Do you upset yourself when you sing in the shower? Have you been banned from performing karaoke? Does the dog disappear when you deliver your La donna è mobile?
If the answer to any of that is yes then television producers want to hear from you because voice coaches at English National Opera (ENO) have insisted they can train anyone to hold a tune.
Sky Arts has announced what its director Phil Edgar-Jones called a “reverse X-Factor”. They have put out a call for Britain’s worst singers: “We only want people coming if they cannot sing for toffee.”
The idea for the series came after a call Edgar-Jones was having with senior figures at the opera company discussing ENO Breathe, a programme that uses singing as a way of helping people recovering from coronavirus who still suffer breathlessness and anxiety.
“They made the bold claim that they could teach anyone to sing and I said ‘even me? Literally, if I sang to you now you would run to the hills’.
“They said yes – that most people are a third or a fifth out and they could get them to sing.”
Edgar-Jones asked if it could be to a level of performing on the stage at the ENO’s home, the London Coliseum. “They said ‘potentially yes: not so it would move you to tears, but you would be tuneful and good’.”
From there came the idea of a series titled Anyone Can Sing. It’s a fun concept but also one with serious intent, not least showing the benefits of singing for your health and wellbeing.
“Singing is very athletic and you are using a lot of your muscles,” said the tenor Nicky Spence, who will help mentor participants. “Opera singers are really strong, you have to really look after yourself.”
It is also good for your mental health. “I know for me when I was younger I was a triple threat for bullies – slightly large, ginger and potentially homosexual. Singing for me was a super power.
“For many of these people who haven’t sung before, they are going to realise that singing makes you feel great … it gets your endorphins flying, it is an exciting feeling.”
Spence, who will this year be Siegmund in the ENO’s production of The Valkyrie and next year Samson in the Royal Opera’s Samson et Dalila, also hopes the series will help make opera more approachable and accessible.
History is full of terrible singers who misguidedly believe they can sing, perhaps none more so that Florence Foster Jenkins, the American socialite and amateur soprano portrayed on screen by Meryl Street.
One person’s terrible singer is another person’s voice of an angel. Yoko Ono has been vilified for a voice is that is not in tune in the conventional sense, sometimes more cat being stood on than Smooth FM. “I don’t accommodate the audience,” she once told the Guardian. “I ask the audience to accommodate.”
The late Mark E Smith, lead singer of the Fall, was adored for his tuneless delivery and “cruelly measured disregard for pitch”.
Sky Arts is inviting terrible singers from the UK and Ireland to apply here . Six will be chosen and be trained over three months with the series airing later this year.
Edgar-Jones said the channel, which became free to watch last September, strived to have an annual purpose. This year it is cultural recovery, next it is likely to be physical and mental wellbeing. “This is a good way to kick that off. Singing makes you feel good and singing collectively is a beautiful experience.”
It would be an experiment in “joining-in” said Edgar-Jones, with the fun not just being watching people transform.
“The how you do something is as important as the doing,” he said. “I’m hoping to take away lots of tips so that when I sing in the shower my wife goes ‘encore’ not ‘shut up’.”
