Why I Gave Up On Being a Great Singer

This newsletter is written by the talented Australian producer and artist Pete Covington.

Have you ever tried so hard at something you wanted so badly, for so long, only to eventually give up? That was me with singing. 

I remember my first “tour” of the USA. Really it was a handful of café and bar gigs I’d hustled together as a 21-year-old kid from Australia. But to me, it was a tour. One of the first things I did when I landed in LA was book a lesson with a celebrity vocal coach. He had a client list full of big names and taught “speech-level singing.” I figured this was my chance to finally become the singer I knew I could be.

Man, it's hard singing in a room in front of one person. I'd already performed a decent amount, but this felt way different. He had me do vocal exercises –  “woo-woo-woo’s” and“yay-yay-yay’s” – and explained I needed to bridge my chest voice and head voice. I nodded like I knew what he meant. 

To end our first lesson, he asked me to sing one of my songs. I grabbed my guitar and did my best rendition, trying not to make my lack of technique too obvious.

"OK, let's try that again in our next session. We need to work on a few things." 

I left with a CD of warm-up exercises and a bruised ego. I genuinely thought he’d be blown away by my voice and songs, and maybe even introduce me to his famous friends. Instead, it was clear I had a mountain to climb. 

I stuck out the rest of my lessons, but it felt like I'd bought an expensive pair of pants that didn’t match anything in my wardrobe. The more techniques I tried, the worse I sounded. I realised it would take more than five lessons to rebuild my singing from the ground up, and I had gigs booked in the meantime. 

So I went back to doing what I knew, with a bit of extra warming up. When I returned to Australia I made it my mission: I was going to become a great singer. For the next five years, I studied with every coach I could find. In person, online, over Skype. I practiced 2 hours a day. I nailed the exercises, learned to blend chest and head voice and cut out alcohol and coffee. 

I'd practice singing along to the hardest songs I could find and I could even hit a convincing high A. There was just one problem. I sounded like shit. 

It wasn't immediately obvious to me, but anytime I recorded a song, the track would fall apart as soon as my voice came in. Once, as an experiment, I asked my friend to sing a vocal part I'd written. Suddenly, the song worked. I was simultaneously crushed and excited as the thought occurred to me: What if I just stopped singing?

It hurt my ego, but I started bringing in other vocalists. And every time, the tracks came alive. That was one of my first big lessons as a producer: the right singer can make or break a song. 

Almost ten years after that first LA lesson, I finally had a breakthrough. My friend Tim and I were offered free studio time and decided to make an original record for fun. We'd hit record and play whatever inspired us, then piece songs together. Once we had a few instrumentals going, Tim asked, "What do you want to do for vocals?" I don't know what made me think of this, but I said, "What if we sang in our Australian accents?"

Up until then, I'd always sung in a put-on American accent. That was most of the music I'd listened to growing up, and it felt weird to sing how I spoke. It was the thing no vocal coach had suggested (even the"speech-level" one), and the thing I'd never thought to try myself. 

The first takes sounded ridiculous; I couldn’t get through them without laughing. But we pushed on. And when we finally captured a take, something clicked: this actually sounds like me. For the first time, I wasn’t worried about sounding “good.” I was focused on sounding like myself. 

All those years of vocal takes I wasn't happy with, I'd been focusing on whether I was singing in tune, breathy enough, or sounding cool. The thing I was missing was believability. 

I did give up on having the vocal prowess of my musical idols. But I found my own voice. Literally. And that's made all the difference in how I approach writing and production. You don’t have to be the best singer, instrumentalist, or producer in the room. You just have to sound like you.

Thanks to music producer and artist Pete Covington for writing (and letting us share) this content.

If you missed it, check out this unique guitar pedal we reviewed in a previous newsletter and YouTube video.

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