Shirley Bassey

[BertiWooster]

Just been listening to Shirley Bassey singing the theme tune from the Bond film - Diamonds are forever .

What other female singer has such vocal strength and displays such emotion, both audibly and visually in their performance .

Is she out there on her own - Who do you think is comparable ?

[Bobbisox]

She is a brilliant singer Bertie..that's true
isn't she on television tonight?
I am sure I saw it avertised

[Bobbisox]

<advertised>

[rowanwitch]

you mean she hams it up like a drag queen at a karaoke night

try k.d. lang...no fireworks just great range and tone

[chirpychirpy]

this won't be a popular answer, but I reckon Celine Dion

[joggerjayne]

Whitney Houston ... until that snake Bobby Brown screwed up her life.

[andy-hughes]

BertiWooster - never confuse technique with emotion - the two are separate, and often do not occur in the same performance.

Take Whitney singing 'I Will Always Love You' - a triumph of technical vocal skill with all the emtional input of a damp Daily Express.

Shirley Bassey similarly crafts her perfomances to appear to be emotive, when in fact they are simply grand physical gestures from an artist who has spent most of her career in theatres, where large gestures are appropriate to involve the audience which can be quite a distance from the stage.

As advised, emotion can often be conveyed with far more effect using the 'less is more' approach. For this, look no further than Dolly Parton's rendition of 'I Will Always' - written to express her feelings for her fellow country star Porter Waggoner with whom she enjoyed a close reltationship. The emotion is real because she wrote the song, and knows of what she sings, and her ability to convey emotion in an artless performance with feeling rather than gesture.

For me, the definitive version of this song is Linda Ronstadt's - the song given to her by DP for her 'Prisoner In Disguise' album where all the songs were donated by writers who admired Ronstadt's technique and approach.

Emotion is conveyed quietly, mind to mind, not nosily with loud voices and much arm waving - check out 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' by Eva Casidy - a triumph of emotion conveyed by a woman who knows she has not long to live, and pours her feelings into this iconic song.

After that - anything by Roy Orbison who endured the tragedies of losing his wife in a motorcylce accident, and two sons in a house fire. His soul bleeds all over his vocals, but in an undestated way which simply adds to the power and impact.

As you will gather, i am huge fan of emotional music, which is not the same as grand gesture music.

But for the purposes of mass marketing, the media are happy to present gesture as emotion - as happened with the auditionee in the current X Factor who took all the emotion and power of Adele's skill as a writer and performer, and hijacked it by pretending it was her own, producing cod tears from the judges in the process.

A plague on such nonsense - seek the real deal, and leave the rest to the rest.