When we want to perform a song perfectly, one of the significant factor is emotion. If we just sing for ourselves, it is fine to have less emotion and just sing for our happiness. Because sometimes we just need to act like that to support us keep singing. However, if we want to sing for other people, particularly if we want to perform in professional way, it is impossible to attract audiences without emotion and feeling. The throat will be closed up, which is a problem of feeling strong emotions.1 After long-term singing skills training, a professional singer may be able to complete a song with correct pitch and tone. Even if these professional singers may have some musical skills to perform a song, it is quite difficult for them to pay adequate emotion into a song. If we want to perform a song that can make the listeners feel that they are in the similar conditions as the original singer, we should pay lots of effort on different aspects. Firstly, we need to know how to control our voice to express the emotion. If a singer had suffered through the song, it is not necessary for them to feeling those emotions deliberately. Feeling and understanding the lyrics and emotion of a song singer will perform is part of their significant job. People can easily identify with them and their feeling when they listen to the song performance.2 That way we can make everyone believe we are actually going through something special in our life, and the meantime the listener can feel that feeling as we do.
Listen carefully to the song we will sing and decide what the main emotion is in the song. We are not analyzing the words which they used in the lyrics but the method they use of their voice. And then we simulate the sound as if we have the same emotion too. For examples, if it is happiness, imagine you are having dinner with who you love in a nice restaurant. If it is anger, shout out loud like you are arguing with an unforgivable person. We will notice that under diffident scenarios what our voice will sound, what sounds we will use, what tone of voice we will make, what kind of speed we will use to speak, what kind of volume we will use. People often make the sound of a bubble going on or an inner smile behind it when they are in happiness. The speed will usually be slow down and there is also a “crying” sound behind it when people get hurt. When feeling anger, the voice will be sharp and hard to express the terrible feeling.3 When we practice, we can begin with a phrase from the song and sing it happily. When we tend to sing happy at the beginning, we can then move on to sing happily without feeling the emotion. And then we can try to sing it again with anger or other emotion, try as many as we can. This is an effective way to practice emotion singing for the singer.4 We need to connect the emotion to the vocal sound. Knowing the emotion and singing with it is obviously not enough for a singing to perform the song well. Emotion and vocal sound is in a close relationship. If we are using it, but the emotion is not behind it, we cannot make a convincing performance. Skilled vocalists can perform their emotion through specific singing techniques. Except voice control
technique can impact to the emotion of our singing, we have to pay attention to the breath control. When you do not know how to control your breath with power and stability, you are not easy to sound emotional. A good way to solve the problem is to learn the breathing technique and foster your stamina.5
To understand the meaning of the lyrics is an effective way to help the singers adjust their emotion. We should find out the historical background when the lyricist was writing the song. According to the song “Express yourselves”, we know the historical background is in the end of 1980s, which is in the second stage of the feminism.6 A lot of female artists started to publish their works in many areas including movie, music and paintings. They tried to paying their attention from women’s equal right to women independence.7 After the first stage of feminism, lots of married women begin to work in all kinds of industry. They took back the economic initiative in their family. In this song, Madonna sings” You don't need diamond rings or eighteen karat gold. Fancy cars that go very fast you know they never last no, no. What you need is a big strong hand to lift you to your higher ground.” She tried to tell females that they should focus on what a man can provide you from the spiritual dimension which is more important than the material dimension. She criticized the materialism in the society and some of the women who fall in love with a partner without deeper understanding. When we are singing this part, we should use a firm tone to express a certain rejection of materialism. We may sing the lyrics word by word like reading legal provisions in court. It would sound clear and firmly to let the listener know that we against materialism in a definable position. By vowels and consonants, performer can express much stronger emotion. Breaking the word into its phonetics also make the singing better. Because it has some clarity to the lyrics, the ears can also have some relax. 8
We need to do some researches on the motivations of the lyricists and the background of the time when they decide to write. When Madonna was writing the lyrics for “Express yourselves”, she was suffering marriage crisis during that period. The whole song has a main inspiration or the only inspiration is female empowerment, telling women should always choose the best lover and test the love before paying out everything they got.9 Madonna tried to using her experience in love which can remind women should express themselves in the relationship. In the music video of this song, Madonna reveals that she was like a drag expert with multiple strategies. At the beginning of the song, there is a brief monologue say” Come on girls. Do you believe in love? Cause I got something to say about it. And it goes something like this.” This monologue seems like an opening statement. It shows Madonna willing to share some opinions about love based on her experience. If we try to sing this monologue, we can
try to use a high tone and high volume to attract the attention of the audience in order to let them know the song’s main meaning.
Pop music in Unite State has a new trend during the 1980s. Dance music and new wave became the trendiest music in Unite State.10 Dance-pop is started in early 1980s and it is fit the contemporary hit radio at the same time. Dance pop is a mix of pop music and electronic pop music, with impacts of disco music, post-disco, new wave, synth-pop, electro pop and house at the beginning. Strong beats with simple song structures is one major characteristic.11 During that time, Madonna is one of the most typical dance-pop artists with world-wide publicity. When MTV was just formed in 1980s, fans would like to follow their idols because they think their idols is the fashion trend. Lots of teenage girls follow Madonna’s behaviors and ideas. “Material girl” was a title of Madonna. After “Like a prayer”, people have different arguments about Madonna. The song subverts the title “Material girl” from Madonna. In fact, Madonna also did not like this title. So she wrote the “Express yourselves” to clarify her stand on counter materialism. We know the meaning of this song is very serious. But because it is a dance-pop song, we need to keep up the rhythm of this song, with a vivid sound to interpret this song is very important.
We know that there are a lot of cover singers at this time. They are encouraging people to playing in their own style. They are uploading their cover song on the online video stream. They create a very diffident version of the original song and music video as well. Respect to the original performers does not mean that the cover artist cannot make some changes of the song. We should respect in the context. For the song “Express yourselves”, if we fail to understand the meaning of the lyrics, we will sing this song like normal dance-pop song. It may sound like we encourage people to separate from their lovers or partners which are not the best for them. But that is not the main idea what this song is trying to tell us and will be misleading. This song has a positive opinion to let women realize that they should have more caution when they choose their lovers. Women can fight for what they want. Furthermore, we should know the historical background and the motivation when the lyricist wrote the song. It helps us to adjust our emotion while we are singing it. When we are singing “Express yourselves”, we know that Madonna is trying to use this song to reveal her dissatisfaction of the “Material girl” title. So when we sing the part of lyrics about against to the materialism, we may express the meaning in a stronger tone.
In summary, once we want to perform an artist's song well, both virtuosic skill and a sense of irony are necessary to pay attention to. We need to have a deeper understanding about the song in different aspects, such as singer background, culture background, musical techniques, to can help us preform the song in a better way.