In which I have strong opinions

You search for "songs for women with low voices" and.

Fucking. "Girls just wanna have fun" is on this list.

Bullshit.

A few years ago i had a vocal coach and I had to buy a music book from the store but I didn't know what would be right so the coach had me sing some Disney songs then walked out of the practice room and grabbed me a book with Hozier songs; unfortunately his highs are WAY higher than mine and most of his lows are on, like, the high end of my low range. The "offer me that deathless death" line in "Take me to Church" is a strain but all the low bits are easy.

This is why I'm feeling a little nuts. Like, I'm looking at baritone songs at this point. "Cellophane" from Chicago is like pretty much the perfect comfortable spot for me.

I should try recording sixteen tons. I can't hit the low lows in that but I bet it'd still sound rad.

Okay vocal range is complicated. True contraltos are kind of rare, sounds like you might be one, and often time people don't know what to do with that. I have no idea what ranges look like in pop music, but in musical theater there are plenty of songs that can be sung by altos, just not ones written in the last ten-twenty years. What's happened in contemporary musical theater is that the words "alto" and "soprano" kind of became words for vocal weight and where the belt range exists. So women who are technically "altos" are being made to belt ridiculously high (something that is harder if not impossible for sopranos) but certainly into what a soprano used to sing and that belt range is kind of defining the alto range even though she's singing ....the same notes as a soprano. Elephaba and Glinda are actually good examples of this. With the exception of Glindas really high notes in no one mourns the wicked and thank goodness, their ranges are ...similar. I'm not saying most singers could sing either part because they're different voice types and weights, but their ranges are very similar. Also a lot of what people call altos in musical theater are mezzos.

So yeah, kinda you're being gas lit, is what I'm trying to say.

But there are a lot of songs that are written quite low. Look at "turn back o man" from Godspell and "diamonds are a girl's best friend" from gentlemen prefer blondes (the ORIGINAL key, not Marilyn's key which is a little higher) "send in the clowns" from a little night music, maybe "science fiction double feature" from rocky horror picture show. I have a friend who's a True Contralo, there just ISNT a head voice there. She changes keys on everything and she does struggle with material but she's a semi professional singer so the material is out there. I'm trying to think what she does, some of those are her numbers. My other advice is look into 20s-40s jazz and American songbook songs. Those are usually written pretty low and they're not rangy, theyre what I call gentle on the voice.

I wish I had some notes to figure out exactly what range you have, because I do think that if you're singing baritone songs in the baritone octave you're dealing with a VERY low voice but there can also be some fear about accessing higher notes and maybe you just don't know the technique to get to your head voice. I'd also love to know which version of mr. Cellophane is sitting right for you.

I hope this helps! I'm not a voice teacher or anything I just know a lot of musical theater rep and like to help people find good songs.

Oh wow the “there’s no head voice” resonates so hard - I have a really hard break between chest and head and part of why I wanted to go to a vocal coach in the first place was to try to smooth that out (it didn’t really work. yet. I’ll get there someday. It’s better than it used to be).

I’ve got no idea what my top range is (low, like very very low - I do not have a wide range, and where I’m at on the high end now is actually a drastic improvement because of practice) and I’m not a music theory understander, but I remember my vocal coach saying that I was hitting low F when we were doing warmups. I can definitely get lower now than when I was working with her (which would have been in like 2018).

The version of Mr. Cellophane that feels good to me is the John C. Reilly one from the movie, which doesn’t go super deep I don’t think. I can’t hang out in my low end for a whole song so I’d struggle to do a full Type O-Negative cover matching Peter Steele, but it’s hard to find songs that are in, like, a low tenor range. I don’t think I’m actually anywhere close to a baritone, it’s just that my high end is about the same as the high end for a baritone.

This is a song from my band that has some of the lower notes I’ve recorded; it doesn’t cover my whole range but the high note on “before” at 47 seconds is getting very close to as high as I can go. The low on “through” in the chorus (1:10-1:12 and repeated later) isn’t the bottom of my range but I’ve got to be warmed up and practiced to get lower than that and do so in a way that’s clean (in the song it’s raspy with intentionally because it’s a metal song).

If anyone could tell me what those notes are at those time stamps that might actually be really handy.

I’ll look into the jazz standards; a lot of the songs I end up singing to myself and practicing are folk songs that have the same easy-on-the-voice feel.

Thank you for the in-depth notes!