Frankie Valli is the premier falsetto singer.

Didn't invent it but turned it upside down in the music business by making it the lead.

Everyone else pales in comparison. A lot of the other folks you mention (eg. Brian Wilson) merely copied Valli because he had such success with it.

What is the play list for the show? there was an amazing band i've never heard of who was supposed to be on later next month?

How about the hard rock guys such as Ian Gillian, Rob Halford et al who employ falsetto to convey energy & excitement; rise above the decibels onstage; match the flash coming out of the guitar amps?

Thank you, dear Philippe!
Thank you for your sensitive expressiveness, your undersatnding, your generosity to share with us your musical treasures, for your power of fragility.
You´re the gift for the music and your bright talent is a gift for us!

Can someone please tell me if the snippet of "Hallelujah" played on this episode was Jeff Buckley? If not, WHO?! It's driving me crazy thanks.

Thanks for the interesting piece. I think, given the issues of defining masculinity that were properly brought up, we need to mention a very current name in this discussion: Adam Lambert. Lambert has a powerful counter-tenor voice, with high notes he employs both in a class rock wail and in entire songs sung in a crazy falsetto. But, perhaps as importantly, this voice compliments a new kind of sexuality that he has unleashed onto the pop music scene: it is as flamboyant and embracing of androgyny as it is assertively masculine. Lambert is probably the first openly gay pop singer to be marketed as a sex-symbol to hetero middle-America. And we seem to be embracing the High.

Jon Anderson of Yes
Peter Cetera of Chicago
Morton Harket of a-ha
Sting
Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys
Paul McCartney
Graham Nash of The Hollies and CSN&Y
Ken Stringfellow of The Posies
Colin Blunstone of The Zombies

death vessel. not like the name suggests.

I like high singing in parts of songs but maybe not the whole song.

My favorite is Matt Bellamy from Muse

Did anyone mention Little Jimmy Scott, a natural male soprano born with a congenital anomaly? Another natural soprano whose voice never broke due to a physical anomaly is Pascal Toussaint of Paris. I heard him sing at a cabaret there. I was in awe. His timbre is unusual, heavenly. His voice is not falsetto. He sings in full chest voice. You can hear him sing
on his website: PascalToussaintMusic.com. He is making his US debut on Feb 28 in San Francisco.

Pat wictor uses a high voice in parts of several of his songs -- this seems to
very effectively heighten emotion -- these are not love songs.

Let me recommend the young indie band Red Fox Grey Fox, whose lead singer's voice is so high it's really difficult to believe he's really a boy. Even harder to believe, if you look at a picture of the band, is that this high-voiced guy is the butchest, oldest-looking one of the bunch (they're all really young guys, ~20 ± a couple years).

"Building a building" is a favorite of mine, and a good showcase for the voice.

claudio sanchez of coheed & cambria has an amazing voice!

Martin Tielli from Canada.
"From the Reel" or "I'll Never Tear You Apart"

Almost forgot Morton Harket of A-Ha. Who can forget Take On Me. He has been singing the song in concert for years and can still hit the high notes.

Remember Frankie Lymon (sp?) and the Teenagers - Why Do Fools Fall in Love? - a song that rocked my adolescent world in the mid-fifties?

Paul McCartney!!!

Lou Christie's "Lightening Strikes," was very popular and song in a register for dogs and dolphins!

While I appreciate the falsetto, definitely not a turn-on! When I first heard Eddie Vedder, I swooned!

chris isaak!!

Good: Robert Plant, Paul Macarthy, Robert Johnson.

Bad: Frankie Valli, Tommy James

Then there's the conundrum of . . . Wayne Newton ("Danke Schoen"). He's enjoyed a huge success in Las Vegas with an alto-sorprano voice that is incongruous with his imposing visual size. Another example of what stays in Vegas.

Neil Sedaka. The first time I heard "Laughter in the Rain" I was sure WABC had finally allowed a lesbian love song on the air.

What I love about Hawiian guy singers is they can go from a great baritone to an extremely sexy falsetto. The voice is different from a woman singing the same note, because of the effort it takes to maintain that note, which translates into passion. And passion is something I notice, for sure. Like the sound of a violinist breathing, which is often recorded these days along with the instrumental. P

How about Slim Whitman?

what about Neil Young?

@jeff from Brooklyn: Thank you for mentioning Jim James, he does a wonderful job on the higher-register singing.

My dad listened to a lot of 50's doo-wop so I grew up with so many wonderful falsetto singers - I remember a lot of Flamingos and Frankie Lymon being played - and to this day I enjoy listening to them. At that time, the high male singing may have been a bit rebellious, challenging the Crosby-style crooners of the previous generation, in the spirit of early rock & roll. In any case it is a gorgeous sound!

martin sexton!!

Come on John!! play something from Juan son

What about that guy on Glee singing the girl's song "Defying Gravity"??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkeCNeHcmXY

Thanks I love that video!!

I think there has to be range in the song. If it was a dude singing soprano straight that's not particualry exciting but when it goes from high to deep like Parliament or other R&B Groups, that's exciting.

Jeff Buckley's "Corpus Christi Carol (For Roy)" on Grace is amazingly high. His father, Tim, had quite a reach on "Phantasmagoria In Two," as demonstrated on the recently released Live At The Folklore Center, NYC - March 6, 1967. In the past there was Art Garfunkel and Jimmy Sommerville's "Smalltown Boy."

I love a male voice with a broad voice, just as I admire a female voice capable of a wide range, such as Joni Mitchell had at the peak of her popularity in the '70s or '80s. Nature is cruel as it is also sometimes generous, taking away some of any singer's upper range later in life, yet also opening up a lower octave for some, and affording a flat voice some elements of vibrato and texture that no amount of training could otherwise cultivate. In (relatively) modern pop and rock, I think of Freddy Mercury of Queen and Todd Rundgren exploiting their falsetto range, yet not forsaking the sheer strength of their baritone or bass foundations! I think the old stereotypes of what is a "manly" voice are happily falling by the wayside.

You can't talk about killer male falsettos without including the likes of Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, and D'Angelo. And even Bono.

- Jeff Buckley's version of Benjamin Britten's "Corpus Christi Carol"
- His father Tim Buckley routinely balanced very high notes with his baritone and tenor ranges
- Brian Wilson was a king of high notes. Listen to the phrase "columnated ruins domino" on "Surf's Up," recorded live for a Leonard Bernstein TV show
-The late Klaus Nomi was a noted pop soprano who recorded alone and also with David Bowie in the 1980s

Juan Son is another guy with a great high voice

... also, Jim James gets an incredible falsetto in My Morning Jacket's "Wordless Chorus".

there is something really vulnerable about men singing in falsetto. it's a dichotomy, a surprising contradiction. my all-time favorite is Maxwell's This Woman's Work, where he does slip into his more burly voice midway, only to bouce back into the high registers. i love it!

here's the vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkeCNeHcmXY

also... Jim James gets a killer falsetto in My Morning Jacket's "Wordless Chorus".

Great falsettist:

Martyn Jacques of The Tiger Lillies.

Adult male sopranos give me the creeps, and I try to avoid hearing them at all costs. It actually causes me pain.

Greatest falsetto pop singer of all time - Lou Christie. "Two Faces Have I", "Lightning Strikes." Around 1961 or so. His songs drove girls and guys crazy. His falsetto singing predates even Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

i love the sound of incredibly skilled and soulful male tenors, especially the unmatched Irish tenor of Jeff Buckley, they say he used to walk around the city singing scales to maintain his range.

We shouldn't forget Klaus Nomi. He was a very original and fascinating performer/counter-tenor.

i'm a death, black metal guy liking and appreciating growling. i cannot stand those high male voices in pop nor in metal music. but i like jaroussky voice and repertoire. i listened to him last week at carnegie hall and i loved every second of it. go figure.

Craig Bartock makes good use of falsetto. His tonality is even better on high notes.

Vitas, a Russian pop singer has an extremely high voice that he uses to his advantage. Any live Youtube clip shows the female audience members in love with him. His music isn't for everyone, but I agree with Ms Veltman, that high voices are intriguing and powerful in its own way

Someone said it already, but really, how do we forget the great Jeff Buckley?

He has to be one of the first men to make this whole thing HOT.

renee that orgasm bit is great. so true.

Klaus Nomi FTW!

Don't forget to include the singer from Providence, RI's Death Vessel. Unless someone told you, or you saw him play, you would have no idea that it was a man.

i enjoy anything justin timberlake does!

The Beach Boys are probably the best very male pop falsett-ists.

Bee Gees, Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, Maxwell etc YES!

Tiny Tim? NO!! lol

"C'mon Marianne"by Frankie Vallie, play a bit!

Hmmm Let's remmeber Philip Baily from earth wind and fire and the hit reasons.

There are certainly a lot of bad examples of male falsetto in music, especially in rock/pop.

Let me focus a little on the good:
>Roy Orbison had an amazing falsetto;
>so too did Jeff Buckley.

Anyone else thinking about the BeeGees?

I think the sex appeal in indie, pop, and soul music has something to do with vulnerability and specifically that vulnerability at orgasm...

I am not sure it is the highness. I think we're impressed by difficulty of it for a guy to sustain a falsetto.

I was totally convinced when I first heard them that Passion Pit HAD to have a female singer...before I found out it was all Michael Angelakos with crazy high voice.

bon iver. i was not expecting that voice to come out of that guy. love it.

Please keep the Antony Hegarty to a minimum. Supremely talented but haunting and depressing. Plenty of Sigur Ross is fine, they're haunting but beautiful.