That did indeed cause mortal wounds.
BwanaBob writes:
> . . . Zooey Deschanel (the girl who sings in ELF) . . .
This is a strange way of putting it. Do you only know her from the movie Elf? She’s been in a lot of movies and TV shows and has sung a lot of songs (as part of She & Him, which you can find on YouTube). She’s also considered the ultimate model of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
I couldn’t get past seconds of this. Her voice is the worst thing that has ever happened.
The first woman singing…yeah, agreed. But it wasn’t really the style we are talking about in this thread. However, the second woman, starting nearly a couple minutes in, nails the style (and sounds much better to me).
I’m confused. That link is to the first woman singing (plain white, possibly light blue, top)–the one who seems to be trying to channel some of Bjork’s quirkiness without quite the strength of voice. The other one is the woman (with flowers on her shirt) who is singing in a more conventional style. Which one are you talking about? I assume it must be the quirky singer, but she is the first singer, unless I’m missing something.
OMG, you are my people! I absolutely cannot stand Cat Edmonsons’ singing and that eventually landed me here. I registered here soley because of this thread. As I read each entry, each one is different but describes this horrible singing style to a “T”.
We got another one! Welcome to the boards, Empire!
Yes, welcome!
Just out of curiosity, has anyone noticed if the newbies attracted by this thread continued to post in other topics?
Pulykamell, I will take another look when I am in a Wi-Fi zone.
That is beyond excruciating. Whoever decided that style is cute and sexy should be fed to starving baby elephants.*
*Obscure Fugs reference.
You are right. I guess somehow the first time I watched it, the video started a minute in or something and I didn’t catch it.
The one who is emulating Bjork is the one I would agree is most relevant to this thread. I don’t mind her singing, although I certainly understand that anyone who doesn’t like the style would particularly hate this rendition.
The woman with the flowers on her shirt is not singing in the style of this thread, although I wouldn’t call it conventional style singing either. She is the one I find it really painful to listen to.
I have to wonder: Do these women naturally have this voice (in which case it’s OK,) or are they deliberately trying to muster up a husky, throaty, annoying voice in the belief that it is endearing?
They are both offenses to human ears.
I don’t look at any other threads or topics, I’m too busy with life. I came here solely for this thread, which tells you how much I fucking HATE the subject of it.
My question now is, what can we do to end this horrible plague on music?
Oh God, that Phoenix University commercial! Die you smug, gargle-voiced, twee bitch. Anyone with microcephaly can go to college and sing insufferably, apparently. I joined this board in 2000 just so I can complain about the horrible singing in this commercial.
Well, “more conventional” in relation to the first singer. She at least is trying to hold notes and the such. She does have her own brand of quirk, though, but not of the wispy waify kind (as you note.)
I’m gonna go against the grain and say that there’s nothing wrong with waif-y singing, or whatever you wanna call it. Music is all about using your instruments (voice included) to produce a desired effect. Sometimes the best tool is a classically correct singing style, but sometimes the waif voice sounds better for the situation. I love Regina Spektor, Feist, and Daughter, but I also need my Janis Joplins and Aretha Franklins. Good songs are diverse in their styles.
Waify is an affected tone, usually reflecting an artistic deficiency. The first girl to sing waify probably had every reason to do it, but this many iterations down the rabbit hole, it’s awful.
A song that “needs” to be sung waify would be like a speech that “needs” to be done in baby talk. It doesn’t happen in nature anymore.
But I exempt anyone who has something to say from my definition. Regina Spektor can say something some times. Cocorosie is a true tasteless abomination. I want to grab them and shake the truth out of them that they’re really just infantile narcissists who are on this for the ride. I dislike them so much I have to listen to them. I just went through 4 songs of theirs. The one that has pipes uses them in the most pretentious way, and the other one is trolling like Donald Trump is basically.
I don’t always mind it…I mean, Bjork goes into manic pixie mode a lot, but I think it works great for her music, especially when she contrasts it with her more full voiced, yet still quirkily emotive, passages. And sometimes it can project an atmosphere of childish innocence or vulnerability or something of that nature. It can certainly work, and I do tend to like non-traditional types of voices (see, for example, Beth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. Hell, I even like a lot of pitchy twee stuff like Cub). But a lot of it just sounds so copycat and quirky-for-the-sake-of-being-quirky-and-cute to me, especially when it’s paired with a sparse acoustic guitar and toy instruments kind of background. It’s completely subjective, though. For some artists it conveys naiveté and sincerity to me, but for others it just sounds like a calculated affectation.
I’m with ya!
Pulykamell, isn’t much or most singing a “calculated affectation”? Take two very famous female singers whose styles are (were, in one case) on the far end of the spectrum from the “waif” style: Amy Winehouse and Adele. Aren’t their styles a calculated affectation, every bit as much as the waifs’? You can’t tell me they’d have sung anything like that if they had grown up in a cabin in the Yukon, cut off from all pop cultural influences. Or if they had lived in the 19th century or even early 20th.
I think it’s really just which affectations you do or don’t enjoy the sound of, simple as that. 
Yes, you can make that argument, of course. It’s just that some sound more “sincere” to me than others. It’s like an instrumentalist being able to “swing” or “rock” or not. There’s some that just sell it and make it sound perfectly natural and believable, and others that it feels like they’re trying too hard. In the end, it’s subjective, sure, but there’s just some performers where I “feel” it, and others I don’t.