Hardest to understand lead singer of the Seventies?

A not too serious post, but an actual discussion that came up amongst friends a few years ago.

I was born in 1970, and loved buying records and listening to the radio, so I was always trying to decipher lyrics. Some just proved to be far,far beyond me, LOL.

Anyway, the consensus decided on two finalists: Mick Jagger and Elton John.

I recall trying very hard to figure out the words to Benny and the Jets, Island Girl, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road...etc.etc.

 

You've never heard Leonard Graves Phillips I take it

 

I still don't know 90% of the lyrics to Exile On Main Street by the Stones. One day I will look them up online. Robert Plant is another I have a hard time understanding most of the time.

 

How did they overlook the guy from Blind Faith and Traffic? He was also the lead singer from Spencer Davis Group, who had that hit in the '60s, "Howwoohah Haunndd Uuuiiii", or somethin' like that...?

 

I love him, but early Joe Cocker. Of course there's this video:

 

The lead singer for the Kingsmen on Louie Louie.

 

Can't think of one for the seventies, but for the eighties it would have to be Brian Johnson of AC/DC.

 

I read that when Linda Ronstadt covered Tumbin' Dice, she and the band played it over and over to decipher the lyrics, and then recorded the song. Jagger commented she got them wrong but he liked her lyrics better anyway.

 

Another vote for Mick Jagger and his mishmash parody of all American southern dialects.

 

"She's got electric boobs. Her mom has too. You know I read it in a magazine."

 

Johnny Rotten

 

Alice Cooper
I bought the Japanese CD release of Killer just for the lyric sheet! This was pre-Internet !

 

I got a shock when I first read the lyrics to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, as they bore hardly any relation to what I though I'd been hearing for years.

 

Robert Plant.

 

Steve Winwood

 

Exactly! I think the first time I saw Elton lyrics (Bernie Taupin, of course) pre-internet, was when I bought "The Superior Sound of Elton John" CD. I was stunned about how wrong I was about some of the words.

 

Ian Anderson could be hard to understand at times, though that could be because his lyrics often made no sense. I think at one point I couldn't make out hardly any of Aqualung, but after poring over those lyrics so many times during my prog-obsessed days, they are hard not to hear.

 

Damo Suzuki of Can for my money.

Holger Czukay described his vocals as "an amalgam of Japanese, German, English and words culled from the very fringes of language".

 

There's some funny stuff in Rip This Joint. "Dick and Pat in old DC, they're gonna hold some **** for me."

 

I used to hear "five little girls with bad intent"; which makes no sense with the rest of the lyrics, lol. Hey, I was young.

 

Ozzy had some songs I'm still not sure what the lyrics really are, and some websites are hilarious with their interpretation.

 

What no Stevie?

 

Mick's impossible, but I gotta vote Elton mainly for Benny & the Jets.

 

A theme is emerging: high-pitched singers (Elton John, Winwood and Plant in his prime) tend to be poor at articulation.

 

That's certainly a problem on Aqualung but that may have more to do with the vocals being treated and generally shoved to the back of the mix.