Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke credits Neil Young with giving him the confidence to sing in his natural voice.
The ‘No Surprises’ singer has an incredible range and can hit extremely high notes, which has become his band’s signature sound.
But Thom wasn’t always confident singing that way, and it wasn’t until he was compared to legendary singer/songwriter Young, 77, after sending a demo to a magazine at the age of 18, that he decided to embrace what he initially thought was an “uncomfortably high or awkward” register.
In an excerpt from Jason Thomas Gordon’s forthcoming book, The Singers Talk, he recalls: “I said, ‘Who’s Neil Young?’ I had never heard Neil Young, so I went out and bought ‘After The Gold Rush’ and I was like, ‘Wow! Is it okay to sound like that? Because he’s a little higher than me, but there was a softness and a naivety in the voice that I was always trying to hide. Then it was like, ‘Oh, maybe I don’t have to hide it.
Yorke also cites another artist who allowed him to feel comfortable with his voice and unique singing style as Jeff Buckley, who died in May 1997 at the age of 30.
He added: “When we were doing the second record [‘The Bends’], I went to see Jeff Buckley before he died. Again, it was one of those, ‘It’s OK to do this? And it reminded me of this vulnerable part of me that I wanted to hide. I remember recording ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ by myself at first. Then when we got together to listen to it, the others were like, ‘Let’s use that,’ and I was like, ‘No, no, we can’t use that, it’s too vulnerable. It’s too much me.'”
