Remember My Name

Carrie Grant is Fame Academy's singing coach. So can she turn our Gareth McLean into a pop sensation?

Friday August 8, 2003
The Guardian

I love singing. Unfortunately, no one else loves me singing. I suffer abuse every time I attempt a song in public, leading to embarrassment and feelings of self-consciousness. Analogies have been drawn between my voice and cats trapped in garage doors, and gas escaping from hot-air balloons. Such metaphors do not do wonders for your self-confidence.
Hence, I have come to Fame Academy to see Carrie Grant, vocal coach to the stars, and Atomic Kitten. As a session singer, she has worked with Diana Ross, Rod Stewart and Fat Boy Slim. With husband David Grant, she has a Mobo award for 1998's best gospel album. Along with the Kittens, she has also coached Emma Bunton and Victoria Beckham. If anyone can help me, Carrie can.

"Lots of Scottish people have very good voices," she starts, optimistically. "It's to do with the surface that you hit in the mouth to create the sound. English people tend to speak at the back of their mouths - think of Princess Diana or Margaret Thatcher - but Scottish voices are a lot more lyrical."
We begin with breathing. Carrie doesn't focus on diaphragmatic breathing because that comes from Victorian times when "people had upright pianos and nice girls, who were taught to sing, wore corsets". Carrie says you should sing from where you speak. It's that simple." Singing is not rocket science. People try to make it so complex and actually it's not like that at all."

So we are breathing in and "dropping" our lower abs. My co-ordination isn't great, so it takes a bit of time for me to get this right. Eventually, we move on to humming. Humming, says Carrie, warms up the vocal cords. Jo, the pianist, is playing scales and I am to imitate her. "M-m-m-m-m-m," I wail.

"Again," Carrie says. "M-m-m-m-m-m-m." "Again." "M-m-m-m-m-m-m." "Good," says Carrie. "M-m-m-m-m-m-m." "Good." "M-m-m-m-m-m-m." "Good. Once more." "M-m-m-m-m-m-m." "Good." Carrie is smiling. Sheepishly, I ask how tuneless I was. "You were out for a while there, but your ears told you where to go, how to correct it. One of the most important things we teach singers to do is to listen. It's not your vocal cords that have a problem. It's your ears you need to train." Carrie says she has never met anyone who is tone deaf, just lots of people who think they are.

Usually, Carrie would spend weeks on humming, scales ("Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah") and sustained notes ("Eeeeeeeeoooooh"), training the ears and building confidence. We don't have that time so we quickly move on to my chosen song, Fly Me to the Moon.

Jo strikes out on the piano and we're off. "Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars," I warble. "Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars." I think I am singing too fast and imagine I have gone beetroot. By the time I reach "In other words, I love you", I am laughing nervously. Surprisingly, Carrie isn't crying.

"That was really good," she says. "Really?" I say. "The first time through a song, even the best singers are a bit wobbly," she says, "but the second half was getting good. You're not the finished article by a long way, but if you took lessons, you could definitely sing. You tell all your friends that."

Listening to the tape of my attempt makes my eyes water, but Carrie doesn't sound like she's lying. We run through the song again. And again. And again. I have a problem with the melody, too - "In other words, darling kiss me" - but otherwise Carrie says I am doing really well. "If you were to practise this and get your ears going, you'd be a good singer," she says, adding with a grin: "If you spent £5,000 a week on lessons with me, you'd be fine."

By the time I have flown to the moon for the seventh or eighth time, Carrie is clicking her fingers in time and noting that my rendition is "Sinatra-esque in its timing. You were really starting to make that swing!" She and Jo conclude I am a tenor (a tenor!) and that my voice "really starts to come alive when it hits the higher notes". Apparently, I have been singing in C major. I am elated.

"So," I venture, "could I have a hit single?" For a second, Carrie looks uncertain. Then, very deliberately, she says: "Absolutely. With the right song."

I decide not to ask what the right song might be (Tubular Bells? A duet with Cherie Blair?) and just enjoy the moment. Leaving Fame Academy, I decide that there ain't room in the charts for two Gareths. Watch your back, Gates. Carrie may just have created a monster.