I cannot for the life of me figure out what happened to Jessica Simpson’s voice. When she first arrived on the music scene ten years ago, she could actually sing. Now, her voice is almost unrecognizable. My only guess is that she’s no longer as tightly managed, and she lost sight of how to properly sing. Listen to the two songs below. In the first song, she’s singing I Wanna Love You Forever, and it’s actually enjoyable. In the second, she’s singing her new Christmas song, My Only Wish, which is getting compared to Mariah Carey’s famous song, All I Want for Christmas. I’m less concerned about the blatant plagiarism and more concerned that it’s not listenable.
She never had a singing lesson and that’s why her voice got worse with time. Her high notes were always screamed, she lacks technique. There are things that can be fixed in the studio, but when you listen to her live performences, her voice is strained, forced. She has the basics – the talent, but all she really needs is a year of singing lessons with a good coach so she can learn how to use her voice without forcing sounds. Christina Aguilera may be screaming a lot, but she does it in a healthy way, she uses the right technique and her voice doesn’t change, while Jessica screams, breathes through her nose and her voice just disappears, gets destroyed.