His range isn't as large as Michael's, not if you'e going by actual octaves and how many notes their ranges span. Prince is extremely limited in full voice. I'm not even sure he can sing lower then Michael, because Michael is able to easily reach in to the base register.
Well of course I'm going by actual octaves and how many notes their voices can hit... that's what "range" is. I just don't see how you can say that when Prince can get EXTREMELY low and EXTREMELY high and everything in between. Do you listen to much Prince? Have you heard how high his voice gets in "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World", or how low he gets in certain parts of "Nothing Compares 2 U"? Name one song Michael has sung where he goes as low as Prince in "Nothing Compares 2 U". Just one. I'm sure Michael can hit the low notes too, but he hasn't done so as low as Prince in any song that I'm aware of.
Sounds to me like you think MJ has the better voice (which I agree with), but you're trying to prove it with facts that aren't true. I can't think of even high notes MJ has sung that Prince hasn't hit, and yet I can think of many low notes Prince has sung that MJ hasn't.
Now, as I said, I like MJ's voice more because he's able to hit higher notes without going into falsetto, which is really cool.
According to a quote from Michae's voice coach, he has a range of 4 octaves, full on, every note in between. I know Prince doesn't have that. Hitting a note doesn't count if you can't control it, actually sing in that register, it doesn't count as part of ones range unless you are able to do that. And unless you can hit every note in between your highest and lowest, I don't care if it spans over 7 octaves, your range doesn't count as seven octaves because you can't reach every note in between. There is a singer in Austraila who holds the record for both the lowest and the highest notes ever hit, and those two notes span over 7 octaves on the piano. But he isn't able to sing the larger majority of notes in between those two, his voice just cuts out and skips over to the next, so in reality, he only has a range of about 4 octaves. Still extremely impressive, but the 7 octave range is a myth. Anything over 3 is impressive.
Well, I don't know if Prince hasw a voice coach, and I've never heard any quotes from him, but what I do know is that on records and in live performances Prince can hit the highest of highs, lowest of lows and sing and control his voice with all of them. If you're actually taking a journal of every note MJ has recorded and every note Prince has recorded and compared them, well consider me wrong, but I have a hard time believing Prince can't sing in between just about every note he's able to hit. He's not just some guy going for a record, he's a singer and his range on record is every bit that of MJ's.
Quality wise, Prince's voice doesn't touch Michael's. Michael has a beautiful voice. Prince doesn't, and technically, he isn't nearly as good in terms of transition, timing, control, etc... I started out defending Prince's ability to sing, but when someone comes along and starts dissing Michael to make Prince seem better, I just won't stand for it.
There's nothing to "stand" for. This is purely subjective and you're not going to be able to prove MJ's voice is better than Prince's, or that Prince doesn't have a "beautiful" voice. I don't see why things like that work you up so often. Step back for a second and pretend this is two artists who you aren't as passionate about, let's say Donny Hathaway and Smokey Robinson. Both have unique and great voices, and both are hugely talented musicians. Would you honestly try to act like it was fact that Smokey had a better voice than Donny or vice-versa? Probably not, because you could realize they are both HUGELY talented singers with unique, great voices and saying one is better than the other is really based on nothing more than who you personally like better.
To me, comparing MJ and Prince's voice is like comparing rock to folk or R&B to jazz. It's just preference and they both offer something different.
Yes, this is an MJ board and most will prefer MJ's voice (myself included), but that's just what it is... preference. Not fact.
