I noticed several things in that BZBlaner video:
1) He used way more studio recordings in that video to make a point than he had to for both Mariah and Whitney.
2) He used way more REPEATS than he had to for Mariah and Whitney.
3) Those repeats were from the same handful of performances.
I won't deny that Beyonce is talented. But earth-shankingly talented? No. On Whitney and Mariah's level? Not at all. And that was my point.
I noticed several things about your analysis:
1. You were incorrect; he uses far more live recordings for Beyonce than Mariah and while he uses fewer than for Whitney I suspect that is more a function of the length of the videos (17 minutes versus 26 minutes) than of anything else.
2. He uses more repeats, but he uses them for different aspects of the performance
and even including those updates he uses nearly 30 different performances for Beyonce in a 17 minute video.
3. And nope.
I don't think she's on Whitney and Mariah's level. I think she's a 9/10 to their 10. She
is better at both of them than different things (Mariah: certain kinds of scales, sustaining high belts, lower register comfort, dynamics in chest voice; Whitney: mostly agility in chest voice), but holistically is not quite on either of their levels technically, especially if you include musical intelligence.
But that's not relevant to the question of whether she's better than Christina. She does not need to be on
their level to be superior to her.
ALSO: Christina is capable of more than just a "
random splattering of notes"...
You repeatedly try to clock Bey on basic, uncomplicated runs and then you present those uncomplicated runs - Loving Me 4 Me, aside - for Christina? I realize your point is that she can do runs without being a mess - though I will note the mysterious absence of live examples - but you are being inconsistent.
The majority of Stripped. Fighter specifically. A better question would be when has BEYONCE managed a complete song with a high tessitura well that didn't resort to shouting (her MO with pretty much all of B'Day). Yes, I'm aware that Christina shouts as well, but this is hardly a habit exclusive to her.
Perhaps I was not clear enough. When I asked when the last time was she managed to do a song with X, I meant
a performance, not a studio recording where Christina's typically shoddy technique can be edited into presentable shape and she has multiple tries to get things right.
But taking your examples for what they are, Fighter is
not a good example of high tessitura singing.
This mess of an E5? Yes, it sounds cool in studio. You can also hear
exactly the same problems in it that screwed up her voice.
Or this attempt at phrasing at E5? Shouting, screaming, and straining.
And don't give me that nonsense about, "Well, Beyonce does it too!" If you think that there is any comparison between Beyonce's vocal habits and Christina's,
you must have lost your mind. And that is not even including live performances where the gap
widens.
Oh, and let's just clock that "sustained" E5 in Fighter once more
Casa de Mi Padre
Sing for Me
Best of Me,
Sex for Breakfast
Understand - and not ONLY does she stay on pitch. She executes a more difficult song than the majority of Beyonce's catalog.
These are all examples that I was able to come up with without much thought. I could come up with more if I were so inclined. You should become better acquainted with Xtina's work if you're going to drag her for it.
1. You gave me studio examples. I wanted live; this is my fault for not being clear.
2. The intervals in Casa de Mi Padre aren't particularly wide and not nearly as impressive as the intervals in, say, Halo (easily over 2.5 octaves)
3. Sing for Me is not half as impressive a vocal performance as Love On Top, which has far more challenging tessitura and multiple key changes
4. I said head voice, not falsetto
5. Ugh, why can't you link to the specific part of the song that demonstrates whatever it is you're trying to show me whenever possible. -_-
I could just as easily ask when has Beyonce shown the same vulnerability as a song like "I Am" the feistiness of "Fighter" or the sheer vocal magnitude that had people comparing Christina to Mariah with songs like "Keep Singing My Song". But I know Beyonce's catalog so I could confidently tell you that the answer is never.
Really? This is cute. Again and again you run to subjective interpretations of vocal performances. Vulnerability and feistiness are subjective qualities of a vocal performance and dependent upon how the listener receives the performance. Frankly I think that Disappear and Resentment both show as much vulnerability as I Am and Beyonce's catalog is full of songs that are as feisty as Fighter (perhaps too many).
You are simply making arguments about how the songs
make you feel and because Christina makes you feel the song more, you decide that Beyonce does not have those qualities. This is nonsense; it says only that you do not feel those things from Beyonce's catalog which given how steam-pressed you are over Bey - and stop singing that tune about you being a fan, because no one is buying it - that you become delusional when comparing her to Bey, I'm unsurprised.
And what is so difficult about Countdown? Understand has a more dynamic melody (and consistently so. Countdown loses the point of being a song with it's scatterbrained everywhere-ness) and structure on single lines than that song does.
Well, at least you didn't deny Love On Top. And Christina does not have the intonation, the agility, the
control, or the transitions to do the first run on Countdown. And let's be serious here: Christina would lose her breath halfway through that song.
Christina could sing all of Beyonce's catalog because Beyonce doesn't really do anything out of her league, especially if we're putting both girls in the studio. The ranges are similar. The acrobatics are similar. I suppose the same thing could be said about Beyonce, but Beyonce has not demonstrated the same level of variety in her studio recordings, which is what I'm dragging her for. Her vocals are always heavy handed. Her interpretation always one-note.
Nonsense.
Christina does not have Beyonce's range. The highest connected in head voice that Christina has hit is that G#5 from her warm-up session
thirteen years ago. Beyonce has good connected notes up to D6. Beyonce has a lower register with
firm, resonant notes C3
and below. Christina is
air down there. Beyonce has controlled, sustained resonant belts with vibrato up to F5 and
sustained up to G5. Christina
struggles to hit notes above C5 and has
no stamina at high tessitura singing. Christina does not have Beyonce's agility - she can randomly splatter notes and "notes" (see
any Debutina performance - but to have Beyonce's agility in any meaningful sense she would need to have the same accuracy intonation, to have the same facility with head voice (and again, her falsetto does not count for that question), the same ability to switch between chest and head, the ability to maintain the same support and the ability to do this live and not ~mysteriously~ be able to do some of these things some of the time in studio and never do them live.
And versatility? Please. There is
plenty of versatility in the studio recordings I have linked to.
Artistic approach, which is something that definitely matters to me as I'm a fan of a records first and live recordings second. Beyonce has not demonstrated a single thing in a studio recording that I couldn't also demonstrate Christina as capable of in a similar song without much thought. I could also do the reverse.
Except examples abound where Beyonce does things that Christina cannot. Frankly anything that involves genuine vocal control can be filed under Things Beyonce Can Do That Christina Cannot, and Lord knows that Bey's discography is full of them.
I love Whitney. I wasn't dragging her with that comment! But I do think Mariah is more versatile. Mariah has genuine CLUB BANGERS in her catalog. I can't say the same about Whitney outside of her dance remixes.
I used to think that Mariah was more versatile, but really look at the totality of Whitney's discography and how many different styles she sang in and how comfortable she was with all sorts of different kinds of phrasing and delivery.
