DBSK's Vocal Prowess

Vocal strength is probably the single most important skill a vocal group (West)/Idol group (Korea and Japan, so I've heard) can have. Without the ability to sing damn good (especially for boy bands) there will be no ballads for fan girls to swoon over or cry their hearts out on and believe me, fan girls need their insanely corny ballads to survive. And besides, vocals are the one thing you can have to make you as credible as you can possibly be in the industry. If you don't write your own songs (because you don't know how to or because you're being controlled by some evil master guy *AHEM* Soo Man *AHEM*) or play any instruments, the one thing you can do to be musically credible is sing your head off and hope you hit some long, high notes here and there. Dancing and performing is second nature - to be a good performer you need strong live vocals and that's pretty hard.
As I've said on Twitter and even here numerous times, DBSK are probably the most vocally outstanding boyband I have ever heard. But then again I came from a Westlife addiction and the only ones who could ACTUALLY sing were Shane, Mark and formerly Brian but even Mark was a bit too much. So let me take the time to properly explain to you guys exactly what I think of their voices.

One point I have to raise before I start is that most of them (apart from Yoochun and sometimes Yunho) sound almost exactly the same live as they do recorded - I'd say about 95% on an average. So that's a start - they can actually, actually sing. What a surprise. Hahah.

I've ranked the guys from what I think is worse to best. OK? OK.

U-Know Yunho

Named the dancer in the band (though I've began to doubt that since a friend told me Junsu was better but then again, what the crap do I know about dancing?) aside from being the leader of this whole operation we call DBSK, Yunho has been known to have visits to the doctor like a gazillion times a year because his throat swelled up really big just before DBSK debuted. Apparently before that happened he had a gorgeous voice but obviously I don't know because I haven't seen any footage of him singing prior to the incident - all his audition clips on YouTube are of him dancing, not singing.

What does his voice sound like now? There's a term for that in my native tongue - ipit (pronounced ee-pit with accent on the 'ee'). It's like his vocal cords being stretched, pushed against each other and something to that extent. If his voice before is what people say it was then the strange-ish sound of his voice now may be a result of his nice timbre being damaged (naipit in Filipino). Still, I have to say that it's better than Nicky and Kian Westlife's voices will ever be.

One of his performances as a rapper before he debuted in DBSK. He's rapping (duh) so I don't really know what his singing sounded like back then.

Max Changmin

Almost everyone in DBSK has a role - Yunho's the dancer, Yoochun's the rapper, Jaejoong the one with insanely brilliant vocals and Junsu's the other vocal guy. So what's Changmin? Well I have a theory/nickname for him - he's the guy who just HAS to scream every single time. No really, he screams in Mirotic, Rising Sun (like a million times), Tonight, O and every possible DBSK song you could ever imagine. Some screams may be more obvious than others(*AHEM* Rising Sun *AHEM*) but trust me, they're there. If he keeps on screaming that most probably means Soo Man thinks he has a high voice (he can't do falsettos like Jaejoong does though) - high enough to keep up all that screaming.

His singing voice is not bad but it's like Yunho mixed with Jaejoong with a lot more Yunho and about 1/4 shrillness to add to his mad range. The guy can sing, everyone in DBSK can, and if he was in a band like Super Junior or Blue or Westlife he'd probably be one of the best. However, these guys are just really, really good.

Although you gotta hand it to the guy, the fact that he can sing AND scream his head off within around 5 minutes during a live performance is pretty impressive.

fanvid with some of his screaming parts:

Rising Sun, the infamous video/song where Changmin screams way too many times to count.

Micky Yoochun

The guy writes lyrics (don't care much for them but whatever.) and came from America (people make a big deal about that but he doesn't actually speak English very well) but he does have a nice voice, to a certain extent. Recorded his voice sounds great - nice timbre, a bit husky and fits well on an R&B number but whatever you do, DO NOT let the guy loose live. He's not like Mark Westlife to the point where your ear drums explode but he does tend to scream and make all these unnecessary and unidentified growling sounds if he gets a moderately high but not too high part - it annoys the heck out of me. (proof is all the way at the bottom of the post.)

Speaking of his live performances, they sound strange - a lot more nasal and air-y than the recorded versions. If that's the case then their record producer must know a very good sound engineer to successfully auto-tune but not make it sound like it's auto-tuned all his singing parts and make it seem like hardly anything but the necessary was done.

Xiah Junsu

Everyone's gushing about this guy's voice - I disagree about 40% of the time. Yes, the guy's better than the other three but he only sounds really good when he's not screaming his head off. And if his vocals are auto-tuned, they sound extra good which can be a bad thing because then his voice would only sound good auto-tuned like Taeyeang Big Bang. Nice timbre, nice range, his recorded stuff sound about 96% the same live and vocal gymnastics are like child's play to him. Needless to say, the guy's good but not as good as someone we know (we'll get to him later).

Another problem I've had with this guy is something I noticed from the very beginning - like a lot of other bands, he's the guy with the way too excessive voice. No really, it can get too much at times and he has little control over what comes out of his mouth. He can't let loose like Changmin either because he's not the screamer and he doesn't have the shrillness that Changmin also has so he's really overdoing it.

However he does have his moments.

Now on to the guy I've been calling the GOD of vocals in DBSK,

Hero Jaejoong

(!!!!)

Not everyone knows this as a solid fact (I think, it's not listed on wiki) but Jaejoong is DBSK's lead vocalist (if you weren't around during my K-pop special and you're not reading PRN because of K-pop, Korean bands have all sorts of 'positions' - lead dancer, lead vocalist, leader, lead rapper. It's not what we're used to in the West but what can we do? hahah) . But before I delve into his vocals alone, can I just say that Jaejoong is a musical quadruple threat? Yes, you heard me right - quadruple. The guy sings (like duh), plays the piano and guitar, writes (as in composes) songs and RAPS. Yes, he RAPS (Wrong Number - he takes the first rap part) and yes, he COMPOSES (His room in Korea is a mini recording studio. I've seen pictures) and HE HAS THE BEST VOICE IN SM ENTERTAINMENT. No really, I'm not kidding.

You obviously know the phrase "he can sing the phonebook/alphabet/anything else that you never attempt to sing and it would still sound damn good". Well I think it was created for this guy. He can do R&B, ballads, serious DBSK world domination songs, and ROCK. Who's ever heard of a guy who makes his band members' voices sound boring and one-dimensional when they do a rock remix of one of their hits? And it's smooth, SO DAMN SMOOTH.

His vocals first caught me when I heard O - the semi-middle 8 he did with Junsu (the one talking about the universe and trust and trees) is to this day one of the most brilliant song parts EVER. And he has this mad range (see an early single of theirs: Tonight. It was on the Rising Sun review I did a while back.) - he can sing comfortably in a woman's range! (see: his and Yoochun's tribute to legendary Japanese rapper m-flo.)

EDIT: Although, his vocals at the beginning Purple Line stands as one of the most annoying parts ever - I actually thought he sucked when I first heard it. But everyone except Junsu had a really crap part on that! Great song though, if I may add. END EDIT

Proof that the guy can sing rock? Here:

The rock remix I was talking about where Jaejoong made the rest of DBSK sound boring and crappy. This is also the performance that proved to me that Yoochun should never be let loose live.

But whatever bad things I say about the other members' vocals, they sound damn good together. When you do watch this, please make sure not to faint when Jaejoong hits that high note just before the last chorus - you have to read the last part! See:

Which leads me to an issue/a point I've wanted to talk about for a long time now (yes, this post has a hidden agenda) - DBSK are most probably not only SM's biggest Asian earners but the most vocally talented boy band in the company. Lee Soo Man will never find another band like them who are as talented apart as they are together and have the chemistry that these five guys have. I promise you, SHINee are a completely different band and they may excel in the genre they're going for (now) but DBSK are in a league of their own - the quality of the vocals is just so different and they're really, really strong performers.

Soo Man should really cling to these guys for dear life because frankly they're the best he has and he probably will ever get, no joke. They write their own stuff, sing damn good, their fanclub is the biggest in the world and they're (most of the time) loyal to him - the guy couldn't ask for more.

With this lawsuit going on I'm honestly really scared about their future but if Soo Man is really the businessman that he says he is, he'd at least keep these guys for the money they bring in. As long as they keep on giving us good music I don't care what reason SM has for keeping them - I know what they can do and the rest of their fan base does. That's enough.