top notes around Ab4 — avoiding the need to live in that higher bridge territory. When he does sing above that, he often goes lighter, creating a stylistic flip for those notes (you can hear this in songs like Kissing a Fool, as well as in this performance).

This isn’t a criticism — it’s a perfect demonstration of how elite singers make intelligent technical choices around their strengths. And it means this song has a lot to teach in both keys: the original, and the semitone-down adaptation.

If you’re struggling with certain songs (whether on the simpler end or the harder end), and want to figure these out in your own voice, you can book in to work with me via the button below.