Haha Phil I knew you would say that. I'm working on different cover where I sing it more with the narrow tall vowels I didn't do it perfectly but it would be a better representation of how Im working that in more. I threw that goal out for this song because I couldn't get it to sound right with a narrow approach. It got too mumbly to my ears.

Spreading is just my way of getting a brighter sound but I notice watching a lot of bright sounding singers don't spread when they go bright - whet creates their brightness then, a high larynx?

And I don't mean just adding bright ping I mean making the entire sound brighter and more smiley - to do so without smiling is a mystery to me, but I have seen other singers do it

Phil Moufarrege said

People have different ways to learn it. But I learned it first by smiling and building the pharyngeal brightness. The reason is when you narrow the vowel you don't want the vowel to become unclear and muffled. So bright sounds can help to build that up before you move into that direction.

Are both qualities built in layers though? By that I mean wouldn't you want to alternate between training more brightly/spread and more deep/narrow every now and then to rebalance the voice?

The whole narrowing thing I've been going easy on because both artistically and technically it can either be a blessing or curse depending on how much I use it and when - in a way, I feel there are some phrases I'm just not trained enough to apply it to yet, without taking it down the wrong road and engaging too much chest and singing flat, or losing the brightness completely and sounding dull and artificial.