Passaggio

From the L.A. Times Music blog on Adam Lambert:

But a very particular gift allows him to go beyond the average show tune belter — or the average heavy-metal squawker. I think this gift puts him in a league with some of the best singers of the rock era. It has to do with the passaggio — his ability to transition from the lower register to that killer falsetto.

A friend who is a singer pointed this out to me (thank you, Erika Gunn!). She noted that many of the vocalists we find most unearthly and stirring can go from their earthy chest voice to the more piercing head voice without stumbling into the weak, constricted zone that often plagues singers as they make the leap. One blogger described it this way: The voice is like a stick-shift car, and the passaggio is the area of shifting, that risky spot where you'd better be both flexible and totally in command.

There's a lot of interesting technical stuff written about the passaggio. I'm no expert on vocal technique, so let me leave my thoughts within the territory I know: the effect of a certain voice on listeners. Lambert's natural range is fairly high — he's a tenor emerging at a time when most rock-oriented singers are baritones, like those kings of the "Idol" jungle, Chris Daughtry and David Cook. (R&B singers are a different matter altogether; the lingering influence of Michael Jackson means that soft, high voices still do well in the field.)

What's most striking about Lambert, though, is way he can linger in between registers without cracking, wavering or producing a "tight" sound. That's why his rendition of "Mad World" struck many as his best performance of the season. It lived in that space. The way Lambert's voice moves gives definition to grace, the way an Olympic skater does when executing a triple toe loop.

This was from April 27, 2009, before Paula compared Adam to Michael Phelps. In our house, we compare him to Lebron James.

[Update 5/4/09: LeBron named NBA's Most Valuable Player. We use the LeBron comparison for Adam because by the time they each came on the scene, they were fully formed, freakishly skilled and in possession of all the intangibles necessary for greatness.]