It's not just about range. It's also about timbre and weight of voice and some other, more technical things. I'm a tenor and I can sing most of the notes Eldritch sings* but our voices sound very different doing it. Even on the high notes you can tell he's a baritone and even on the low ones you can tell I'm a tenor. And his low notes sound fuller and richer than his high notes, which sound like they take more effort. The converse is true for me.Nikolas Vitus Lagartija wrote:Really ? I can't imagine Jimi Somerville singing along with the likes of Bury Me Deep or Afterhours. sound more basso profundo than baritone on these, but as you point out his tenor range on the early work was also fairly impressive, so "baritone" would seem a reasonable compromise.mh wrote:It's odd but I don't really view Eldritch as being so much in the "baritone" class.
It's not really appropriate to attribute basso profondo to a non-operatic voice but, as it's the lowest of all voices (the very, very low end of the entire bass range), Eldritch doesn't fit anyway. The only two I can think of offhand (as I'm not an opera buff) are Bob Bingham as Caiaphas in the film of Jesus Christ Superstar and whoever sings the "I have to push the pramalot" line in Monty Python and the Holy Grail - and I'm not even sure that they're quite low enough.
*He can sing lower than me; I can sing higher than him. As you'd expect.