holynapkin

My favorite singer of all time is Layne Staley of Alice in Chains. I thought it was pretty indisputable that he was a talented vocalist, regardless if you like him or not, to each his own. However, yesterday I wanted my friend to see how good of a vocalist he was so I linked him this video. He proceeded to tell me that he was "mediocre". I was confused for a minute, so I sent him this one. Afterwords, thinking that maybe those videos were too "slow" for his taste I linked him one last video, this one. Upon doing so he told me that he was incredibly unskilled and "simple". I couldn't believe what I was hearing so he started to list off a whole bunch of terms that I really had no idea the meaning like "falsetto" and some other garbage. He's in choir so I think that maybe he was just being the typical, arrogant critic throwing out big words but it got me thinking. After he did this he started to link me some opera stuff and some crap by this band called Opeth which I thought was pretty screamo. Anyways, it got me thinking nonetheless. Is Layne Staley really "simple"? I had always thought otherwise but I guess I could be wrong.

If you could, I'd like someone to explain to me why Layne is "simple" or give me a list of reasons that I can show to my friend that contradict what he is saying. Please, feel free to use all the big choir terms you want because that seems to be the only way to get through to him.

PS: While I know the liking of music is subjective and it doesn't matter at all what someone thinks, I was still taken aback at Layne being called "simple". It got under my skin really.