Your Voice Changes, And That’s Not Something to Fear

I really wish more singers understood this.

Your voice changes.

When you’re young, it can be difficult to imagine getting older. For young men in particular, the changes that happen during puberty make this incredibly obvious. Your vocal folds grow and thicken, your voice becomes lower, and suddenly you’re having to figure out how to sing with an instrument that feels completely different from the one you had before.

But does that mean you should stop singing?

Absolutely not.

Your voice changing is not a reason to stop singing. It’s a reason to learn more about your voice.

And while the changes for young women can be somewhat different, that certainly doesn’t mean women’s voices don’t change too.

The truth is, all voices change.

As we age, our bodies change. We talk about this constantly as a society, about being kinder to ourselves, accepting the bodies we have, and recognising that our bodies carry evidence of the lives we’ve lived.

But I don’t think we extend that same kindness and understanding to our voices often enough.

As singers, we can become incredibly critical of our voices when they begin to change.

We notice that a note that once felt easy suddenly requires more preparation. Perhaps our range shifts. Maybe our stamina changes. Our tone might feel different. Things that used to happen automatically may suddenly require a little more thought.

And we can panic.

But why?

Our voices are a reflection of us.

They reflect the lives we have lived, the experiences we’ve had, our physical bodies, our emotions, our health, our habits, even what we eat and drink can have an impact on how our voices feel and function.

So why would we expect our voices to remain exactly the same throughout our entire lives?

We shouldn’t.

Your changing voice isn’t your enemy

As a singer, one of the most important things you can remember as your voice ages and changes is that change isn’t something to be scared of.

In fact, I would argue that the best way to embrace vocal change is to keep learning.

Keep exploring.

Keep listening.

Keep developing your understanding of your instrument, not just where your voice might be in ten or twenty years, but where it is today.

Because your voice is changing on a much smaller scale all the time.

Some days you wake up and everything feels effortless. Other days, the same notes seem to require a completely different approach.

That doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong.

It means you have a living, changing instrument.

And the more you understand it, the more confidently you can work with it.

I often think back to a conversation where someone asked me, “What has your journey been with your voice? How did you get to where you are now?”

My answer was:

“My journey has been wild, exciting, but most of all, my journey is unfinished.”

And I genuinely believe that.

Every day, I’m learning something new about my voice.

That shouldn’t stop simply because I’ve been singing for a certain number of years.

If anything, it becomes more important.

So, what brought this conversation on?

Well, unfortunately, it wasn’t something entirely positive.

The vocal wonder that is Céline Dion has, as many of you will know, taken her rightful place back in the spotlight, delivering a series of shows in Paris this month.

And the response has been incredible.

There has been an enormous amount of awe, appreciation and excitement for a vocal powerhouse who has given us so much throughout her career, and who continues to demonstrate just how extraordinary she is.

But scattered amongst all of that praise, I’ve also seen comments and videos criticising her decision to lower the keys of some of her classic songs.

Most notably, “All By Myself.”

Now, first of all, anyone who criticises All By Myself is immediately met with my instinctive response:

“Well, even in that key, you do it then!”

Because honestly, that song is nothing short of beastly.

But beyond my personal reaction to anyone attempting to take on that vocal mountain, there is something much more important here.

Yes, Céline has lowered the key.

So what?

She has lived a life.

She has spent decades performing.

She has consistently delivered extraordinary vocal performances across a career spanning around 45 years.

Her voice has changed because she has changed.

And, perhaps most importantly, she has been working through an incredibly challenging illness.

And guess what?

She is still performing.

Not only performing, but performing live.

And performing exceptionally.

What exactly are we comparing ourselves to?

There is another part of this conversation that I think we need to acknowledge.

We have to be careful about what we now consider to be a “normal” singing voice.

Not every performance we hear from a major artist is genuinely live in the traditional sense. Some performances use backing vocals, vocal doubling, pre-recorded elements or varying degrees of vocal assistance. That isn’t necessarily a criticism. Modern live production is incredibly sophisticated, and there are many legitimate reasons artists and productions use these tools.

But it does mean that the average listener can sometimes be comparing a real, unedited human voice with something that has been heavily produced.

And technology has changed our expectations enormously.

Pitch correction, vocal editing and tools such as Melodyne have given producers the ability to make incredibly precise adjustments to recordings. Used creatively or subtly, these tools can be fantastic. But they can also create an almost impossible standard of vocal perfection.

When you’re constantly hearing perfectly tuned recordings, perfectly stacked harmonies, edited breaths and vocals that have been manipulated to sound consistent from one phrase to the next, it’s easy to forget what an actual human voice sounds like.

A real voice moves.

It wobbles.

It breathes.

It has imperfections.

Some days it is stronger than others.

Sometimes a note doesn’t come out exactly as you imagined it.

And sometimes, especially when you’re singing live, you make a choice to change a key, alter a melody, take something down an octave or approach a phrase differently because you are a human being standing on a stage, not a vocal track inside a computer.

Perhaps we’ve become so accustomed to technologically perfected vocals that we’ve started to regard perfectly human vocal decisions as shortcomings.

And I think that’s a problem.

Because when we lose sight of what a real voice sounds like, we also lose sight of what makes live singing so extraordinary in the first place.

We need to stop treating vocal change as vocal failure

I think this is where our attitudes towards singers need to change.

We seem to have this strange expectation that singers should preserve their voices in some kind of permanent time capsule.

We celebrate a singer for sounding exactly as they did 20, 30 or 40 years ago, and when they make an adjustment to accommodate the voice they have now, we sometimes treat it as a weakness.

But adjusting a key isn’t failure.

Changing the way you approach a song isn’t failure.

Choosing a different register isn’t failure.

Modifying your technique to work with the instrument you have today isn’t failure.

That’s musicianship.

That’s understanding your instrument.

That’s listening to your body.

That’s respecting your voice.

And, ultimately, that’s what allows you to keep singing.

Because perhaps the goal shouldn’t be to sound exactly like the singer you were ten years ago.

Perhaps the goal should be to become the best singer you can be today.

Your voice is going to change.

Mine will change.

Yours will change.

Céline Dion’s voice has changed.

And that’s okay.

Actually, more than okay, it’s inevitable.

So instead of fearing those changes, let’s become curious about them.

Let’s learn.

Let’s listen.

Let’s adapt.

Let’s give our voices the same kindness and understanding that we’re increasingly learning to give our bodies.

Because your vocal journey isn’t something that ends when your voice changes.

Your changing voice is simply the next chapter of the journey.

And as long as you’re still curious, still learning and still singing…

the journey is unfinished.