Okay, tell me who Johnny Ace was influenced by then. You can't. Ace died Christmas 1954 without ever giving a single interview, which has the unfortunate effect of completely invalidating your entire methodology if you want to be fair and ACCURATE! In other words, because all (or even most) artists don't publicly attribute their influences (either because they were never asked, or it was never reported, or can't be found, or died before they could be asked... who was Jeff Buckley claiming were his influences for example) and because there is such a disparate amount of attention shown in reporting rock history to white acts, and naturally to acts who came along after rock journalism began asking these questions in the late 60's, the entire ordeal becomes so inherently biased - EVEN if you yourself try desperately to maintain fairness and thoroughness in your attempts to track down every potential example - that it's utterly worthless.

So yeah, Healy and Gnecco say they were influenced by Buckley, who did absolutely nothing new and innovative in his singing, so we're crediting him with influence, which in fact is just inspiration and admiration, which is ALREADY counted more accurately in the IMPACT criteria which is for factoring in that very thing and that thing only??!?!?

Look, there is admittedly no perfect way to do any of this. Anything trying to rank numerically things which do not even use numbers (unlike say sports statistics for athletes) is going to be flawed to a degree, but the goal is to make it so that we eliminate as many of those biases as we can. So we take out personal tastes (and yeah, that definitely includes the personal tastes of magazine reporters, or book authors, or even artists who go on record to praise their friends and heroes in ways that mistakenly use the very word we're discussing) and to try and show rock history as a whole in as objective and accurate a fashion as we possibly can. Innovation is what has the biggest effect on the altering of musical styles, I think everyone would agree, so that's what primary influence credits. Who sparked that innovation and how wide did it spread. Secondary influence allows for those who had a role in the spreading of that earlier innovation to receive some credit as well. All of it can be reasonably proven without needing to exhume the bodies of artists like Ace or Buckley and grill them on who they felt were influential... that is, after we explain to them the specific differences between influence and inspiration/admiration. Since the impact part of the criteria already uses the very thing you're all citing as examples you're effectively trying to have it count twice, which is stupid and biased and will lead to even more inaccuracies.

Influence is something that should be relatively easy to show. Artist B, C & D all took this approach, Artist A is who did that first, hence = primary influence. Or, Artists E, F and G all followed that approach and they learnt it from Artists B, C and D (secondary influence) as evidenced by the timing of it and the slight variations that followed their renditions of it more closely. But even then, it's still A who gets the majority of the influence for coming up with the new thing that started it all to begin with, without it there's no B, C & E doing it for others (E, F & G) to follow. We credit it all proportionately and we do so by simply studying the musical evolution ITSELF, not the interviews of the chosen few.

It's doubtful many pilots today were directly influenced by the Wright Brothers, but they were the ones who started flying first and so they get the majority of the influence for doing so. Baron Von Richthofen, Charles Lindberg, Ameila Earhart, Chuck Yeager and others have lots influence as well, but it would be for either spreading the popularity and possibilities of the Wright Brothers innovations (giving them secondary influence credit), or for specific attributes they added to the flying experience which altered it significantly in the future (which would get them primary influence credit for those aspects). It's the same with music and it works well for both because it eliminates almost all of the unfair variables.

We're talking about influencing the direction of rock music itself - as a whole - something that alters the way it is sung, played, produced, written, etc., which takes it in previously unheard direction, not someone's highly personal, mostly internal, inspiration for something. In other words, how does what followed an Artist's innovation matter and how would music itself been different had that artist not done so. With Buckley there is nothing of any great note in that regard. Don't ever look at influence as in who supposedly influenced who, that's gossip fodder and big name dropping, headline writers looking to attribute things without evidence, to draw attention to things they deem important. Look instead to how music itself changed after a certain event, innovation or appearance of somebody on the scene. If focused on that way, showing where an artist tangibly affected the future direction of rock music by what they specifically did that no one else had done prior to that, then it becomes very easy to determine.

Hey guys, in case any of you forgot, Sampson knows a whole, whole lot about obscure music from the 50s and earlier

So Buckley has no influence because wall of text?

It explains fully your definition of Influence. In 7 or so years of modding the Vocalist forum, though, we have never signed off on that definition. I know I certainly haven't. Perhaps that's how things go in other parts of the forum, I really don't know, but that is never how we've done it as long as I've been here (since 2005).

And to say that Buckley didn't do anything new, that's ridiculous. His voice is his own, therefore most of the elements of it must be his own. The way he delivered his phrases, the way he implemented dynamics, the way he switched between registers, the way he implemented techniques that had been around since before he began singing was unique. Undeniably the way his voice resonated with many, many listeners was unique; and if it's Jeff Buckley's implementation of techniques or styles that directly influences another artist, then Jeff Buckley deserves credit for influencing that artist.

If we want to go back to the origin of vocal techniques, then there is literally no limit to how few artists can receive receive what you're calling "influence." Every artist has been influenced by an innumerable myriad of other artists, down until to the first singer ever to sing, the first guitarist ever to play guitar, the first drummer ever to drum, and so on ad infinitum. Contrary to what you are claiming, indirect influence is much harder (in most cases) to attribute than direct influence (like what I'm talking about), because there is no limit to how indirect influence can be.


If you would like, we can put this to a vote to the forum's current active members, though I suspect that won't appease you.

Well why is innovation and influence being put in the same criteria anyway?

I support this.

Oh, I'm well aware. Was there a miscommunication?

You're contradicting yourself. If "a singer's voice is his own, therefore more of the elements of it must be his own" then NO SINGER will have influence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That definition would apply for every singer, not just Buckley, which means they're ALL doing something new, including the ones claiming they were influenced by Buckley who naturally also have their own voice, the elements of which are THEIR own. So your own definition in his defense has just negated his influence. Good job.

But then you go back to the way in which he implemented dynamics, switched between registers, etc., techniques which you admit have been around before he began singing, but you want to credit him for those, even though he didn't introduce them to the popular singing lexicon, nor did he spread their usage in any significant way. That's what influence IS! But apparently you want to say that doing something that hundreds of others in rock have done before him either doesn't count, or him doing the same is somehow equally influential? How are you going to make sense of that?

YES, his voice resonated with many listeners, I agree, but that is already being credited in Impact, or is this definition found on Page One of this thread wrong: (Impact: Overall Acclaim). You can't count it twice in two different criteria. So we're back where we started, the definition of Influence: "How much influence the singer had on future vocalists; How the singer influenced the evolution of rock vocals".

Buckley has little or no influence on the latter, simply because all of the things he's done has already been widely and successfully done prior to that, by far more widely known artists, who therefore would themselves be influential in the exact same way you'd like to credit Buckley for being. How many times are you going to credit the same thing as being influential? If Artist A in 1947 switches registers in a pleasing manner and thousands of singers after that do the same, does the 304,583rd singer to do so get influence for it too, because that's what you're essentially saying, isn't it? - he'll be getting credit for doing something others did first and did just as well and with even far more popularity?

Buckley didn't influence the evolution rock vocals in any way, period. Vocal technique, delivery or anything else did not change radically after he appeared. Singers in 1998 sang the same as they did in 1992 before he was around. No matter how much you bitch about it he can't get influence credit for the evolutionary aspect of the criteria without it being a total farce. Which means we're back to the first part of the definition of influence in the criteria, collecting names via Google searches and tabulating them, which is about as unfair and inaccurate a method as can possibly be done. Both for the predominance of WHO is asked about their influences and who is not, and because singers aren't even sure of specific differences between influence and inspiration, nor are all questions asked the same to make that point clear. Also, will it matter the stature of the names of who those who claim to be influenced by someone? Are we going to be saying that Fran Healy being influenced by Buckley isn't worth much because Healy is a relatively minor figure (good UK success, virtually nothing in America)? If somebody else finds BIGGER names claiming they were influenced by Joe Schmo is that going to outweigh this? Or how about fact-checking the claims to begin with, like the fact that Healy was singing with Travis before Buckley was even recording! Their first album came out later, yes, but Healy was already singing and therefore must've been singing like SOMEONE else then. Do we know who? Are THEY going to get influence credit too? Do you care about finding out,(you should if this is how you're going to compile influence) and how will we know? Most importantly do we have tangible evidence that his vocals appreciably changed after he heard Buckley, otherwise his claims about being influenced by Buckley are worthless if he sounded the same both before and after his Buckley exposure!

Oh yeah, then apply that same technique for all singers in rock for the past 66 years. Good luck.

So guys, apparently there is no such thing as influence. Sorry bout that.

Sampson, we've been through all this before. Sure, we can't be definitive about who influenced whom--but, as you yourself say a couple paragraphs later, we can't be definitive about ANY of this. If you want to find out who influenced Johnny Ace, you have to go back to the recordings he would have had access to at the time and see which ones were reflected in his sound. Sure, that leaves a lot of subjectivity, but I maintain that there's just as much subjectivity in deciding who was the first to do something, because every record is different. To use your own example, you change from something that's almost indisputable--that Lou Christie (and the Newbeats, and so on) were trying to sound like Frankie Valli--and instead try to go back through music history and determine what was the first vocal sound on record that you think qualifies as a falsetto.

If you think influence and musical impact end up being too close under this definition, you don't have to include both. For that matter, if you want to credit innovation, you could always make it part of the criteria.

Would you please supply proof of this. What evidence do you have that his acclaim is the highest of the last 30 years? To be honest, one of your stated influences (Chris Cornell) has much greater acclaim as far as I can tell. One thing I know for sure, when an artist dies prematurely his acclaim tends to grow well beyond the facts.

Excellent. Your argument is logical and extremely well thought out. I agree with you 100%.

What leads you to this conclusion? I love Cornell, probably even more than Buckley, but if we're talking overall acclaim he doesn't come close to Jeff.
I wish Cappa was still around. Back on the old forum he posted a shit TON of quotes from rather significant artists praising Buckley's immense talent.

I think it's close.

You inferred the wrong meaning of the statement you're responding to (probably thanks to the way I wrote it). "His voice is his own, therefore most of the elements of it must be his own," meaning that the way he uses the elements (in most cases) must be his own. The exception to that, quite obviously, would be if he explicitly and/or clearly was mimicking someone else.

Let's return to the criteria real quick:
Influence (how much influence the singer had on future vocalists/how the singer influenced the evolution of rock vocals)

The former part of that is mostly what I am referring to in my argument for Buckley. He influenced many singers after him to sing differently. Many singers have claimed it explicitly. In the case of Thom Yorke, there is a clear distinction between his singing on Pablo Honey and The Bends, and he has stated that has a great deal to do with his experience of getting into Buckley's material. Buckley absolutely deserves credit for the first sub-criterion of Influence here; to disagree with that is insanity.

It is a singer's delivery of a collection of techniques that causes the techniques themselves to spread. You are doing the exact same thing that you are accusing me of in your argument, which is you are implying that an innovator of a certain technique should automatically be given credit for the spread of that technique. This is inaccurate. Innovation itself should be contained within "influencing the evolution of rock vocals." If the innovator also was a direct influence on singers to come after him, then he would obviously get credit for that as well. In the case of the true greats, like McPhatter for instance, they were (a) innovative, (b) directly influential to a very large number of singers, and (c) widely acclaimed for their talent. Those are three different distinctions, and none should be mashed into another. If a singer is extremely innovative, but relatively obscure, then he will score very highly in category A, but will not get credit for scoring highly in category B. You are arguing that innovation, being the first, is the be-all and end-all and direct influence accounts for nothing. This is hogwash and a conflagration of the sub-criteria of influence.

Buckley clearly scores high in category B, and he deserves credit for that. I'm not saying that he should be Top 5 (like he was, once upon a time) or anything even close to that. But you said that his influence was "zero" which is categorically false.