Alan has a point

Bad can indeed be good, and I was working up to a post that said something similar to Alan, but from a different direction.  Who is familiar with the voice of the counter-tenor?  Have any blokes out there sung as a counter-tenor?  Both men and women have a "head voice", but for a multitude of reasons, some chauvinistic, the centuries have left us a head-voice repertoire written for the counter-tenor, and even a small repertoire for the male soprano. What is funny about a man singing in this register?  Nothing, if it's done well.  That is the easiest place to start because there aren't too many folk that sound really beautiful, in this register.  Jeff  Buckley's rendition of Britten's "Corpus Christi Carol," sounds amazing and serves well to hold the beer-can humor that usually accompanies this topic to a minimum.  For those of you who prefer a more classical offering, not many people can find their way around a Vivaldi aria with such amazing poise and pyrotechnics as Philippe Jaroussky:

Now they are about as good as it gets. For the less successful offerings out there, I think our brains play tricks on our ears.  Maybe the first subconscious reaction on hearing a male soprano is "Crikey! It's pretty incredible that he can do that at all!" and we forgive everything else.  A friend of mine (and recovering counter-tenor) sent me this parody, which has kept me in hysterics most of the weekend:

To end on a more sobering note, meet Alessandro Moreschi, who recorded this around 1902, a full twenty years before his death.  Alessandro is popularly held to have made the only  known solo recordings by a genuine Castrato. -- Hugo Munday