Can Everyone Learn to Sing? A Vocal Coach Reacts to Celebrity Coach

So, I finally sat down with the Billboard On the Record interview with Eric Vitro — the vocal coach behind an absurd share of the voices you hear on the radio, on Broadway, and in every musical biopic Hollywood has cranked out in the last decade. Ariana Grande. Rosalía. The actors playing Elvis, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen. When a coach with that résumé talks shop for an hour, I listen. And you should too, because most of what he said is exactly what I've been telling my students for twenty-plus years — just with more famous names attached.

But there's one big claim in that interview I want to wrestle with, because I think he's mostly right in a way that leads a lot of everyday singers to a completely wrong conclusion. Let's start with the agreements, because there are a lot of them. 

Preparation Is the Whole Mind Game

When the host asked how he gets artists through the terrifying stuff — world tours, singing the national anthem in front of the planet — Vitro didn't reach for a magic trick. He reached for preparation. His argument: if you're genuinely prepared, if the song is in your body and your bones, confidence overrides the nerves. Everything else — breathing exercises, visualization, warm-up routines — sits on top of that foundation.

This is the single most under-appreciated truth in performance, and I'll say it the way I say it in my studio: confidence is not a personality trait, it's a receipt. It's the receipt you get for the work you already did. My students who feel shaky before an audition are almost never shaky because of some character flaw. They're shaky because somewhere deep down they know the material isn't actually cold yet. You can't affirm your way past that. You can only rep your way past it.

The gym parallel is direct. Nobody walks up to a heavy barbell and decides to feel confident. You feel confident on the lift because you did the program — because you moved slightly heavier weight last week and the week before that. Your nervous system knows the truth about your preparation whether your self-talk admits it or not. Vitro's artists walk onto the biggest stages in the world feeling ready because they are ready. That part is available to every one of us, at every level, for free.

He also mentioned having artists visualize their performance — even mentally stepping out into the audience and watching themselves walk on stage. I use a version of this constantly, especially with my speakers and audition clients. How you enter the room is the first note you sing. The audience decides in about two seconds whether you're happy to be there, and that decision colors everything that comes after. Rehearse the walk-on. I'm serious. Rehearse the walk-on.

Your Voice Is Working All Day, Not Just On Stage

Another point he made that I want to underline three times: audiences think a singer's workday is the ninety minutes on stage. It's not. It's the 6 a.m. morning show, the camera blocking, the sound check, the interviews, the meet-and-greet, the second sound check, and then the show. The voice is on duty from wake-up to lights-out.

You may not be on a world tour, but the same math applies to you. If you're a teacher, you're doing a six-hour vocal performance every single day before you ever get to choir rehearsal. If you're in sales, you're on calls all day before your community theater rehearsal at 7 p.m. The show is not the workload. The day is the workload, and the show sits on top of it. This is why I talk about voice building the way a strength coach talks about training: your daily capacity is the thing we're actually developing. A voice with more capacity handles a long day and still has something left for the performance. A voice living at the edge of its capacity gets hoarse by Thursday.

Coaching note: Track your total daily voice use for one week — talking, teaching, calls, shouting over restaurant noise — not just your practice time. Most vocal fatigue problems I see aren't caused by singing at all. They're caused by six hours of untrained speaking stacked underneath thirty minutes of singing.

The Whiskey Shot and Other Shortcuts That Aren't

The host floated the old myth: a shot of whiskey before you go on loosens up the voice. Vitro's answer was essentially please don't, and his reasoning was better than the usual finger-wagging. Yes, alcohol relaxes you — possibly to the point where your body stops supporting the sound. It dries the folds and stirs up reflux. And the dose creeps: one shot becomes two becomes a habit with a very well-documented ending. We've all seen that biopic.

Here's my broader version of the same principle. Singers are forever asking me about the stuff — which tea, which spray, which lozenge, which elderberry extract to drip down your sinuses to activate whatever. And my answer is always the same: the tea doesn't matter if you're sleeping four hours a night. The spray doesn't matter if you're not drinking water. The products are the sprinkles; sleep, hydration, and sane daily voice use are the sundae. Vitro sells the same idea from the other direction when he talks about how quickly he can hear whether a singer has been warming up and maintaining their instrument. Habits are audible. That should scare you a little, and then it should motivate you a lot.

Pre-Records Are Just Reps (Ask Tony Bennett)

My favorite practical gem in the entire interview was about movie musicals. Even when a production plans to sing everything live on set, Vitro tells directors to record the pre-records anyway — because the studio process itself builds the singer. Do fifteen takes, listen back, critique yourself, adjust, go again. The actor who walks out of that studio is several levels better than the one who walked in, regardless of whether a single take gets used.

That is the entire philosophy of my studio in one anecdote. The recording isn't the product; the recording is the training stimulus. This is why I push every singer I work with — beginners included — to record themselves constantly and listen back like a coach reviewing game film. Not to wallow, not to cringe. To make one specific adjustment and take another rep.

He backed it up with the old-school examples, and they're worth repeating. Tony Bennett rehearsed songs so relentlessly that decades later, deep into Alzheimer's, the music would start and the performance was still in there. Frank Sinatra was famous for walking into a session and cutting a song in a single take — not because he was magic, but because he'd done the work before he arrived. Everybody wants to sound effortless. Nobody wants to do the ten thousand boring repetitions that effortlessness is made of. Same as it ever was: everybody wants to be big, nobody wants to lift the heavy weights.

Coaching note: Steal the pre-record method this week. Record your song three times in a row. Listen to take one, write down one thing to fix, then record take two. Repeat. Three takes with honest listening between them will teach you more than an hour of mindless run-throughs.

Where I Push Back: “Can Everyone Sing? Absolutely Not”

Okay. Now the fun part.

The very first question of the interview: can everyone sing if trained properly? And Vitro, to his credit, didn't hedge: absolutely not. His reasoning: he can make anyone better — he's clear about that — but the raw material has to be there. The vocal cords, the ear, the sense of pitch, the musicality, the ability to convey emotion. Without those, in his words, it's just not going to happen.

Here's my honest take: he's right about the question he's actually answering, and wrong about the question most people hear.

The question Vitro is answering is: can everyone become a world-class, radio-topping, arena-filling singer? And no. Of course not. When your client list is Ariana Grande and Rosalía, your reference point for "a singer" is someone with a freakish instrument, a freakish ear, and a freakish work ethic all in the same body. Most people will not reach that level with any amount of training, the same way most people who train hard in the gym for a decade will still never step onto a professional bodybuilding stage. Genetics set the ceiling. Training determines how close to your ceiling you get. Both things are true, and pretending otherwise is dishonest coaching.

But the question everyday people hear is: can I learn to sing? And when someone with Vitro's authority says "absolutely not, some people just don't have it," thousands of listeners quietly file themselves into the don't have it bin and never try. That's the damage, and I've spent a career cleaning it up.

So let me be equally blunt in the other direction. I have been giving conference talks on so-called tone-deaf singers for years, and every time I make the same standing offer: if you can find me a person — barring severe mental or physical disability — who genuinely cannot learn to match pitch after real training, put them on a video call with me and I will pay you hundreds of dollars out of my own pocket. The bounty goes up every time I give the talk. Nobody has ever collected. Not once.

What I have met, over and over, are people who say "I'm tone-deaf, I can't sing," and when I offer to teach them, they say no thanks. Those people won't learn to sing. Not can't — won't. Pitch matching is a learnable skill. Tone is buildable. Range is trainable. Breath support is trainable. I've never seen a singer complete two years of competent instruction and still be unable to carry a tune. The instrument you were born with sets how high the ceiling is; it does not decide whether you get to walk in the building.

•       Everyone can learn to sing in tune. It may take months; for adults with no childhood music background it can take longer. It happens.

•       Everyone can learn to sing more beautifully and more powerfully than they sing today. Capacity grows the way muscle grows — with progressive, boring, consistent work.

•       Not everyone will become a star. Correct. Neither will most people who buy a guitar, a basketball, or a barbell — and nobody tells them not to train.

Train Anyway: The Star Question Is the Wrong Question

And here's the thing about the ceiling: you don't actually know where yours is. Nobody does, from the outside, on day one. Vitro himself tells the story of Monica Barbaro playing Joan Baez having never sung or played guitar before — and astonishing everyone. Coaches are routinely wrong about who "has it." The only reliable way to find your ceiling is to train hard for years and go look at it yourself. If there's any real pull in you toward performing, give it your absolute best and find out. The audition you don't take is the only one with a guaranteed outcome.

But even that frames it too narrowly, because becoming a star was never the only reason to train a voice — any more than becoming Mr. Olympia is the only reason to lift. People train their voices to lead a classroom without being hoarse by Friday. To stop dreading the happy-birthday moment at the office. To sing to their kids. To finally join the choir. To stand up at a podium and sound like someone worth listening to. To worship. To grieve. To feel the almost embarrassing physical joy of a phrase landing exactly where you aimed it. Vitro quoted Miles Davis in that interview — that it can take a long time to sound like yourself — and I'd point out that the quote says nothing about sounding like a star. Sounding like yourself, fully and freely, is the actual prize, and it's available to every single person reading this.

So listen to the man on preparation, on maintenance, on skipping the whiskey, on doing the reps. He's one of the best in the world and he's giving away the real stuff for free. Just don't let the first ninety seconds of the interview talk you out of the whole game. He's telling you the truth about stardom. I'm telling you the truth about singing. They're different subjects — and only one of them was ever up to you anyway.

About the Author

Topher Keene is a Grammy-Award Nominated Vocal Coach with decades of experience. He has helped thousands of singers, actors, and voice actors — from total beginners to working professionals — and trains the voice the way a good coach trains an athlete: from the ground up, one rep at a time.

Connect on LinkedIn: @VocalCoachTopher