Originally Posted by
RanRan79
Flo's voice definitely underwent some changes. Whether it was "damage" or not, I guess at this point no one knows. But she, like the other Supremes, had apparently been smoking for years, so it may have very likely had some effect. During 66/67 she was also under a ton of stress, naturally and unnaturally job related, and stress does affect the voice. During her famous Supremes years Flo was in her early 20s, a time when female voices are still changing, so she may have undergone a natural change that might also have been compounded by the previous factors. Not to mention my belief that Florence wasn't a natural soprano and may have done some damage by singing so often in the upper register of her voice.
I don't buy that Flo was phoning it in during this time. There are definitely tracks from the A Go Go sessions on up that sometimes sound like both Flo and Mary are phoning it in, but since it was both of them, I suspect that was more a producer issue. Flo and Mary are tearing up "Hangin On", "Love Is Here", many of those Rodgers and Hart cuts, among others, and it's clear that Florence's voice doesn't sound like it did on "Stranger In Paradise" or "Come See About Me". She still sounds great, like on "Manhattan", "Bewitched", "It's Going All the Way", but it's not as high as it once was, which of course doesn't make it any less good, just different. IMO the boom of her voice was still there, the height had just decreased, if that makes any sense.