FWIW, I've heard that when Janis Joplin died, her autopsy revealed that she had no nodes on her vocal folds.   Perhaps had she lived long enough to subject her vocal apparatus to decades of the kind of belting she did, she would have ruined her voice before age 50, but it doesn't seem she had done so by her twenties.

And whether you like the style or not, Janis could do things with her "instrument" that not only suited her type of music perfectly (e.g., "Piece of My Heart") but that most "good singers" can't begin to do.


Oh, and I can't believe I'm seeing singers like Sinatra, Ella, and Pavarotti "nominated" as singers who can't sing!    Even when I don't immediately recognize who it is, every time I hear an Ella Fitzgerald recording on radio, I find myself marveling at the voice and stopping to pay full attention.

And I agree with Don (and others) that saying someone whose pitch is spot on "can't sing" just because you don't like the timbre of their voice or their style is a bit like saying that an accordion or banjo is "less musical" than a piano or a violin because you don't care for its sound.









Oh, wait ... maybe I should have used better examples than banjos and accordions. ; D