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This can be one of two things. They have a naturally high voice or it is "earned" range, meaning they worked on and developed their voice (over time) to be able to consistently sing in this key. As Draven suggested, send a sample for someone to listen to you. They can easily assess whether or not you are at a place in your vocal development where you can do a song like this. You have to be realistic in terms of your current capability. These notes may or may not be available in your voice...yet. Also, try to find truly LIVE performances of them, what I call reduce the singers to lowest terms. I know Nissy (from quick research) had been singing many years and they are older than they appear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTmwXJx_Ag8

Jon, to really do a song right, you have to get a sheet of lyrics and pick each word apart and see the vowel(s) in each word like I had shown in "Ready for love." You sing on the vowels, because vowels enable breath flow, where consonants inhibit breath flow and or close down the throat. The notes you admire are tuned vowels ...... The vowel changes with the pitch. The higher the notes, the more you have to be concerned with vowel choices. Pronunciation and intelligibility erodes as you sing higher...

"Singing lighter is about shedding vocal cord weight and reducing sound volume." M, You do not have to reduce sound volume. You do not have to lighten up anything. You can keep a constant flow of air and intensity, regardless of volume. This shedding weight is accomplished by the vowel...(the throat shape). The vowel choice you design for yourself (no one else) is the thing that let's you up. Do you really want to be training or singing and having to say to yourself "I'm going up high, time to cut back my voice?" What does lowering volume accomplish? All you end up doing is underpowering and loosing connection. Whether you begin light or heavy you need to still play the instrument. The voice has to get requistite breath energy at any volume.

Why not purchase a voice evaluation? It's inexpensive and will help you.

Dan would be a good one to ask for Stevie Wonder. I skyped him. As far as technique goes, he is using mask (more forward placement) with a little touch of nasality....NOT singing nasal...but a higher placement with a higher (but not high) larygeal positioning. He's also splitting his resonance at times and employing twang for bite and cut. Notice how he never lets the sound go back or drop down into the throat. The "ng" exercise is what helps you find the spot to place your voice for this kind of singing. Then you still need to see how you can sound when you get this placement, because if you get too nasal, it deteriorates.

Now listen carefully to this. It a $5,000 mic (or more, I'm guessing), he's a breathy falsetto and very light head voice. Listen to his speaking voice.

His voice sounds like the chest voice while my voice sounds like head voice Oh? Does it? What do YOU think you need to fix?

Bottom line: Yes, everybody's different. Nothing is cut and dry. An "h" does the opposite for me...the "h" softens (for lack of a better word) a hard attack (onset). A "sh" can help too. You have to stay very open minded, because again, you're not that singer. A voice teacher's job (seems like you're moving in that direction) is to bring out the best in each individual singer. You may hear light mass or heavy mass phonation, doesn't mean it actually is. Just like perceived volume and loudness.... So much has to be figured out by the singer by extensive trial and error.

Tristan, the reason why the moan or cry makes the transition smoother is because it facillitates consistent adduction. But it can easliy be done incorrectly and lock up the voice or throw things way off balance. Also, Humming is not just in Neutral in the first example, but curbing as well. Modes change.... sometimes within a little as a syllable. Some singers are natural curbers. Rob, Awesome larynx video.

Twang's benefit is analygous to taking a water hose and kinking the hose to produce additional pressure by lessening the opening. In effect, you've increased the water pressure with no additional corresponding increase in water flow. As far as her singing, you really cannot tell how much vocal fold mass is engaged simply because you're not her. You can guess, but when you really get down to it, you cannot tell for sure. Tristan, going by strict CVT terms curbing is singing with vowels/throat shapes which produce a restrained or covered sound. It's not typically a loud volume mode. "EH" is not a curbing vowel.

One thing that would help is to hear you so we can get an idea of what you sound like.

Not being a wise guy, just trying to help out..... Do you understand what it means? Do you understand why you need to do it? This is a helpful video and exercise, but you should have a nice strong middle development work going on as well, because this serves like a launch pad to those higher pitches. Be sure to keep it bratty and don't sing too loudly. This helped me very much because as you can tell he's not backing off and yet not going overboard. Don't forget to warm up a bit before you go near this kind of stuff. Also, the nay exercise is a good one. The teachers will likely add more.

Kill the negative thinking......it will get you every time. The mind......it is the voice!!!