Jonathan Forani

"Golden" is so hard to sing that the women who recorded it lowered it two keys the first time they performed it live on Fallon. The song runs from C3 to A5. Three full octaves. And the A5 at the top of the chorus has to come out in full chest voice, a note usually reserved for trained operatic sopranos. The low end is the trap nobody notices. Those verses sit around C3, which is below where most female voices produce any real tone. Drop the key to make the high notes reachable and the bottom of the song disappears entirely. There's no comfortable version. That happened because it was written for a cartoon. EJAE has said the production team asked for big high notes and she wrote them freely, assuming she'd never be the one singing it. Then the director heard her demo and cast her as the voice of Rumi. She built a vocal Everest for an animated character and got assigned to climb it herself. Which explains why this became the most requested Kellyoke ever. A song that humbles nearly every professional who attempts it, handed to the one daytime host who won her career in a live singing competition.