What Makes Certain Songs Hard to Sing

If you have ever tried singing your favourite songs, you’ve probably recognised that some are harder than others. You may have even found that some have near identical range, and yet some feel utterly unachievable. Why should this be?

I regularly speak with clients about such songs they find difficult to sing. Comments come up like:

“I’m fine until the bridge/chorus/outro, then I’m knackered”
“It doesn’t seem particularly high, but I seem to struggle to hit the same notes I can in other songs”
“I can’t seem to find a key that makes this song singable – what’s going on?”

These are all common complaints I hear about people trying to sing some songs. In particular, certain songs and certain genres seem to hold much harder melodies for people to sing.

As it happens, there are mechanical and musical reasons for why certain melodies and intervals are harder to sing than others. There are characteristics that, once you learn what they are, you can scan for when listening to songs. Moreover, the more of these melodic characteristics a song possesses, the harder the song inherently becomes.

Characteristics of difficult songs

I’ve got ten traits in mind. Some of these are “voice moves”, tricky things to ask your voice to do, and others relate to general hallmarks of what makes songs easier/harder to sing.

I’ll discuss each briefly so you can grasp why these characteristics make songs tricky. There are many others I can think of, but we’ll start here for you.

0. Key too high/too low/wrong for you
I go on so much about key choice, so I’m going to be brief here. If you are trying to sing a song in the wrong key for you – too high, too low, etc – the song will always be difficult so sing. The following points are to cover attributes within songs themselves, assuming that key choice isn’t an issue.

1. Wide ranged melodies
This one is fairly obvious, but often people don’t check the absolute range of songs. If a song requires too great a range (typically 1.5 octaves or above), most untrained singers will find this very tricky to sing, as they generally have less than 1.5 octaves of reliable range. Ergo, the range of the song in ANY key will always exceed their facility to sing it.

Even trained singers can find this tricky, as 1.5 octaves-plus will require one or two bridges in their voice to be perfectly robust to allow access to all that range.

2. Narrow ranged melodies
This may seem counterintuitive, but songs with very NARROW melodies are also very tricky. This is because, to sing low notes the vocal folds have to contract and thicken, to sing high notes the vocal folds have to stretch and thin. The ability to sing smoothly from low to high and back again is dependent on one’s ability to move smoothly from that more contracted state, to that more stretched state. This requires the vocal folds to not just be capable of moving supply, but to remain in a supple condition throughout singing a song.

But melodies that are too narrow mean that the vocal folds get stuck at one length for the whole song. They don’t get to stretch longer or contract shorter. This inhibits that supple condition, and doesn’t let the voice operate optimally. Fast fatigue is a problem with such songs.

3. Melodies with heavily repeated notes
This is a specific outworking of point 2. Many rock or modern pop songs involve choruses hitting the same single note over and over (think AC/DC, Demi Lovato, etc). Much of modern worship music does this, as do some choral arrangements. The act of having to hit the SAME note over and over can leave the voice feeling very tired, because it is LITERALLY the same length of vocal fold throughout. It is very fatiguing over long periods, hence songs that do this throughout are very demanding to sing even for trained singers.

4. Verses and choruses are the same range/melodies
This overlaps with the previous two points, but is it’s own point. Some songs have nearly identical melodies for the verses and choruses. As such, even if the melody isn’t too wide or narrow, the vocal folds are stuck hitting the same co-ordinations over and over and over. That makes the song tiring to sing for the same reasons.

This is a mechanical (and musical reason) why verses that sit lower than the chorus are so favourable to sing (and so enjoyable to listen to).

5. Octave jumps
An artist that writes fairly similar melodies for verses and choruses is James Bay. On his record ‘The Chaos and The Calm’, a lot of the verses and choruses follow nearly identical notes. The only difference being that he sings the chorus melody an octave higher than the verse to impart extra intensity.

This often requires more range than a singer has (per point 1), often means the melodies are too similar (point 4), but also means the singer is jumping from very low to very high. This can lead to either the top sounding strained (as they’ve grabbed too much muscle from their lower register to try and make the top), or results in the lower voice becoming too light (in an effort to avoid the first problem mentioned).

It also tends to leave a yawning void in the middle of their voice, both in such songs and mechanically. The jumping from low to high and back again is demanding and quite wearing.

6. Melodies that sit right on a vocal bridge

Bridges are the connecting regions between respective registers of the voice. The simplest one to help grasp this is the first bridge. This is the region connecting chest and head voice.

In reality, there are multiple bridges, and each have their own peculiarities and mechanical challenges we must learn to negotiate. Most of U2’s songs require male singers to sing on their first bridge for verses and most of the choruses, then climax on their second bridge.

Put simply, it is typically harder to sing right ON a bridge, than to notes either side of it. It’s technically challenging to land right on a bridge and not go too heavy or too light, and by simply nudging the melody up or down a single semitone, it can often make the melody much more favourable to sing.

7. Half-step melody notes that sit right on a vocal bridge

Here’s the tricky bit. Sometimes by changing the key to move a certain melody note up/down and away from the bridge, you end up positioning another note onto a bridge. This is a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul – you aren’t fixing one issue, you’re just moving it elsewhere.

This makes it impossible to get a really great feeling key for certain songs. This is especially true with key melody notes a half-step/semi-tone away from each other.

A simple example of this would be ‘Only You‘ by Yazoo. The chorus repeatedly hits two notes that are side by side and only one semitone away. Tricky stuff, especially when placed right on a bridge.

8. Really wide/really narrow vowels on key notes

Vowels are an under-discussed element of good singing, and errors in vowel work is generally what derails most singers, even at higher levels.

Certain vowels are tricky. For example, in the song ‘Always Remember Us This Way‘, the top-most melody in the chorus has the lyric “and I can’t find the words“. You have to ascend to these top notes, and sit on almost the same note for all of these words.

All of the vowels are either really quite wide or a dipthong (two vowels together). This makes it extremely challenging to get the vowels right when sitting that high.

Other times, we have to sing a high note on a very narrow vowel. This tends to tip the colour of the voice towards a lighter headier quality, when we are often wanting a beefier fuller quality. This makes narrow vowels also very tricky to stay consistent on.

9. Songs with no gaps between song sections

Most songs have gaps between verses and choruses to give some musical and vocal respite. But not all genres do.

A lot of early motown has no breaks between verses. Think ‘Higher‘ by Jackie Wilson, ‘Rescue Me‘ by Fontella bass, ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg‘ by The Temptations. All of this have song sections running one into another with no rest. This gives even very capable singers no respite from hard melodies, and also gives the audience no respite from hearing the singer going at it hard.

A simple solution to this is to add breaks between song sections, or alter verses to contain more short micro-breaks. But this may be easier said than done if you are contractually obliged to deliver music exactly as written, and other solutions may need to be found.

10. Songs with stylistic flips

Singers like Sam Smith, Adam Levine, Leona Lewis, etc, all sing with stylistic ‘flips’. This is where the lower range sounds one way, and the higher range seems to flip into a much lighter/softer sound.

Whether this is head voice or falsetto isn’t relevant. This involves ‘letting go’ of the muscular contraction more characteristic of their lower register, in order to make it into the higher register. Then they have to suddenly regain that contraction when returning to their lower register. Think of it like pulling an elastic band tight, then snapping it, pulling it tight, then snapping it, repeatedly.

This is mechanically very wearing on any voice, and for most singers, exhausts them when done for even a few songs on the trot.

Conclusion: Sometimes songs seem hard, because they are

The reality is, some songs seem hard, because they are hard. Certain melodies are very favourable in voices, others less so. While we can all train to improve our voices, sometimes less experienced keep insisting on trying to sing melodies that even experienced highly skilled singers would actively avoid – not because they can’t do it, but because they can quickly assess a melody and know whether it would be easy/hard to sing.

Want to sing your songs better?

If you would like to start to tackle some of the songs you find very difficult, I’d love to start work with you. All these issues are solveable with good technique and time spent building your voice. If you want to make your favourite songs sound and FEEL much better, you can book in your initial consultation via my booking form right here.