When Men Were Men (and women were women)

Read a fascinating article by Barb Jungr in The Singer magazine this week about changes in popular singing. Specifically, she points out that "adult" voices have gone out the window in the last decade and we now have pop stars that sound like infants. She also highlights the replacement of authentic communication through song with "vocal gymnastics" and simulated, disconnected (though often heightened) emotion. If this sounds dull don't read on, but if you're a geek like me- here are some extracts:
"Song structures designed in studios and not on the pianos of Tin Pan Alley did not have the breadth of harmonic and melodic architecture that 'confined' singers to delivering the song. These new structures abandoned the rigidity of traditional melodic and harmonic shapes. The singer, thus 'liberated' is confined to gyrating around the repetitive patterns of the musical frame, making their mark through elaborate ornamentation."
"Quivering vibrato, curlicued melisma, notes held past the vanishing point: the favourite tricks of American Idol contestants are often like screams divorced from the pain or ecstasy that inspired them.
"The separation of 'authentic' emotion from its performed facsimile links these ubiquitos phenomena in contemporary singing- the breathy child and the gymnastic vocaliser."
"Ben Brantley argued that the influence of American Idol had infiltrated musical theatre voice production...'Good, well-trained voices that can carry a tune and turn up the volume come cheap. What does not is the voice that identifies a character as specifically and individually as hand-writing.' And herein lies the problem. It doesn't come cheap to invest in talent, to allow it to mature, to support its development and cherish its blossoming. We 'find'our voices over time, experience and understanding..."
"The auto-tuner effectively flattens out the vocal to the exact tonal pitch required, removing all idiosyncrasies which make the voice special... Factor in a society where people in their mid-twenties live at home..., a culture of fast-fix where it seems what is best required for commercial success is to be the most like something already on the market. Add to that a reluctance to engage in what is real, but to emulate ...a soundalike emotion, and what you get is a wall-to-wall carpet of similarity of either tone or vocal styling and increasing youthfulness...of sexlessness or of simulated sexuality."
"Fame must be achieved at all costs, and one very easy route...is pop stardom, because anyone can sound like today's singers. And anyway, everything can be fixed in the studio (or the operating table) and it doesn't require any actual ability or need to communicate. And...we...they...are cheated of something. And only time will tell what the price of that will be."