There is some lip syncing. There’s even less autotune. (One track has it. I wont tell you which).
My answer may be boring and more “poor me” than all of yours but I want to contribute to my own prompt. The truth is, I’ve had this sort of moment a repeated amount of times. I started at age 17 mostly just to impress my first girlfriend. The first “phase” I ever went through was a Johnny Cash obsession. I thought it would be so cool if I was a bass. I thought maybe that was my purpose. Then I tried I Walk the Line and realized E2 was all I had. Not nearly enough. So I lied to myself for years. I continued to say I was either a higher bass or a baritone because I couldn’t bear the thought of never getting the voice I dreamed about. And a few years went by. My voice lowered ever so slightly. Temporary notes lower than E2 got more frequent but never permanent. I would keep working on my voice in the meantime. I recorded lower stuff any time I could. I’d have KILLED to be in Tim Foust’s “weight class”. But fast forward to 2025. A professional finally told me that I was 100% a tenor. God/the universe/fate or whatever you believe in, gave me the OPPOSITE of what I wanted. And this was probably one of my lowest points. I started trying to embrace it what little I could. And I’ve got some fantastic higher range. I have a C5 full voice that is permanently available even when I’m fatigued. On a good day, I can hit the E5 chest note in Boston’s “Peace of Mind”. But the fact of the matter is I don’t care, and I’m not thankful for that. I’d sacrifice an octave on top for 4 more notes on the bottom. I don’t want to be a tenor. I’m not glad that I’m a tenor. I don’t want to embrace being a tenor. And the most frustrating thing is I’m between a rock and a hard place… For bass singers, there’s some leeway that exists for them to be able to sing higher songs and they can always to train to make their voices reach higher, or if nothing else they could use falsetto. But with me? There is NOTHING I can do as long as I live to be able to hit the notes I want to hit. Bass notes come from human anatomy. I have to enjoy the occasional weak C2 I get on some mornings (which still isn’t nearly as low as I wanna go) or once in a blue moon when I’m sick I might touch B1. That’s the closest I’ll ever get to being a baritone or a bass.
I will never fully love my voice. The most satisfaction I get is the couple of days each month I can wake up early and record some Josh Turner stuff, and fake being a lower singer. I guess if there’s any silver lining here, it’s that I DEFINITELY look the part of at least a lower baritone when I first wake up in the morning. But that’s gone by noon. **I guess the bottom line is that I wanted there to be something special about my voice. But I ended up with the most vanilla cookie cutter crap ever**. Pretty much man who’s ever been born can hit the low notes that I can hit.
I’ll sum it up.
My wife’s family shit-talking me was definitely a downer.
The bad genetic hand I was dealt; With starting as a terrible singer and having to improve in a brutally slow way across 13 years sucked too.
But not getting the voice I wanted (or even anything remotely close to it) is the thing I’ve never been able to shake.
2012: I straight up would not sing. I was terrified.
Early 2013: I opened my mouth to sing in private for the first time. It sounded horrible, nasally and weak on a cover of In Loving Memory. This cemented a disdain for my voice which would never truly die.
Later 2013: I sang in front of someone for the first time- My first gf who I was trying to impress. She liked it. Not many else did. My family suggested that maybe I was only meant to be a guitar player.
2014: A little more open about my voice, 95% of the confidence to do so came from my girlfriend. I was made fun of by some people.
2015: I started posting covers on Facebook. Some people liked them, not sure what the true consensus was, but I was still way off pitch at times. Maybe I improved somewhat. Girlfriend number 2 thought so too.
2016: Big mistake this year- I discovered pitch correction software. This hurt me badly in the long run as I got lazy with improving my voice, and I slowed down improving.
2018: New girlfriend loved my voice. Her family made fun of me a little but this was when I felt I took a step up the ladder. I wasn’t quite as pitchy anymore. I still was reliant on autotune to put together a full, professional cover of something. This was also when I hit what I thought was an impenetrable plateau. My voice wasn’t improving anymore. I developed a whole new hatred for my voice, cursing it anytime I made a new recording. I still posted my covers on Facebook for anyone who’d listen.
2021: Still not much more improvement. This was the low point for my voice. I had 8 years of work under my belt and not much to show for it. Still reliant on autotune, still no vibrato, still shit pitch control. Oh, and I never fully got over the depression of wanting to be a bass and not having the lower range I wanted. I made the conscious decision that I was going to get into thrash metal and death metal and destroy the voice I hated so much out of some sort of spite.
2024: I never got into extreme metal subgenres for some reason. But one day at work around Christmas time this year, I softly sang “Back at One” by Brian McKnight to myself. Someone noticed and said my voice was beautiful. And this was when I took a good long look at myself. And I saw improvements I hadn’t been paying attention to. My vocal folds FINALLY stopped fighting me on vibrato. I finally had some control. I finally found my “accent”. And finally, I learned to appreciate my voice a bit. And for the first time in nearly 9 years, I posted some stuff with no pitch correction.
2026: I continued building on the little improvements. I’ve DEFINITELY come a long way. You be the judge at how I am today. I still haven’t fully fallen in love with my voice. But I know how far I’ve come and I try to appreciate it. The guy who was once made fun for his voice and wanted to destroy it myself, is now a 2-time top post of the day on r/singing.