Dear Jellybean,
I need your help, Me and my friend Clare are in a band with another girl called Nicky and she thinks she can sing.... well, she sounds like a strangled cat to be honest. We've sung at a club and everyone said that me and Clare were good but she was bad. We told her this but she didn't take the hint. Now she wants to sing again but me and Clare are trying desperately to find a song that even she could sing , but its non existent so we wanna tell her about her problem but we cant. She'll get so mad and say something right back about our weaknesses. Even though we aren't trying to be mean.we need to tell her she really can't sing! Please help!
-Lou
Dear Lou,
You have a couple of options here. You can clam up and suffer quietly, or you can tell Nicky the awful truth. Which one you choose depends a lot on why you're in a band in the first place.
If you're in a band to have fun and hang out doing music together, then maybe you and Clare should agree to put up with Nicky's ear-splitting voice for the sake of your friendship with her. But, if you are serious about this band and getting ahead in the music industry, then you've got to make a business decision for the group and cut loose the person who is holding you back.
If you choose that route, make sure you do it in the nicest way possible to avoid hurting Nicky's feelings. There is no reason to tell her that she cannot sing - just tell her you decided to "go a different direction" with the band and you're replacing her with a new singer. Make sure to line up a new singer before-hand, so you're not lying, because trust me, she will find out if you are. Your friendship may not survive this move, so be prepared to deal with that.
Finally, there is a third option here, and that is asking Nicky to take some singing lessons. You could all sign up for lessons, because you and Clare will probably do double-duty as backup singers on some songs at least, and there's always room for improvement. Nicky will feel like it's a band thing, instead of a "just her" thing, and with any luck she will improve her singing style.
Keep in mind, some of today's best singers had to take a lot of training to sound the way they do. So really consider giving Nicky a chance to improve before you give her the boot for good.
