|
Personally I think it comes down to whether the vocals have been written to support the music, or whether the music has been written to support the vocals. It's usually pretty easy to tell them apart: in the former case the vocals seem drab and unimaginative, and the song, which would have originally been written as a non-vocal piece but only had vocals added on haphazardly at the last stage of production to add commercial appeal, would be quite capable of standing up on its own without the vocals. Some songs that fall into this category of having vocals needlessly added at the end are:
Rank 1 - Airwave ("I can feel you over the airwave")
Hi Gate - Pitchin (In Every Direction) (I'm Pitchin in every direction")
Choo Choo Project - Hazin and Phazin ("I'm Hazin and Phazin")
Cass & Slide - Perception ("You can see forever".... etc)
And so on. These tracks were originally written as non-vocal tracks, but had vocals added in rushedly to the final release to try and boost commercial appeal. These, needless to say, are the vocals I don't like.
However many songs have the vocals written before the background music, and are considered to be central to the production, and thus the music is written to fit in with the vocals, not the other way round as is so often the case. This is particularly noticable in remixes of non-electronica tracks, such as the remixes of Delerium - Silence and of Garbage - Milk, where the productions would be meaningless without the vocals. But even in vocal tracks written as electronic music initially, very often, depite the heavy dependance on the musical elements within the genre, vocals are the "raison d'etre" for many tracks. For instance, Iio - Rapture, Fatboy Slim - Star 69, Freefall - Skydive and many other would make little sense if you took away the vocals and left just the music. The musical element, where it has been written into these tracks simply as a support for the vocals, is generally quite weak and purely incidental, and thus would not be able to stand up as a track on its own, without the vocals.
Personally, I don't usually like vocals in tracks unless they are especially unique, worthy, and capable of leading a track on their own (Delerium - Silence, Creamer and K - I Wish U Were Here, Jean Jacque Smoothie - 2 People etc.) or if they have been doctored or distorted in some way so as to become part of the musical element of the track as opposed to a seperate vocal element (Blu Peter - Funky Suite (James Holden Remix), Divider - Stereo Rides (Brancaccio and Aisher Remix) etc).
Interesting eh? 
|
go figure 
hehehehehe ...the irnony... 
