Oh, you know what I mean. Personality. Heart. Charm. Balls. You know. Ian Dury. John Darnielle. Lou Reed. Mark Mothersbaugh. Hell, I hear even Britney Spears has her niche. Poly Styrene! Listen, arguably every punk singer sounds like a leaf blower. Capital-S Singers are not always the most emotive, interesting, pleasant or* best* to listen to for me personality, that’s all I’m saying.
Heh. I need to go and ally myself with these people. E-friends! It’s okay! I’m coming!
BRITNEY SPEARS?
By this rationale, almost anyone who’s cute and loud can sing then. I think I’ve gotten a lot pickier about music since I stopped listening to Q104 and started listening to more obscure/earlier artists.
Aha! So obscurity is a talent!
I knew it.
I was making the point that singers are not necessarily Singers, so yes, Britney Spears. And the horse she rode in on, no sniggering at the back.
I’m behind that, but I would scratch the “cute”.
I like you 
I like you too. 
Okay;
Neil Young
Willie Nelson
Kurt Cobain
Bob Dylan
Johnny Cash
Not a pretty voice among them. Every one a wonderful singer. There are lots more.
Wonderful dancers? The mysterious, and goofy, woman in that video.
I was just thinking about how awful Kurt Cobain’s voice was the other day.
Nope. Cash’s voice is, well, my god, it is sexy. I have a customer out in southern Missourah somewhere who sounds a lot like Johnny Cash. I don’t have tons of customer interaction in my job, but when I do, I typically send e-mails because having things in writing = key. Except this one customer. I call him because his voice is… magical.
I love Johnny Cash. I have pretty much all of his stuff. He had what I consider the best show of it’s kind on tv ever. And he was by all accounts, a good guy.
But his voice, outside of his limited range, I dunno. I’ll buy “magical”. 
Okay, I didn’t mean obscure. It’s just that I used to think of great rock as all that stuff in the late sixties and seventies on classic rock station, and when I discovered the roots of rock, I guess I couldn’t help seeing some of the guys I thought were so awesome like Mick Jagger and Roger Daltrey as a bunch of silly caterwauling white dudes. Sorry, Mick, the fifteen year old inside me still gets a little wet for you but otherwise…no dice.
As for dancing–to give an example of something I do like by my own criteria (do I want to see you, am I drawn to you, do I want to see more), here’s a guy whose moves I like:
Okay, the choreography? Not super inspired, not all that innovative. But I like the way he moves and it feels natural to me. And no, I’m not a hipster so let’s leave out all the “I love bad stuff because it’s ironic.”
Okay, other than this mini-hijack, I shall hijack this thread no further. No, he doesn’t have the best singing voice in the world, but his voice-voice is pure magic and he sings his songs well, which pleases my ear. Even if he doesn’t have a Technically Nice Singing Voice, the combination of his natural speaking voice being the cat’s pajamas, and the way he sings his songs makes me happy.
Except when I’m at work. When I used to be able to keep my headphones on at the job (because I worked an all reports, no interaction with others position), I would frequently listen to Stevie Wonder, Sinatra, Duran Duran (don’t make fun of me!), until one day I put on Cash’s Folsom Prison album. Do NOT do this when you’re at a place that you hate, makes you feel trapped, and adds great misery to your life. Just don’t.
We agree. Hijack over.
Sorry, wolf-alice et al.
So you like a dance number from a 50 year old Broadway musical? I don’t think that’s surprising.
I am not trying to be condescending, but comparing what the girl in the video linked by the OP was doing to the Elvis-like gyrations of Conrad Birdie misses the mark by a wide margin.
It’s sort of like saying this isn’t as good as this becuase the latter looks more like a real guitar. Don’t get me wrong, this girl probably won’t be teaching at Alvin Ailey any time soon, but she’s moving exactly as she intended to.
I wasn’t comparing the two. I was saying that the one I posted may not have been great or original but that the guy there does know how to dance and on the most basic level (outside of deep criticism or anything like that), satisfies what I think of as a good dancer–someone whom I want to see, who I’d like to see more of.
She may have been moving as she intended to, but that doesn’t make it good, IMHO.
Another example of what I think of as great dancing was Michael Jackson’s Motown 83 performance. This performance I would actually consider great (hey, even Fred freaking Astaire said so), and again, it’s something that draws the eye, that makes me sit up and take notice. Again, that girl in the OP may have been dancing as she intended but it comes off as jerky and awkward. If you’re trying to be jerky and awkward, great, but I guess part of what I like is someone who can be smooth, who makes the dancing look as natural as breathing.
And that’s all well and good, but the OP doesn’t ask whether we like the dance being performed only whether the dancer was “good.” I am saying that folks are either: 1. answering a question that wasn’t asked; or 2. using poor criteria to answer the question asked.
She looks like a fairly typical goth-rocker chick. Perfectly fine on a club dance floor, but i wouldn’t spend a lot of time watching her.
…or
The OP asked whether we thought the woman in the video was a good dancer.
Apparently, the only acceptable answer to this question is to say “yes”, because any detailed description of why we think she’s a poor dancer are defeated by simply implying we’re all old-fashioned.
That’s fair enough. My own criteria was whether I was drawn to them. I don’t have any real knowledge of dance, so I’m probably not the best judge.
But Mjin gave pretty good criteria, and has a dance background.
So far it seems like anyone you don’t agree with isn’t giving proper criteria.
I disagree with your last phrase - one of the things that’s lacking in her dancing is a sense of intention.
She’s hesitant on some steps, but I have no idea if that’s on purpose or not because she doesn’t dance well enough to convey that. At times, she seems to possibly be trying to do something with syncopation, maybe, but I can’t tell, because she’s not intentional about it. She’s carrying tension oddly. Is that accidental tension? tension because she knows she doesn’t know what she’s doing? tension because she’s got upper back pain? or is that in the choreography? I don’t know - I can’t tell, what I do know and can tell is that she’s not pulling it off well.
She also has no musicality.
Yeah, I’m a bit of an old fogey and I do watch “‘Dancing’ with the ‘Stars’” but that doesn’t make her a good dancer. I’m sticking with my original opinion, not good, not horrifically bad, and if I saw her in a club, I’d think “drunker than she thinks she is.”
You’re doing a remarkably good job of it, though.
*So not only are you so much hipper than the rest of us, you can also read people’s minds over YouTube. It’s amazing what you crazy kids can do these days.