Weekend Listomania: Special "Golden Throats" Audio/Video Edition

[I first wrote and posted this back in 2010, when the blog and the world were young. I was gonna add at least one new artist to the list, just to prove that I'm not the slacker that everybody (with justification) thinks I am, but for the life of me, I couldn't think of a single recent act who I thought was either innovative or annoying enough to make the cut. That's probably a function of my current extreme old age more than anything esthetic, but what the hell. Obviously, I'll be curious to hear what your feelings are on the subject. -- S.S.]

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental nocturnal emissions specialist Fah Lo Suee and I will be taking an exploratory meeting with Harlan Crow, billionaire Hitler merch collector and real estate partner of SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas, who has promised to cut me a deal on rent for the back room of his mom's house.

In any event, further posting by moi will have to be sporadic for a day or two.

In the meantime, then, here's a hopefully fun little project for us all:

Post-Elvis Pop/Rock Singer or Group Who Most Influenced (For Good or Ill) the Art of Pop/Rock Singing!!!

No arbitrary rules here whatsoever. I should also add that my song selections do not necessarily represent the singer or group's most influential work. They're just things I like, or that perhaps immediately sprung to mind.

And my totally top of my head Top Seven is:

7. Bob Dylan -- Percy's Song

Believe it or not, there are still people who think Dylan couldn't sing. Heh heh. In any case, Dylan's phrasing and charmingly nasal tones have influenced countless singer/songwriters over the years, few of whom would have likely been granted artistic license without his example.

6. The Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger)-- Good Times, Bad Times

Snotty white boy sings the blues and quite convincingly -- this despite the fact that he doesn't really sound all that black, although everybody thinks he does at the time. An amazing accomplishment, when you think of it, and the template for decades of snotty white boy vocalists who probably never even heard of Muddy Waters.

5. Vanilla Fudge -- You Keep Me Hanging On

If truth be told, it wasn't the faux classical instrumental overkill that made The Fudge influential (that stuff is as dead as the papal penis, actually). No, it was their vocal approach. The notion, in rock, that you can simulate soul with pompous Italianate pseudo-operatic yoweling begins here, and legions of bad bands and singers -- mostly from Long Island, for some reason -- have made that appalling innovation part of their gestalt.

4. David Bowie -- Young Americans

The aforementioned pompous Italianate pseudo-operatic yoweling overlaid with an affectless Anthony Newley impression. Influential? Essentially, every unbearable singer out of England between 1971 and the late 80s -- Bryan Ferry, Martin Fry of ABC, The Thompson Twins, that clown in Spandau Ballet -- copped their vocal shtick from Bowie. Hey, thanks for nothing, Dave.

3. Patti LaBelle -- Over the Rainbow

Over-souling: A vocal style in which the singer throws some poor song onto the floor, writhing in pain and gasping for breath, and then wrestles it into submission until it simply expires. The late great Jerry Wexler, of Atlantic Records, named it, but it was Patti LaBelle who brought it to the mainstream, and just about every successful r&b singer since -- black or white, male or female -- has emulated it at some point. I should add, of course, that Patti's 1985 "Over the Rainbow," as heard above, would be considered a laughable model of subtlety and restraint by most contemporary artistes of the American Idol/The Voice school.

2. The Doobie Brothers (Michael McDonald) -- What a Fool Believes

Okay, there's no real name for what McDonald does, but it's a style in which the singer's beard does all the work, and for a period in the 80s, it was the dominant male vocal sound of pop music worldwide.

And the numero uno most influential post-Elvis vocalist actually turns out to be...

1. Cher -- Believe

Well, Cher via the dreaded AutoTune, that is. I'm guessing the list of irredeemably crappy hit records featuring robo-vocals in the wake of 100-percent-recycled-plastic-based-life-form Cher's "Believe" now numbers in the thousands. In any case, the single most insufferable pop music trend of the last several decades, unless as I suggested in the intro, I've somehow missed one.

Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!