Girls singing Hard Rock and Heavy Metal just for the hell of it

I like to sing, and I owe it all to Mr. Lordi; the lead singer of Lordi who inspired me to sing. I will write more about him in later posts. Because of him, I developed the confidence to sing, share it and, sing whatever I want. That is why I started vocal covers; Lordi songs mostly and shared it on my YouTube account. I also did one cover of my favourite Nightwish song. Everything went pretty well, for about six months I think.
But eventually stuff started to go bad in February this year. It began after I redid the covers to minimize the choreography; I had too much of that earlier. So after that was fixed, I started receiving some negative attention on my singing. I know what you’re thinking: Don’t take haters personally, just ignore them. Yes, I get that but, the problem is that I am quite sensitive to negative comments. I end up reacting the wrong way before I can delete them and move on. Somebody who claimed to be a musician said I was terrible. To me, that just hurts like hell, because musicians should give constructive criticism. That way it helps me improve, but sadly not this one. Then later on, another “professional” came along and claimed to be a singing teacher. He said I couldn’t sing but didn’t want me to stop singing. He offered to help me and that I appreciated. But as I went back to my vocal covers, he came back. He said my voice sucked, but he thought I was a great person with a great taste in music. What the hell? Okay, professional music teachers never say someone sucks. If he thinks I’m a great person; he should have given me some constructive criticism instead and been a little more polite.

That’s not the only issue I dealt with. Also, some people didn’t like how I was singing such aggressive songs with screaming and stuff. (That can be found in Lordi songs.) They claimed I was talking instead of singing. They also would only consider me a good singer if I sang something more melodic by a female vocalist. Look, if I’m singing for fun; then this shouldn’t be about matching the original singer’s voice. I like to sing Lordi’s songs, but I don’t drink two litres of Pepsi or Dr. Pepper, smoke tobacco, and eat chocolate before singing. That’s what Mr. Lordi does. I like chocolate but the other stuff I don’t. The reason why I think people say this to me is because; they are absorbed by gender stereotypes. These stereotypes say that men sing aggressive stuff and women sing melodic stuff. However, I understand now that not many female vocalists make it under this music genre. I thank a friend for helping me with that, and his wish to help me improve. But seriously, do I look like I’m looking for a record deal out of my singing? No I do not, so I wish some people would recognize that.

Finally what happened is I enabled the ratings on my videos to, hopefully, not give a shit what people thought. But that didn’t work out, and I regret doing that because this was where things crossed the line. Turns out my covers got more votes down instead of votes up. This struck me hard because it sounded like there were a bunch of idiots who hated my voice because it wasn’t distorted, I’m a girl, or they didn’t like the sound quality. I tried to fix that and can’t unless I use a different device to record. Surprisingly, even my single Nightwish cover got more dislikes too; even though it was stereotypically something I should be singing. This was devastating, so I closed my YouTube account, and all covers were deleted. Many of my friends were sad that I had deleted it, but I told them that I would keep singing, but kept it private.

Now this brings me to conclude, that if a girl like me is singing just for the hell of it, it shouldn’t matter what she sings. I sing metal songs I know all the time when I’m alone, and if I were to share it then I really wish people would not say anything, unless they have something nice to say. But as usual, the Internet is chock full of people who want to let out their frustrations in life. They do so by picking on others. Examples include: claiming to be professionals or are but don’t do their job well. I wish criticism was not done so negatively. If you’re gonna make it constructive, then why don’t you say something like: “Not bad, now if you want to make it better you need to do…..blah blah blah.” That’s what I would rather here come from those kinds of people; teachers and musicians.

I am a girl who sings Lordi and other metal stuff and I’m proud to admit it.

-Emily