FEATURE:
Sprechgesang Durch Technik
IN THIS PHOTO: Wet Leg have harnessed and personalised talk-singing, as evidenced throughout their award-nominated eponymous 2022 debut album/PHOTO CREDIT: Terna Jogo for Rolling Stone UK
Why Is Talk-Singing Becoming More Prevalent?
_________
IT is not a new thing in music…
IN THIS PHOTO: Artist and D.J. Gemma Bradley’s 2023 documentary for The Cultural Frontline asked why more and more guitar bands are speaking rather than singing - a phenomenon that is seemingly growing and expanding
but, maybe as part of diversifying and evolving genres, there is a definitely rise in talk-singing. The Germans call it Sprechgesang. For decades, we have heard songs where there are spoken lines or verses. I don’t think that there has been a particular revolution in that sense. One can definitely feel it becoming more popular and integrated into music. Maybe genres like Rock, Indie, and Pop have been quite homogenous and defined in past years. As we are seeing more artists push boundaries and find new ways to communicate with the audience, it is no surprise that many artists are mixing singing with speaking. It is not uncommon to find solo artists doing this, but bands especially (including duos) are employing speak-singing. I was compelled by a documentary from earlier in the year from musician Gemma Bradley. She asks why guitar bands are speaking instead of singing. I am quite torn over it, and I have theories as to why a lot of Rock bands especially are bringing talk-singing into things. I want to start with a couple of features that provide some background and context to this phenomenon. In 2019, The Guardian asked the question as to why many of the best bands preferred talking rather than singing:
‘It feels like acting,” says Florence Shaw, frontwoman – not singer – of the London indie band Dry Cleaning. “Speaking your lyrics is acting, more than singing is. Everyone knows what it sounds like in a person’s voice when they are irritated, or when they are in love. The voice changes, and it doesn’t whack you in the face – it can be quite subtle and creep up on you more.”
If you spend any time in small British venues, it is likely you have noticed there are quite a few bands like Dry Cleaning around at the moment – bands that don’t employ a singer so much as someone who declaims their words, and that are getting noticed. Do Nothing and Black Country, New Road have been winning admirers; Talk Show have been signed by Felix White, late of the Maccabees, to his Yala! Records label; Sinead O’Brien’s new single is on Chess Club, the label that brought the world Mumford & Sons, MØ, Wolf Alice, Sundara Karma and more.
It is not a complete surprise that all these artists are operating in that part of the musical spectrum marked, broadly, as post-punk. The late 70s and early 80s were when sprechgesang – literally, “spoken singing” – flourished as a means of expression, in part because of the embrace of musical limitations, in part because it was a clear point of difference from traditional rock music, and in part because it was ideal for conveying the scorn, sarcasm and disgust that performers such as John Lydon and Mark E Smith dealt in.
Smith, especially, is an inspiration for O’Brien, even if her style – poetic and allusive, with an often flowing and melodic backing – is more akin to early Patti Smith (she even started in the same way as the latter, reciting poetry to the accompaniment of a guitar). “Mark E Smith showed it’s not about perfection,” O’Brien says. “Every piece I ever listen to by the Fall can sound like a whole different mood board on another day. It completely transforms, and I’m stopped in my tracks.”
That sense of confrontation Lydon and Smith brought remains important to many of these new groups. They are all still playing small rooms, where eye contact is unavoidable, and there is something uniquely discomfiting about being singled out from a crowd to be spoken at by someone on a stage.
“There are people, understandably, who are cringed out by spoken-word stuff,” says Isaac Wood of Black Country, New Road. “It’s too direct. They think it’s like an open mic slam poetry night or something. But if you are in any way inclined towards it, it is less easy to ignore, because there are conversational elements to it. It’s more direct.” Like Dry Cleaning, whose breakthrough track was about Meghan Markle, Wood’s lyrical references to Kendall Jenner and Kanye West make him feel all the more immediate.
“They hate it,” says Do Nothing’s Chris Bailey of his own audiences. “They feel super-weird and wrong. A lot of the time I’ll stare one person down, and usually they just look away. If I’m playing a character, it makes it feel like theatre. Breaking the fourth wall always makes people uncomfortable.”
“I love being able to stand a metre away from someone and just stare at them,” says Talk Show’s Harrison Swann. “It’s really visceral and the most real thing you can get. You can’t shy away or hide behind a melody. It’s great as a performer; it’s really immediate.”
Unsurprisingly, sprechgesang did not come about as a means to enable scratchy indie bands to make their audiences feel uncomfortable. It was first used by Arnold Schoenberg in 1912, when he set 21 poems by Albert Giraud to music as Pierrot Lunaire. (Strictly, what he was doing, and what these bands are doing, was sprechstimme – which emphasises speech above melody – but outside classical music, the two terms are all but interchangeable, and sprechgesang is the one that has stuck.) Brecht and Weill developed it further, but it was never more than a novelty in rock until the post-punk years (you might make an argument that Bob Dylan deals in it, or you might say he isn’t a very good singer)”.
Whilst artists throughout music history have used talk-singing, I think what is remarkable about the last few years it the variety of genres that is exploring it. In terms of newer acts coming through, the likes of Wet Leg, Dry Cleaning, and Black Country, New Road cover a vast array of sounds and territories. I think it will be something that becomes even more common in the coming years. The Ringer investigated why Sprechgesang was very much in vogue:
“Yet the present state of talk-singing (or “Sprechgesang”—yes, there is a German word for this) is anything but a monolith. Consider the vast array of talk-singing styles on display in the early 2020s. If Shaw sounds ever calm and collected, her peers in the London-based groups Squid and Black Country, New Road sound agitated and distrubed, like Mark E. Smith on steroids, delivering feverish punk monologues coated with rage at the collapsing world around them. (The great eight-minute finale of Squid’s album Bright Green Field, for instance, finds singer Ollie Judge ranting and raving about political propaganda—“Pamphlets through my door / And pamphlets on my floor!”—with mounting hysteria.)
“The more melodic the songs were, the less excited we were about what we were writing. Then, as we tried things that were less melodic and more spoken, we just got more and more excited about what we were doing.” —Greg Katz, lead singer of Cheekface
Contrast that with the flirty, winking monotone favored by English duo Wet Leg on their debut single “Chaise Longue,” in which singer Rhian Teasdale cheekily quotes Mean Girls and repeats the phrase “chaise longue” 46 times without breaking a sweat. The ferociously addictive single became an unlikely success: By late September, “Chaise Longue” had amassed nearly 3 million streams on Spotify (The Ringer’s parent company) alone, and Wet Leg announced their first U.S. shows despite having only two songs.
Across the pond, more laid-back, stylized talk-singing approaches have flourished among indie acts like Sneaks (a.k.a. musician Eva Moolchan), whose four albums revel in minimalist post-punk mantras, and the band French Vanilla, whose records French Vanilla and How Am I Not Myself? draw links between the iconic, exaggerated Sprechgesang of early B-52s and the present-day queer-punk scene.
Meanwhile, Greg Katz, the lead singer of indie-rock group Cheekface, channels his anxieties into a dorkier, more conversational mode of talk-singing on 2021’s excellent Emphatically No., employing an untrained voice that evokes everyone from Jonathan Richman (whose stock has risen so much lately that he’s being impersonated at festivals!) to Cake. A typical Cheekface song finds Katz talking his way through the verses, riffing on subjects like climate collapse (“Original Composition”) and smartphone addiction (“Got my old phone replaced / Now I do nothing faster than I did yesterday,” he quips in “Wedding Guests”), before breaking into a singable chorus. He never sounds as cool or detached as, say, Florence Shaw. He sounds like a funny, self-deprecating friend cracking jokes to ward off despair.
Like many talk-singers, Katz has no formal vocal training. He embraced the style more or less by accident. When he and bandmate Amanda Tannen began writing songs together in 2017, they tried various approaches. “The more melodic the songs were, the less excited we were about what we were writing,” Katz says. “Then, as we tried things that were less melodic and more spoken, we just got more and more excited about what we were doing.”
In Katz’s view, his vocal style conveys the jittery emotional landscape of Cheekface’s music as much as the lyrics themselves. “You can tell when your friends get overwhelmed because they start talking so fast, right?” Katz says. “You’re like, ‘Whoa, slow down. You’re tripping.’ And I think that’s something you can do if you’re not concerned about keeping the cadence of the melody the same from line to line and verse to verse. What is the polar opposite of that? It’s a Max Martin song, where he would rather the words have less meaning and the melodies stay symmetrical.”
Yet in recent months, even the upper echelons of pop royalty have dabbled in Sprechgesang. Billie Eilish sexy-mumbles her way through the bleary-eyed Happier Than Ever highlight “Oxytocin,” doing her best Madonna-circa-Erotica impression, while St. Vincent affects a saucier beat-rap delivery in her comeback single “Pay Your Way in Pain.” Back in April, Mick Jagger delivered a rather lackluster brand of shout-singing on his Dave Grohl–assisted lockdown anthem “Eazy Sleazy,” which is disappointing, considering Jagger gave us one of the all-time great, sex-obsessed Sprechgesang performances on 1978’s “Shattered.”
Even Olivia Rodrigo, the newly anointed Gen Z pop queen, unleashes a caustic mode of talk-singing on her song “Brutal”: “I’m not cool, and I’m not smart / And I can’t even parallel park,” Rodrigo snarls, as though she’s too consumed by teen angst to conform to melodic orthodoxy. Curiously, Rodrigo’s song nicks a guitar lick from “Pump It Up” by Elvis Costello, which, by Costello’s own admission, borrowed heavily from Bob Dylan’s talk-singing landmark “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” which, in turn, took influence from the fast-talking proto-rap of Chuck Berry’s 1956 single “Too Much Monkey Business.” How about that: a talk-singing lineage that directly links Gen Z all the way back to the Greatest Generation”.
One would say that an increased number of groups and new artists would lead to a rise in talk-singing. This is true, but I don’t think it is a mere numbers game. I am a little divided over the phenomenon. I am someone traditionally who prefers singing as the best way to articulate a message and capture me. I do think a talk-singing can be a little weary and ruin the momentum of a song. On the other hand, artists can bring more nuance and personality to songs. I feel a greater range of dynamics and emotions can be deployed through talk-singing. Also, for many Rock acts who might have a more political edge, providing speech can be more impactful and clearer (in terms of vocal clarity) compared to singing. I do not like songs that are mostly talk-singing, but having Wet Leg have shown how effecting and interesting music with a more conversational edge can be. I guess speaking can seem a more direct link to the fans and lyrics. Singing can sometimes be unintelligibility, so there is that desire to be understand. Rock is a genre that is seeing more talk-singing. This might beg the question whether the genre is transforming into something different. We do still have guitar bands who write huge and raucous songs, but I think the sound and culture of Rock has transformed quite notably over the past decade. Regardless of age, even Indie heroes such as Arctic Monkeys are far removed from how they sounded on their 2006 debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. Lead Alex Turner has this interesting mix of singing and speaking. More Lounge and Orchestral than their early work, maybe they have lead a bit of a revolution.
The fact is that every artist has a different reason for talk-singing. I am not sure which song or artist started the trend, but we are talking many decades ago now. Whether people err more towards a more traditional approach of Rock songs largely comprising singing, or they are pretty open to talk-singing, it is definitely becoming more prominent. I do think it is a way for artists to distinguish themselves and get their natural accents and voices heard. It also provides something more cinematic, dramatic and even comic. It adds layers and depths to genres like Rock, and certain spoken lines can come across more powerfully, naturally or engaging than if they were sung. I would recommend people listen to Gemma Bradley’s excellent documentary from earlier in the year, where bands like Squid are put under the spotlight:
“Fontaines D.C., Dry Cleaning and Yard Act, as well as solo artists including Billy Nomates and Sinead O’Brien are just some of the acts using speech prominently in their music. It is not just vocal performance that has been commented on - many emerging bands have been described as having a ‘post-punk’ guitar music style and lyrics rich in social commentary.
Musician and broadcaster Gemma Bradley meets bands and vocalists to find out more about this exciting music trend and why.
James Smith, songwriter and vocalist of English band Yard Act explains why he was attracted to what he describes as ‘spoken word, politically forward’ guitar music. He reflects on the power of vocal performance and how the Covid pandemic affected his song writing.
Irish vocalist Sinead O’Brien performs on stage with a guitarist and drummer and works in poetry as well as music. She meets Gemma backstage before a gig to discuss how versatile and impactful speech in music can be.
Fionn Reilly from Belfast band Enola Gay explains to Gemma what inspires his energetic performance style, vocal delivery and the band’s song lyrics.
Gemma also visits the prolific and much sought-after producer Dan Carey at his London studio. He has worked with many guitar bands that use speech in their music including Fontaines D.C., Squid, Wet Leg and black midi, and describes the freedom available for artists unconstrained by the parameters of singing”.
I am a big fan of many of the artists included in the Gemma Bradley documentary. Whether they use talk-singing to bring poetry into music or something that builds dialogue and conversation into the mix, it is clearly providing very popular and enduring! These are artists with a rich catalogue that is setting them aside. As I say, there is a delicate balance where too much talk-singing (Dry Cleaning for instance) can prove a bit samey and unappealing to those who do like at least a bit of singing. That said, bands like Dry Cleaning are almost creating a sub-genre or sound that has a very growing fanbase. That is a good thing. New acts like Wet Leg are adding their own stamp to Sprechgesang. As it shows no signs of slowing, it will be fascinating to see…
WHERE it leads.