I find it a little weird when white women demonstrate that they have managed to uncannily imitate a singing style developed by black women. At least the “waif” thing is more authentically “white girl”…
The one that drives me absolutely nuts is the Ohio.org commercial. I believe its Cat Edmondson that sings it. Pomplamoose is the other band (i use that term loosely) that absolutely makes me want to vomit.
I really hate the waif and hipster movements.
Fuck, maybe I am just old.
Ah yes, this commercial is definitely a good example of the genre. I find it pleasant.
Oh yeah, spot on. I remember when Sinead O’Connor first came out with Mandinka. Man I loved that song and how she put a hitch in her voice in an Irish-y way in key phrases.
But the song hit, and for a few years that hitch became a featured effect, like the pennywhistle from Titanic. Hearing the difference in delivery from Sinead - she’s a whackjob of the highest order, but is a sincere whackjob with a brilliant voice - vs. folks just doing it as an effect was hard for a while. (note: I thought Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries used this vocal effect well, too).
Have I ever got a song for you.
Funny, that’s not normally her style.
I dunno. Styles come from everywhere and should be available to anyone. I would never question Bonnie Raitt’s commitment to the Blues, or Wynton Marsalis’ winning Grammys for his work in Classical Music* as well as Jazz.
*hey, that’s “white people” music!! nice to see that a guy like Marsalis can “uncannily imitate” it! 
Now: do people of all races try to master a vocal style and can’t yet inhabit it, so it sounds inauthentic? Yes. The point to this thread is that folks like Mariah have the chops, but don’t know now to inhabit a vocal and get inside the lyric vs. treating the song like an Olympics Floor Exercise tumbling run of vocals…
I agree. It all comes down to taste, who is “real” and who isn’t basically. A style isn’t unreal. It’s individuals. There are a lot of ways to be an “asshole” singer. Hence the popularity of this thread. The waify style though sounds emotionally manipulative, and isn’t aspiring to copy an older great style. It’s decadent.
Amy Winehouse is flat out genius. She was just a kid and sometimes really chewed the hell out of a syllable, but it was real, as demonstrated by strong original material. Adele, I see as a bandwagon jumper, and a mainstream compromise/accommodation.
The only bone to pick with you Word is that Wynton is no less culturally attached to classical music than any white american, by being black. Both he and Miles Davis went to Juilliard, studied it all with the rest, and later Miles had not much Jazz at all in his record collection. It’s not an analogue to blues or soul, at least to me. Wasn’t Beethoven 1/16 black?
I was merely trying to go for a silly shock extreme - questioning Wynton’s badassness is so silly that I was hoping it made my point.
I agree with your follow up. And yeah, Amy Winehouse could sing the fuck out of a song. I like Adele, but she only has a few settings on her dial that she does really well. Amy had finesse.
Her phrasing was so effortless. That’s what you hear in that first clip of her singing Happy Birthday at age 14 (?). That’s Michael Jackson singing Who’s Lovin’ You good.
Her example, like Aretha, Mavis Staples, like Whitney at her best - they should stand out as examples of how to correctly approach this otherwise-hyper-annoying singing style.
I am not a musician, just a fan of music, but it somehow seems different to me to sing like someone of a different race as opposed to playing an instrument in a style from outside your ethno-cultural background, whether that’s a white guy playing jazz or a black guy playing classical.
Note that even the rare white rapper does not sound exactly like a black guy.
My belief after a couple of years of wanting to claw out my eardrums with my own fingernails whenever I hear this lazy, irritating, talentless tripe is that the Nora Jones style has somehow combined with the worst of what the alternative rock world had to offer in the 2000’s and has morphed into this incredibly annoying sound. As much as I like some of Nora Jones’ older stuff, I am certain that she’s at least partially to blame for this sad state of affairs.
Jeez, whatever you do, do NOT tell that to Elvis Presley, okay?
Have only just found this thread. I’ve been banging on for years about breathy singing - and trebly production settings which exacerbate it. In my youth I was a church chorister and my choirmaster said that people want to hear the voice, not the breathing. In the choir we had to breathe out of sync with each other - and you needed to take a good breath in order to SING and project your voice, not vocalise with a mic shoved down your tonsils.
The accentuated treble setting in production seems to have come in with Cliff Richard’s saccharine Christmas offerings, and has been universally taken up.
Matt Bellamy of Muse uses the inward breath presumably to impart emotion - at his worst I find him unlistenable-to, not quite drowned out by the sound of my choirmaster whirling in his grave.
…or maybe it is my grumpy old man hearing that is affecting the sound equalisation, but I think not. Listen to some singers of the past - Sandy Denny springs to mind from the female side - who could do range and emotion without puffing and panting! Freddy Mercury was another Can Belto. I guess its just poor, lazy technique with technology affecting the sound even further.
After lighting the blue touch paper, I’ll retire hastily!
keiths, welcome to the SDMB. I have only heard the Britishism “lighting the blue touch paper” because David Hare entitled his memoir with it, and explained it meant lighting the fuse.
No fuse lit here. I am a journeyman guitar player and music geek; my vocal experience is selling songs to drunk dancing crowds with much enthusiasm.
Isn’t your observation about a breathy voice a byproduct of recording? Like the difference between acting on stage for the back seats vs. acting close-up for film? I doubt anyone would’ve cared about Mariah Carey’s near breathless head voice super-high notes if it wasn’t mic’d to give it enough body to sound credible.
I prefer vocalists that have a foundation of technique, but their own thing, too, so we aren’t merely dazzled in an operatic sorta way. Someone like Bonnie Raitt stuns me - Broadway schooled (her father was a star), authentically blues - she’s earned her voice. She is the only person I have heard hold the stage with Aretha Franklin, do her own thing and pull it off. That made me listen harder.
This thread continually makes me grin, especially the number of new folks who come across it because the singing style is driving them fucking bonkers. It really is an affectation infestation.
And yet I have to admit something. Despite my dislike of the style, there’s a song by a singer who I think falls close to the line… Bulimic Beats, sung by Cerys Matthews from the Welsh group Catatonia. This came out in 1999.
I’m not sure it’s the same affectation, or even affectation at all. She is certainly waify, but that sense of helplessness/inability to be seen is kind of the point of the song. (It’s about a woman who feels invisible due to her partner’s negligence, and falls to eating/purging for consolation and/or self-destruction. Matthews had/has an eating disorder herself, so it’s at least partly autobiographical.)
Regardless of her voice, I think the song is fucking gorgeous, especially the orchestral sweep at the end.
Just curious what others think. Does she fall into the category, or is it a legit use of style to get a meaning across?
I like a lot of the waify stuff, but I’ll take a stab at it. This singer sounds like those others at some moments, but not others; and overall, the style of the song doesn’t fit IMO.
That view of “authenticity” is what kept blacks from singing Opera, and why Marian Anderson, the amazing African-American singer, sang at the Lincoln Memorial (she had been barred from the Met so her supportors arranged for that performance).
Good singing knows no color. Hyper-annoying singning knows no color.
heh try a cover of bizarre love triangle by frente for an example of this style although don’t personally hate it as long as it dosent sound like that "if I only had a brain commercial "
This is a perspective/positive post, about the Blake Babies.
It was Julianna Hatfields band and I saw them a lot. To me she was the origin of all the waify sounds we hear, as far as it went through the rock and alt scenes. These records go back to 1988 and I would like to know if anyone can cite earlier examples of this sound to correct me.
Of course she was a great songwriter and rocked like crazy. She isn’t responsible for the aftermath. The whole oeuvre is worth checking out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rokFhSymbQM&list=PL5QmUeEgD_TaWR6L2Nl4ig-ffnV3fcVpI&index=8
[quote=“drad_dog, post:221, topic:677704”]
This is a perspective/positive post, about the Blake Babies.
It was Julianna Hatfields band and I saw them a lot. To me she was the origin of all the waify sounds we hear, as far as it went through the rock and alt scenes. These records go back to 1988 and I would like to know if anyone can cite earlier examples of this sound to correct me.
Of course she was a great songwriter and rocked like crazy. She isn’t responsible for the aftermath. The whole oeuvre is worth checking out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rokFhSymbQM&list=PL5QmUeEgD_TaWR6L2Nl4ig-ffnV3fcVpI&index=8 [/QUOTE]I was only familiar with Hatfield from her song “My Sister”, though I have heard of The Blake Babies. Those songs you linked sound pretty cool, but I don’t think they sound waif-y.
And I still think my 1950s cite of Blossom Dearie is the earliest yet put forward.