Artists Who Use Shure Microphones
Published on 17 June 2024
Shure make a wide range of microphones, and you’ve definitely seen them at one stage or another during your life as a musician. They are the Fender of the mic world - innovative and hugely popular - and so naturally, lots of artists use them.
It’s an almost overwhelming task to try and have any sort of cohesive or worthwhile list of all of Shure’s artists, since there are so many. Instead, what I’d like to do today is show you some examples from the world of music, and how Shure has fitted into that world. We’ll look at some rule-breakers and some unusual tales as we check out artists who use Shure microphones. This way, please!
Contents
The SM7B - the Vocal Sound of Million-Selling Albums
The SM7B - the Vocal Sound of Million-Selling Albums
The Shure SM7B is a very well-known mic. Anybody who watches Joe Rogan’s podcast will recognise the Shure SM7B: it’s the long black cylindrical mic that Joe and his guests are forever pushing and pulling around as they get more and more tipsy/baked and out-there with their conversation. This is a popular use for the mic, but by no means the only one.
This SM7B has actually been a recording studio mainstay for decades. It can pick up a huge amount of detail for a dynamic mic, and works well with a myriad of preamps, making it a great all-rounder but a particularly popular vocal mic.
Conventional producer wisdom would dictate that you need a nice condenser microphone for release-ready vocals, but check out the artists who use an SM7B for their megahit album recordings:
- Michael Jackson
- Sheryl Crow
- Metallica
- Green Day
- Bob Dylan
- Sammy Hagar
- Devin Townsend
- Mick Jagger
Not a bad list! Part of the appeal is the sound, which is flat and wide in its response, but it’s also partly because of the internal design: the mic has an inbuilt pop filter and electrical shielding, so it can be picked up and grabbed for close-up vocals, and electrical hum levels will be extremely low.
Everyone needs one, basically.
Mic Choice of the Grammys
Next time you check out an enormous event like the Grammy Awards, have a look at what most of the arts are using. Whilst you do see a fair number of Sennheiser mics being carried around onstage, the vast majority of artists (at least this year, 2024) were using wireless Shure handhelds, in particular the Beta 58.
Who was using them? This lot:
- Dua Lipa
- SZA
- Olivio Rodrigo
- Billie Eilish
- Luke Combs
Another good list! Live shows like this require hundreds of channels of wireless frequencies, so it’s interesting to note what’s getting used, since those choices are more likely to be reliable in the heat of battle, as it were.
A Mic Fit For a King
I also believe that a cool looking mic will bring forth a better, more charismatic performance: it’s almost as if the singer rises to the occasion. Elvis ‘The King’ Presley was about as charismatic as it got, and he took care of business with his favourite Shure SH-55 microphone.
That in itself should be enough info for you to want one (one of the world’s greatest recorded voices? He’s definitely up there), but I do have an anecdote for you.
The studio that Elvis recorded in (RCA B) is only rarely used these days - it’s more of a living museum - but country star Amanda Shires did some work there with her then-husband Jason Isbell. The studio had a strange hum that wouldn’t go away, no matter what they did. I’ll let Jason take up the story:
“Yeah, the power was weird, so no matter what I did, I was getting a hum, a cycle hum. And I tried power conditioners, brown boxes and even a Kemper, and I was still getting a hum. Eventually I figured out, the only thing that worked in there was the Gretsch. And so that was probably why Chet Atkins loved playing Gretsch guitars so much, because the FIltertron pickups don’t pick up that hum.”
From that, I’d surmise that the Shure 55 is also excellent at working around studio hum issues. Unless there’s a studio ghost.
The Humble SM58
Of all of the mics that Shure put out into the world, none are as ubiquitous as the SM58. It’s the one we’ve all seen and used, and sometimes it feels like we can take it a little for granted.
The SM58 - and since its release, the upgraded Beta 58 - are of course live favourites, but did you know that some world-class singers use them in the studio too?
U2’s mainman Bono actually won’t touch anything else: from the early days when Steve Lillywhite produced them to their latter-period dalliances with Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Jacknife Lee, the man known to his dad as Paul Hewson will only use a 58 for his vocals.
It’s fair to say that the mic will be going into some serious processing - as would all microphones in a pro studio context - but when you consider what a technically powerful vocalist Bono is, his mic choice is quite a notable fact.
Interesting fact: the ‘SM’ in SM58 actually stands for ‘studio microphone’, so there you go!
Who Uses a Shure Mic?
Which artists use Shure mics? Come ooooon, almost ALL of them! The brand is ubiquitous for a very good reason, and they’ve stayed at the top of the mic game because almost all pro semi-pro and amateur musicians trust them. Whether at home recording, on a small stage or playing in an enormodome with a wireless unit, more performers and recording artists use Shure than any other mic brand. A list, therefore, would be shockingly long!
Hopefully the facts and anecdotes shared here today will give you an understanding as to who is using Shure mics, and for which reasons. There are no rules out there, so experiment and see what happens with your Shure!
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