I recorded a snippet of audio from YouTube of a Chinese song to show a friend that karaoke tracks can be done easily. I have no clue of the artist other than being told they are "incredibly famous" and the recordings done in HK. Anyway... long story short, I got a strange surprise, as I was expecting much more work; but the song is mixed "normally" yet the lead vocal is panned hard right (with a small amount of bleed toward center). I simply inserted R-Mix and wiped the vocal without affecting the song one iota. Traditional stereo spread to the song, just the lead vocal panned hard right.
 
The experience left me scratching my head though... is there a reason for doing such a thing? I was speculating this may have been a mixing flub that made it into the master, but one never knows without asking...

I think many here will agree it is not such a good thing to do. I always think what would happen if they were playing a mix of mine in a cafe/restaurant and they had two speakers spread apart and one was not working.  What would you hear then.  In this case not much from the vocals if the vocal side was not working!

On the flip side of course...it's an artistic decision.  A famous example being Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles which had McCartney's voice hard panned...although I'm not sure about the latest remasters.  I suppose it's all a matter of taste and there are no rules.
 
Ben

Sorry about not providing this earlier... I had to ask the name again to find that video, lol. The song is by Wong Fei (Faye Wong) called "Ren Jian" and was the "MTV video" recorded in 1997 (http://youtu.be/UGhIjKHVE1c).
 
@Jeff, in hindsight I really wish I had thought of your explanation when I was discussing this! I got way too technical trying to explain why this is not preferred, so think I missed making the point.

In my opinion...in short ... "NO".... however......
 
The entire Beatles remastered box set is that way..... vox on one side hard panned, music on the other side also hard panned.... quite the unpleasant surprise and listening experience on headphones. It only sounds good on something that has it's R & L speaker close together.   On the Beatles remaster, I heard that it was a mistake that the vox were left panned hard, and got sent to the reproduction stage before the mistake was caught. They decided to leave it that way for financial reasons,,,,, hoping people would think it was "artistic expression".....
 
Aside from Karaoke tracks..... nope...I would not do that intentionally.....the other reason, as Ben said would be for "artistic expression" generally that would be a very limited segment of the song and not throughout the song.

Queen did this often with Freddie's vox on certain sections.
 
i'd say that was the way to do it, if they did it.
 
again, it's judgement call time.
 

Could it have been done intentionally so it could be also used as a backing track (i.e. discard the right channel)?

I have a lot of fun listening (studying) to mixes from the late 60's / early 70s after mono went to stereo: Paul Revere, Moody Blues, John Sebastian, Elton John...whole drum kits hard panned left with vocals right...all kinds of stuff :) Neil Young even has a track (or more?) with the just the snare hardpanned left, guitar right (Don't Let it Bring you Down). For example, Elton John shows a progression of mixing techniques through Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across the Water. I think it's a cool piece of history.
 
But you know those mixes work! Isn't what a great deal of what's being listened on these days just mono anyway?
 
 

Great thread: imho, to brainstorm slightly:
 
... for personal or artistic purposes or 'getting out of the box' (as most of you hinted)
... 'Get the vox out of the central clutter for clarity-separation
... for drama or attention
... with a balanced 'force' on the opposite channel
... with choir vocs, counter vocs, etc. on the opposite channel
... with dialogue vocs, duets, or multi-vocs, etc.
... Methinks it OK in the car where panning gets jumbled with ambient traffic rumbles (to my ears), if the car becomes my target listening environment.
... with some mixes that are beatz or snare dominant; perhaps vocals could be hard panned for some of these and sound great in some environments  ... with 'L-C-R' schemed mixing.
... I suppose the Beatles and other psychedelia singers really didn't mind hard-panning when their music and vocals wanted 'separation'.  The listener could listen to the words more directly (I think).

Although I won't speculate on hard panning lead vocals today, it used to be standard procedure back in the 60s when producers were trying to figure out how to use "stereo."   And most desks didn't have pan - if you were lucky you had a center to go along w/ left and right.  Also, the troops were lucky to have 4 tracks, and as every aspiring engineer/producer knows Sgt. Peppers was done on 4 tracks (actually, several of 'em, doing live bounces).  If you have the old pre-remixed albums of mid-60s songs you can hear vocals on one side, leads on the other side, drums and bass opposite and all kinds of spatial tomfoolery.  They weren't trying to be cool - well maybe some - but understand what works well.  And also keep it mono compatible, since nobody I knew had "stereo" in their car since there was no stereo AM radio.  And that is where most of the music we heard came from.  Even most living room systems didn't have stereo or much of it, since we had big old consoles with the speakers built-in either side of the turntable.  Maybe two foot apart.  Perspective didn't get sorted out until the 70s really.  I remember being blown away by the Jimmy Page's sounds whizzing around in "Whole lotta love" - by that time I had stereo speakers mounted on the ceiling of my pick-up cab (note - I didn't wear a helmet either, although I bashed my head more than once - dangerous days and maybe explains a lot now ;-) ).
 
Think of the arguments that linger today whether the drum should be from the drummer's perspective or the audience?  Stage left is to the right.  Etc. etc.
 
I do guitars hard panned these days, and some dynamic pans in honor of Mr. Page and all things psychedelic. But lead vocal - not yet.  I might try it on a project I'm starting w/ music and VO storytelling.  The only other reason for that would be to do a karaoke version, and it would be better to send separate files rather than let some yokel do his own.
 
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