Fantastic singer, an idol of mine. During the early to mid 80s he was at his prime in my opinion. He had an incredible range and his high larynxed singing hadn't really affected him at that stage. Prior to the 80s he sung very differently, much more breathy tone, with a lot more bottom end to it. He sounded great but the overuse of blasting air to get the powerful notes in my opinion did a number on his voice and he developed polyps if I remember correctly. After surgery he saught the help of Seth Riggs and around the early to mid 80s he had a lot more range than before, a much cleaner tone albeit he began to lose that bottom end and started puttins his sound in the mask way too much. Seth tried to get him to stop this but I think Stevie just liked the sound of it. over the years he went even more stuck in this high larynx mask-y sound and it has cost him a bit of his freedom now. if you listen to him now, he stuffs the sound even more so into the face and is even more high larynxed which is leading him to more inconsistencies and lose of freedom in his voice.

Please don't take this the wrong way, I really hate critiquing singers who are 100x better than me and hate arm-chair theorists and backseat drivers! so I do hesitate to write such things.

Great singer no doubt!