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Many songwriters are not blessed with pipes like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey or John Legend. But still, the songs have to be demoed before being able to pitch to possible artists for placement. I believe that the vocals on a demo are at least as important as the composition, production and overall appearance of the song itself.
How have you handled this in the past? Do you record your demos with your own vocals, even if you are not a trained vocalist? Have you had any success with it so far? Please share your stories and if you wish a link to one of your demos!

after the song itself, i regard the vocal to be the most important, by far. my priority order is this: song-vocal-production-lyrics. (i'm sure many will disagree on the latter;-)

melodymessiah wrote:after the song itself, i regard the vocal to be the most important, by far. my priority order is this: song-vocal-production-lyrics. (i'm sure many will disagree on the latter;-)

I consider the song to be the composition+lyrics, so I don't really disagree.

I suppose if the success of a demo voice was how many songs were sold and covered, Bob Dylan must be somewhere near the top!

melodymessiah wrote:after the song itself, i regard the vocal to be the most important, by far. my priority order is this: song-vocal-production-lyrics. (i'm sure many will disagree on the latter;-)

It really is hard to tell where to place the lyrics in your ranking to be honest. Some genres rely more on lyrics than others. I would say all the above points are equally important to make a song great (maybe in some genres you could exclude the lyrics).

I've seen songs being warmly accepted by labels only to be ditched instantly when their artist did the session.

Therefore, I would say the song and vocal delivery are the most important, followed by production and lyrics.

My 2cents