Rick N. Backer

The Beatles?

Van Halen was better with DLR. After that? I would have to say it’s them.

Right. They just use the name of a Dio album as their band name and play a number of Dio songs when they perform live.

I'll ask.

My wife has a lot of family in Marshfield. They used to see Tyler around town quite a bit.

I saw Aerosmith last summer at Fenway. They were great. Is it the Kramer thing?

Tyler isn't the average person. He's almost unfathomably successful because he is the lead "singer," of a very famous band. You're sort of making my point for me. The girl playing Little Orphan Annie in your town's theater has a better technical voice. If I were theoretically capable of singing the anthem EXACTLY like Tyler did, and he did not exist (so we don't get wrapped around the axles on the concept of a cover band singer), no team would allow me to sing the anthem before a game. We're just not going to agree here.

The Last in Line. You can't have Dio after Ronnie's death.

IIRC, you're a Notre Dame guy, right? Don't know if they have students sing the anthem before football games, but if they do, chances are the kid singing it has a better technical voice than Tyler. Tyler wasn't "getting his feet under him," in 2004. The anthem just isn't the same as Coney Island Whitefish Boy.

Indeed. I'm moving Heaven and Earth to get tickets to the last Garden show later this year.

Listen to him do the national anthem at Fenway Park and get back to me. 90%+ of the people who go deep on American Idol are technically superior singers. Not one of them will EVER eclipse his success because he has IT. Go to your local community theater and catch a musical and you'll find better technical singers. I yield to no one in my love of Aerosmith up to and including Pump. I've seen them 4 or 5 times, including last summer. I own everything they've ever released. But Tyler is not a good singer in my ears.

If you've never heard it, I recommend his live album at the Palladium with the X-Pensive Winos. Good, no frills rock album.

Keith Richards is another one. True, he's not the Stones' lead vocalist, but he does sing lead on some of their songs, and on his solo projects. Not much technical skill, but it works for me.

Compare: with: Who brings the song to life better?

I think you're right. Here's another related point IMO. Joe Perry is not as technically skilled as, say, Vai or Malmsteen. Yet I think Perry is exponentially better than either of them.

Her range is still incredible. Unlike many of the male vocalists I love, age doesn't really seem to have dented her.

The more I think about it, the more I agree with this. I think I have a bias towards thinking famous female singers have superior technical ability (I'm thinking Ann Wilson, for example) but Stevie is really analogous to a lot of the male vocalists I love. Good call.

Without going back, I think you mentioned Leonard Cohen. My first exposure to him (that I remember) was hearing Everybody Knows at the beginning of Pump Up the Volume. For some reason, it just resonated with me. Later in the movie, Concrete Blonde's cover is played. There's no question whose voice is technically better. But I just prefer Cohen's.

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast where the discussion turned to "Gen-X-y" bands. So doing some paperwork this morning, as a proud Gen-Xer, I've been listening to R.E.M.'s Apple Music Essentials. When I was in college, my hipster buddies LOVED these guys. Never really got them. But this morning it's working for me.

Spot on. The converse, for me, is Freddie Mercury. No question on his talent. But aside from the greatest hits, for the most part, he's just not my thing. Good is a not a synonym for "what I like." At least in this context as I read it.

As with Tyler, he was one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time.

No he isn’t. He’s a fantastic rock vocalist though.

I’m a huge Aerosmith fan. Tyler’s voice is not technically good. I happen to love it. But that doesn’t make him a good singer.

No one has mentioned David Lee Roth? Or Steven Tyler?