...what are peoples opinions of Toshi's voice? He hits almost all of they notes, and it doesn't sound like a struggle but...he seems to be singing like he is...hmmm....restraining his voice?
He hits the high notes on the chorus perfectly, however its uncertain wether he'll be able to hit the highest notes on Forever Love, like "ai ga aru nara" and "all I see is blue in my heart", but this video gives me more hope that he can.
I want to talk about a couple of thing's about Toshi's current voice and I'm probably going to sound very picky to a lot of people, but I think its a very important thing when it comes to the ballads and rock songs, so try to understand what I'm saying. Also its going to be a massivily long post, sorry XD.
High notes is not the only thing Toshi does with his voice that makes the ballads unique and emotional, he also used to sing very softly in ballads like forever love and tears, which is imo one of the most vital things that gave these songs a unique sound and feel emotional, and unfortunatly Toshi doesn't sing like that anymore, he sings everything in falsetto now, listen to the majority of the times he's sung those songs and songs like it since the reunion, and another great example is his recent performance of 'Made in Heaven' from his last solo live, instead of the old way he used to sing it "We're the heaveeeen" very softly, Toshi now instead sings it like, we're the heeavU-U-U-U-U-n. and it didn't make it that good of a performance to me.
And he does it in Tears too, he now sings it like "sometimes the tears blinded the L-A-A-A-ve. Its irritating, because when I think of Toshi's voice during ballads, or when I think of the songs Tears and what its unique sound is, I think of that line "sometimes the tears blinded the love" and the way Toshi used to sing it/the studio version.
When I listen to the song in the new lives that feeling isn't there anymore because Toshi's singing style is different, it doesn't feel a lot like Tears to me anymore for some reason. And I'm worried about how this is going to affect the English rerecordings of the songs, will the new audience get the same feeling of the ballads we had, will they know that Toshi can sing like that (I guess they can by listening to the original version).
If Toshi sang Longing today it wouldn't sound anything like it used to.
As for the rock/metal songs like Weekend, Kurenai, X ect. I think Toshi is going to sing a lot of those songs with his raspy voice because he has been doing that most of the reunion, the problem I have with this is that Toshi's raspy voice sounds nothing like it used to, its not the same sound at all, in the early days it was a powerfully wild raspy sound, the best of all rock/metal singers imo.
Today Toshi sounds like he's just trying to impersonate that, not only that but its at a much lower range, and there's something else about it that makes it sound different from the old days, I know what it is but I can't find the words to describe it. The point is I don't want Kurenai, Weekend and X ect. butchered because his raspy voice does not sound anythig like it used to anymore.
There have only been a couple of instances I can confidently say he sounded like the old Toshi, a couple pf lines during Blue Blood at the countdown gig, and in his new song "Samurai Japan", all the main powerful lines such as "haita koto bushi marun daio" (I know its wrong but there's lyrics anywhere on the internet).
I know I sounded really nitpicky through that and have probably written things too complex, but I think these are important things when re recording these songs.
