MeanOldLady must have single-handedly recruited a dozen new Dopers with this thread alone by now.
Ugh. Yes.
I don’t mind certain vocal characteristics like breathiness or vocal fry as long as it’s used sparingly, that’s been going on forever. However, these FAKE ASS affections to accent are embarrassingly annoying. NO ONE talks like that. YOU don’t talk like that. STOP IT!
At the same time, A LOT of singers talk using a different accent than the one they sing with.
Yeah, but with one that no one on planet earth uses? I’m not endorsing somebody putting on a fake twang when they’re singing a country song, but at least some people talk like that.
I think the earliest precursor or even model of this style (although I doubt current practitioners they are aware of it) was given here as 1999. And on a bit of music theory someone mention Crosby, Stills, and Nash…oh, so close!
For, as I hereby declare, it was Neil Young who trademarked this style, which when he was doing it was all the more radical (and flesh-crawling to me) considering the rock-and-roll scene at the time. 1990 Deja Vu (Helpless - YouTube), although a symphony compared to OP examples, was very off-putting, especially in light of rest of that great album. Helpless" was plain weird to me (). Check Old Man. Obviously he’s light years ahead of those guys, And is brilliant as a song writer for others.
I guess I’ll never forgive him for inspiring the interminable and unavoidable Horse with No Name two years later, with the same thready pleads weak voice.
Sorry for screwups in English and cites above…juggling youtube and typing on iPhone.
And the brits who sing american and the americans who sing brit. We love them. They are good.
For the record, I happen to be in love with Regina Spektor and her voice enchants me.
So I refer to this style of singing as “Trying to sound like Regina Spektor.” To be honest, I usually find it pleasant. I enjoyed all of the OP’s links. 
I just stumbled upon a Wiki cite telling me linguistics people discuss “sociolects,” one of which, it is posited, is exactly related to the “waif” pose of speaking/singing cited here by so many. See the short Sexy baby voicearticle, complete with audio sample and typical modern university academic debate on gender roles, etc. etc.
I was watching Moneyball and when Billy (Brad Pitt) buys his daughter a guitar, he adds to the musical delinquency of a minor when he encourages her to sing, because yeah, she’s got That Voice. Here’s the clip (she starts actually singing at about :53 in there, but even when she’s humming you just know).
In fairness to Kerris Dorsey (who played the daughter), the song she’s singing is “The Show,” by Lenka (2009), an Autralian singer who’s so annoyingly babygirl and shy and yet has this folky twang and worn voice of at least a 15-year-old. (That’s me being sarcastic.)
I’m astonished doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in the thread–a search for “lenka” gave me nothin’–mainly because I thought the song was better known. But anyway… yeah, that’s my contribution this year. We must all pay biannual homage to The Thread.
Yeah, I don’t consider Lorde quite in the same category. I know she got mentioned earlier in this thread, as well. Lorde has a good bit of that indie quirk to her voice, but it’s not waify, and somehow doesn’t bug me like it does with other singers. I just bought her 2017 album Melodrama a few days ago and, man, while she can bend vowels and add vocal fry a bit, the way she does it just works for me and conveys a sense of youth, anger, humor, etc. depending on the context. There’s more emotion and power behind that voice than what I think of as “indie waif” voice.
That’s the same video port linked to back in March.
“Breathy baby,” is very apt. So is “Starbucks Music,” “I’m Just a Girl,” and “Waify”!
I call it “Cotton-Mouth-Baby-Voice.” I believe it started with Norah Jones, and Feist, as someone pointed out, above.
Sarah McLachlan isn’t guilty of this, surely??
Are my posts invisible or something? I have repeatedly cited Blossom Dearie from much, much earlier: the 1950s.
I would say no.
I agree on all counts. Spektor’s “My Dear Acquaintance (Happy New Year)” is fresh in my mind because to me it is the best New Year’s song, bar none.
A couple items I came across that might be relevant to this thread and phenomenon:
(1) I think this Pilate cover of “Fairytale of New York” qualifies, at least in the line “…singing Galway Bay”:
I find this a charming variation, but MMV.
(2) One of my very favorite artists, Father John Misty (formerly J Tillman) seems to share the distaste expressed by the majority in this thread. These are lines from his song “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.”:
BTW, I didn’t realize until looking back over this thread that I had ever heard of Maggie Rogers before she appeared on SNL this fall.
There’s an artist out right now named Billie Eilish who has decided to sing like she’s a widdle widdle giwl. Which is unfortunate, because the songs that I’ve heard are seem to be good (and her voice is actually not bad), except for that affectation - which is nails on a chalkboard.
Dude, most of her more well-known songs were recorded when she was 15. She’s now 17. She is a girl.
I absolutely love Regina Spektor. And have for over ten years now. A lot of these “hip singers” imitate her. Badly.
OMG, that’s the worst cover of a Pogues’ song I’ve ever heard. That was positively rancid.
[troll] But … the “hip singers” sound nothing like Tori Amos…[/troll]
That isn’t a reason.
I’ve been a 15-year-old girl. And a 17-year-old girl.
Hell, even when I was a 9-year-old girl, I didn’t speak in a baby voice. She’s imitating a toddler.