Can Anyone Learn to Sing?

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.

“There is nothing quite so vulnerable as a person caught up in a lyric impulse,” Roy Blount Jr. wrote in our February 1982 issue. What makes the situation even more vulnerable is to be among the group that Blount calls “the singing-impaired.”

Some research suggests that it’s easier to improve a singing voice than you might think. But even for those whose prognosis is hopeless, there’s joy to be found in the act of singing. Today’s newsletter explores how the singing voice actually works, and what humans can create when we sing together.

On Singing

Why the Best Singers Can’t Always Sing Their Own Songs

By Marc Hogan

Performing pop songs live offers a thrilling reward—if your voice doesn’t betray you, that is.

Read the article.

What Babies Hear When You Sing to Them

By Kathryn Hymes

And what parents gain (From 2022)

Read the article.

Everyone Can Sing

By Olga Khazan

Very few people are truly tone-deaf. Most just need to practice, a new study finds. (From 2015)

Read the article.

Still Curious?

• How to sing, while only slightly overthinking it: In 2012, Maria Popova offered a technical guide from the German opera legend Lilli Lehmann.
• “The singing-impaired”: Read Blount’s entertaining essay on his singing struggles.

Other Diversions

• How happy couples argue
• Gen Z never learned to read cursive.
• The fairy-tale promises of Montessori parenting

P.S.

Need some new music to sing along to this weekend? Check out our Radio Atlantic listeners’ playlist of songs about friendship.

— Isabel