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Jarvis Cocker, and other frontmen who speak lyrics because they can't really sing

GOT charisma? Can’t sing? Don’t let it stop you stepping up to the mic for a lengthy career. When the tune gets too tricky just talk your way through, like these legends: 

Jarvis Cocker, Pulp

Cocker’s sardonic storytelling was a breath of fresh air in the cartoonish world of Britpop. Until the next album, when it became apparent that monotone delivery was disguising a failing not even suffered by John Powers of Cast. The advantage? As he makes his sexagenarian comeback, nobody’s worried he’s lost his voice.

David Byrne, Talking Heads

Given his band’s name, can hardly be accused of breaching the Trade Descriptions Act. His vocal style is the opposite of autotune, where a soaring melody is digitally transformed into a one-note robotic chant. When he’s not speaking like an android, mixes things up by yelping which doesn’t count as singing either.

Nick Cave, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Grinderman

Cave deserves credit for proving that not all Australian music is Angry Anderson. However, always eager to share his profound meditations on the state of the human condition, his vocal performance leans towards the trope of the demented preacher. Sometimes it’s okay to sacrifice your clever lyric for a decent tune.

John Lydon, the Sex Pistols, Public Image Ltd

You can get away with being a terrible singer if you surround yourself with terrible guitarists, a terrible drummer, write terrible songs, and make being terrible the entire point of your band. Supposedly flicking Vs to the establishment, Lydon normalised making a living by being incompetent, setting an example to all subsequent governments.

Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground

Whether backed by squawking feedback or a 1930s German cabaret band, Lou Reed’s deadpan vocals have the charm of a bluebottle that can’t find an open window. His drone turns tales of depravity and drug abuse into a chartered accountant going through an invoice. The perfect combination of transgressive and unimpressive.

Mark E Smith, The Fall

Dropping all pretence of being an actual singer, Mark E Smith’s vocal work was carefully designed, with the aid of multiple pints, to be even more ramshackle than his band. Achieving success by becoming an ‘anti-singer’ is a strategy that wouldn’t work in any walk of life. Try working in a surgery as an ‘anti-doctor’ and you’d get struck off.

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An insanely tight tie-knot: dickish things you did with your school uniform

THE government has banned schools from forcing pupils to buy more than three branded items a year. But it cannot stop kids twisting the uniform code in the most dickish of ways: 

Neon socks

The 80s neon trend was briefly a way to flaunt school rules with lurid green or pink socks. It lasted about a fortnight. Did heads crack down? Was it the unpleasant synthetic material the socks were made from, or the fact that they failed to turn spotty 80s kids in Warwick into sexy LA gym bunnies that made them vanish within a month?

The tightest of tie knots

Achieved by simply pulling someone’s tie until the knot was a hard little polyester lump to rival the Gordian Knot. Such bullying seems quaint in these days of all-night Snapchat frenzies and respect-related stabbings, but it did mean you couldn’t remove your tie and had to sleep in it.

Boundary-pushing earrings

Much like now, schools allowed stud earrings but not dangly ones. To teen girls, this was a declaration of war. The ban was justified on safety grounds, implying the corridors were previously littered with severed female ears after numerous horrific incidents. However all girls knew it was because Mrs Shawcross was a dried-up old bitch despite only being 33.

Creating a skinny tie

Tying your tie backwards and tucking the wide bit into your shirt left only a thin strip showing, defying authority in the pettiest way. It did actually look slightly better, like a slim 1960s tie worn by a suave Italian guy wooing signorinas in Rome. That’s where the similarity ended while you stuffed your face with Space Raiders and called your mates ‘benders’.

Wearing trainers

But stealth trainers. Black leather trainers with no visible branding whatsoever, slipping past teacher radar like the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird slipped past Soviet defences. Or wearing bright green Golas, being sent home to change and not coming back.

Making your tie too short

A third pointless tie rebellion: a tie no more than two inches long. If the school had required you to wear this, you’d have bitterly complained about what a wanker it made you look. But instead you strutted around with a two-inch skinny tie with a permanent knot and believed you were sticking it to the man.

Wearing trousers in slightly too light a shade

Challenges to authority don’t come much more insipid than this. Dark grey was specified; you went a full four shades on the Dulux paint chart lighter. While being dressed entirely acceptably for a boring, dead-end office job entering faxes into a greenscreen computer, so in terms of your future career you called that right.

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