No matter what, make the vocal sound right
If the vocal sounds authentic for what it is, it sells the entire rest of the mix.
When I’m mixing, mastering, anything, above all, I work to make sure that the vocal sounds like the song wants it to sound. There’s not one way that every vocal should sound — and there are a million ways that a vocal can sound cool — but I fervently believe that once you’ve committed to a certain sonic path for any given vocal, it can sound right or wrong in the context of what you’re going for.
For example: if you’re going for an “old soul” vocal sound, you don’t want too much low end — that sonic metaphor lives further off the mic. But, conversely, for a modern confessional ASMR bedroom pop sort of thing, not enough low end would sound equally wrong. It’s contextual.
As long as the vocal is correct, you can get away with a lot. I’ve heard so many weird, off-kilter recordings that totally work because the vocal sounds accurate to the world the song is building. And, conversely, I’ve heard really great music productions totally blown by a vocal with the wrong presentation — EQ, reverb choice, compression or lack thereof, etc. It’s a question not of things being “correct,” but of everything fitting together. Of the sounds living in a believable world that you’ve created.
My 7th grade English teacher, who was a huge influence on my early creative life, taught me the importance of a reader being able to “suspend their disbelief.” That’s the precondition for someone being able to let go and relax into the story you’re telling them. To suspend their natural state of skepticism and to give themselves fully over to your world. When I hear a vocal that doesn’t sound internally consistent with the soundworld that’s being presented to me, I can’t suspend my disbelief — there’s something amiss, nagging at my periph, saying “This isn’t right.”
If you sell the vocal, you sell the song. In production as in performance. Everything else is secondary. And you can do anything you want to do sonically — just make sure everything’s aesthetically congruent.
Getting away with it — jamie