Posts tagged: famous

What do Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae, and Blackpink’s Rosé have in common?

They’re all nominated for Grammy Awards this year, and they’ve all worked closely with the same vocal coach: Eric Vetro.

In an industry that runs on pomp and publicity, Vetro is the man behind the curtain shaping the voices of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Over the decades, his A-list roster has grown largely by word of mouth, with happy students across all genres recommending him to friends and coworkers.

In addition to counting many of today’s biggest pop stars like Grande, Katy Perry, and Carpenter as clients, he’s been involved in over 40 feature films, training actors like Chalamet, Angelina Jolie, and Jeremy Allen White to emulate musicians like Bob Dylan, Maria Callas, and Bruce Springsteen. He’s done his time coaching rock singers (Meat Loaf, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo), Broadway stars (Bette Midler, Kristin Chenoweth) and Oscar winners (Emma Stone, Renée Zellweger). He even got a shoutout in an Ariana Grande lyric in her 2019 single “Monopoly” (“I never track my vocals, so shout out to Eric Vetro / I love Eric Vetro, man”).

Vetro’s vocation may keep him in close proximity to the limelight, but he’s never wanted to step into it himself, preferring to play his coaching role with a proudly gentle touch. Being a vocal coach, he said, is as much about building confidence and managing his famous clients’ stress as it is about delicately giving feedback when they don’t hit the high notes.

“I’m pretty good at delivering a negative in a way that they know I’m only doing it because I care about them,” Vetro explained. “A lot of times I say to people, look, I’m going to be honest with you because I don’t want you to come back to me later and say, ‘You told me I was doing a great job, but I really wasn’t,’ or, ‘You said I sounded great on this song, but I really didn’t.'”

“Most of them are pretty open. They want to hear what can make them sound better,” he added. “I’m not really interested in working with someone who’s just phoning it in.”

Vetro himself certainly isn’t. His job has seen him huddled in public bathrooms with pop stars (for better acoustics, of course) and ferried to LAX at 6 a.m. to run vocal warmups with a client as soon as they deplaned. Once, he had a session with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the middle of a poison ivy patch while she was filming the 2000 musical “Geppetto.”

Despite the ever-frenzied logistics, Vetro said he loves his job now more than ever.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.

Ahead of the 2026 Grammys, Vetro spoke to Business Insider about what it’s like to teach, critique, and win affection from some of the biggest names in show business.

On managing the stresses and vulnerabilities of A-list stars while giving honest feedback

You work with a lot of people on the cusp of something big — a movie, a tour, a performance. How much of your job is stress management?

Well, picture singing at the Grammys, which is live. So if they screw up, that’s not good. Or the Oscars. That’s live, so if they make a mistake, that’s not good.

So a lot of it is stress management. But I try to think of all the things that the person needs, and then I try to fulfill all of those needs in every session that we do.

I try to get them to really learn how to use their voice the best way they possibly can, how to warm up their voice the best way they possibly can, how to find the correct placement for the song that they’re going to be singing, or songs that they’re going to be singing. But also how to stay grounded, how to stay relaxed.

It’s kind of like a holistic approach. What they eat and drink is going to affect how they sound, how much sleep they get is going to affect how they sound, the environment they’re in. It might be very dry, so they need to have a humidifier going, or they might have to make sure they have a personal steamer with them, depending on how much hydration they get. It entails a lot of different things. So I just try to fit all of that in as much as I can.

What have you learned about what it’s like to be famous through working with some of your students?

I’ve learned it’s exhausting. It’s intrusive. It can be really fun and wonderful, but it also makes people much more self-conscious because they don’t want to get caught looking their worst. They don’t want to get caught tripping, looking foolish.

Sometimes they just want to be with their friends alone. And how often can you really do that? You might be in a city and go, “I just want to take a walk up and down this strip where there are some great stores,” or, “I’ve heard this is a really fun walking path.” Well, how can you just be yourself when people are taking pictures of you? And not just paparazzi now. It’s anybody.

You necessarily see a vulnerable side of very famous people, because it’s vulnerable to sing in front of someone — especially if you’re tired, if you’re doing it a cappella, if your voice may be a little strained.

I do, but I get also a really sweet, wonderful side, people who are so appreciative. I don’t have any bad stories. I couldn’t sell a bad story about someone. I’ve had such great experiences with people — and most of them, when you really get to the heart of things, are pretty humble. Even the biggest stars are the most humble, and they aren’t arrogant about what they do.

A lot of people come across much more confident and assured on camera when they’re doing an interview, because that’s basically what’s expected of them. The fans want them to be that way. But in person, when we’re just alone, they’re really very sweet people who want to do the best job they can, who don’t want to disappoint. They don’t want to disappoint their family. They don’t want to disappoint their teams, and they don’t want to disappoint their fans. So they’re working really hard to do the best possible job they can.

I used to have this image in my head of a pyramid: all the bricks on the bottom of the pyramid represented agent, manager, labels, choreographers, vocal coaches, stylists, hair, makeup — all these people holding this one person up, whether it’s an actor or a music artist, at the top. That’s how I used to see it before I really worked in the “big time” or the professional realm.

Now I see it as completely opposite: The person who is the artist or the actor is at the bottom, holding up all of this. Because without that person, none of these people have jobs. So they have to be successful in order for all these people to have jobs, and people feel that. They feel the pressure of making sure their team is taken care of, making sure their team has work.

On Sabrina Carpenter’s work ethic and helping Timothée Chalamet sing like Bob Dylan

I’m so glad Addison Rae is nominated for best new artist at the Grammys. Since she came from the TikTok world, what was something you focused on to develop her voice as someone who wasn’t known as a singer before?

My main focus with her was just to get her to understand her voice, so that she would know how to sound like she wanted to sound.

She was working with two excellent female songwriters. They all were on the same page with everything, and especially after I heard “Diet Pepsi,” I was like, “Oh, OK. I completely get what they’re going for.” So now, let me try to keep working with her to be able to have her voice sound the best it can — in that world, in that sound, in that genre, keeping that vibe.

Addison has a phenomenal personality, and she also has a very creative mind. I think if you watch any of the videos of her performing, you go, “Oh, this is very specific to her.” Addison has her own thing going on, and so I just wanted her to feel confident when she got onstage that she could sound like the album.

Timothée Chalamet is also nominated for a Grammy for the “A Complete Unknown” soundtrack. What’s the biggest difference between training someone who is trying to emulate a certain singer versus somebody who is singing as themselves?

I start out basically the same with both, just trying to teach them how best to use their voice, how to understand their voice, vocal exercises to strengthen their voice, to increase their range.

Then we start listening, and I try to get them to really listen: What are the characteristics that make this singer special? Is it the way they pronounce a word? Is it the way they attack a note? We start really discovering the essence of these singers that they’re going to emulate — not as a carbon copy, because a carbon copy then becomes an impersonation.

With Timothée Chalamet, it’s like, why did Bob Dylan sound a certain way? And then when you look at him, you go, oh, well, he had a certain posture about him. You can see maybe his leg twitching a little or tapping on the beat. Whereas Joan Baez was very aggressive in her tone. So I would say to Monica Barbaro, who was playing Joan Baez, why do you think it was so aggressive? Do you think it was just, that was her naturally? Or maybe she felt like she had to be a woman in a man’s world, especially in those days? Or is it because the subject matter she’s singing about is so powerful to her and so strong, and she wants to get it across?

So then you start thinking why they are singing a certain way. That’s a better way to capture the essence of them organically.

If I’m working with a singer who just wants to sound like themselves, then I start by saying, what do you think is special about your voice? What do we want to bring out about it? Or what is it you want to sound like?

I usually ask, if someone is listening to you in a concert, what do you want them to walk away with? How would you want your voice to be described? That’s a huge question to ask. Sometimes they haven’t even thought about that, and they might think, oh, I want my voice to have a really warm tone, or I want to have a tone that they can relate to, so they can relate to what I’m singing about.

Another big nominee this year is Sabrina Carpenter. I know that you two have worked together for a long time. From the perspective of someone on the inside, what would you say is most notable about her growth over the last couple of years?

Sabrina worked so hard for so many years. She’s one of those performers that, kind of like Ariana, once they get on a roll, they know what they’re doing. Once they find their voice, find out how they want to sound, what they want their vibe to be, what they want their performances to look like and sound like, they just get on a roll, and then it’s almost like a freight train. It just goes.

Sabrina has really honed in on having the best possible time being authentically herself, and I think that that’s what’s so great. She takes episodes out of her own life and puts them into her music, and she’s been doing that for a long time, but I think she just keeps getting better and better and better at it.

That’s the thing about someone who’s continually doing it. Now, if they’re the type of person who takes big vacations, big chunks of time off in between, I don’t think you can have that momentum, but these girls don’t take time off. They’re constantly moving and doing things. You might not see what they’re doing because they’re prepping for something else or prepping for something for the future, but she’s working all the time. She is the least lazy person on the planet.

It sounds like a big part of your job is focused on longevity, making sure people keep their voices healthy through the craziness.

I focus a lot on that. I think that’s so important. I don’t want anyone to burn out, or miss a really great opportunity, or to sing incorrectly, then get a vocal nodule, then have vocal cord surgery, then lose several months out of their life. I try to avoid that at all costs.

I say this every year, so I think people probably go, “Yeah, right,” but I enjoy it more now than ever. I keep enjoying it more as I get older.

I feel like I’m more empathetic than I’ve ever been, because I really understand how difficult it is.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.