The Grain of the Voice

Barthes makes a distinction between the voice that has "grain" and the voice that doesn't. In what terms can we think of a song that is a duo of the two?

An example of such a song is "Stan" as sung by Eminem and Dido. In The Grain of Voice Barthes says that Fischer-Dieskau's voice doesn't have a grain, but Panzera's does:"Fischer-Dieskau's art, expressive, dramatic, emotionally clear, conveyed by a voice without "grain", without signifying weight, corresponds perfectly to the requirements of an average culture; this culture, defined by the extension of listening and the disappearance of practice, is eager for art, for music, provided that such music be clear, that they "translate" an emotion and represent a signified (the poem's "meaning")..." Then on p. 272 he says that Panzera, on the other hand, does not articulate, or separate the consonants, and that we do not hear him "breathe" but only "shape the phrase". In "Stan", Eminem's voice is like that of Fischer-Dieskau because you can hear the emotion of anger in his voice, so the meaning of the lyrics is clear from the way he sings them, and Dido's voice is like that of Panzera because it seems as though the lines she is singing are not as articulated and do not really express any emotion, instead, she "skates over" the words as Panzera does.
Since we find examples of both in one song, we can't talk about it only in terms of one, so the definition of having a grain becomes more flexible. And it is the song’s structure of combining different styles and voices of Eminem and Dido that allow the song to create this muddling. Additionally, it also has elements of both the pheno-song and geno-song because while we could think of Eminem's voice as being "dramatic" and "expressive" (p.270), and thus, having the elements of the "pheno-song", it also has the elements of the "geno-song" because diction and volume are important for him.