The Rugby world cup is currently taking place in England and the channel ITV are showing most of the games. Which is a shame because this is the fucking travesty that they are using as the intro/outro music before the show and around the ad breaks.
Paloma Faith absolutely butchering “World in Union”, every time I hear a clip it makes me want to rip my ears off and bolt some sound deadening pads in their place. Nasally waify bullshit that takes a great song and makes it unlistenable, who the hell thought that was a good idea. :mad:
Maybe it is that I grew up listening to Shoegazing, but I seem to have always liked this sort of stuff. Slowdive, for example, employ it for both their male and female singers. Take this track from 1991 or from a completely male take, this one from 1994.
I’d take it over the vocal masturbation of the types you get on TV “talent” shows any day of the week.
THAT’S who I was thinking of. I was trying to find some School House Rock videos that she did to demonstrate it was much older than the 90s but I was having no luck.
I do have to admit a cheesy affection for Donna Lewis, who did the same style.
Whoa, that is a pop song I had long forgotten existed but now recall that it was indeed a guilty pleasure of mine as well.
Glad to hear someone agrees about Blossom Dearie! It’s fun, kind of like researching the origin of slang words, to feel like you’ve found the earliest cite.
Without speaking for the OP, my sense of the music s/he posted is that the style involves spare instrumentation and a kind of meandering, almost halting, vocal style. Shoegazer is very flowing and far from spare.
Oh yes, this. A thousand times this. She seems a lovely young lady but I fear I might happily kill her with fire.
It is a modern pestilence that needs stamping out. There is no song that is actually improved by covering it in this fashion. Jose Gonzalez dig a decent job with a waify-style cover of “heartbeat” but the original was far better.
But possibly the worst example, and I hesitate to inflict this on you all, is this fucking travesty.
Paul Weller created one of the greatest songs of misery, despair, hopelessness and urban decay. Possibly the most sarcastic title of any song ever and it gets turned in a helpless, gutless little ditty to sell a Renault. I get the feeling that when that came out and Weller saw it, he spent some considerable time just staring into space, clenching and unclenching his fists with his eyes twitching occasionally. I know I did.
Great article, amanset–thanks. Interesting to me that those examples seem more “pop” than “indie” to me, whereas most of those offered earlier in this thread are more toward the other end of the spectrum. Wouldn’t be the first time a trend has worked its way in that direction.
I sympathize but it’s not like affected singing styles is something new to the world of pop. The first trend to get on my nerves (about 45 years ago if you’re curious) was the ersatz-countrified pronunciations by rock and pop artists. Sexxeh for sexy, singin’ for singing, sugaah for sugar,
that sort of thing.
Yet another person who found this thread by Googling. In my case I used “annoying little girl voice.” Bingo.
Thank God I am not alone in despising this hellborn affected style. I draw strength and consolation from my fellow haters.
I have no clever rationale to explain its popularity. I can only share more examples.
First, a song I thought I liked. The Cowboy Junkies cover of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane.
My excuse for liking it is that it was years ago and I'd never heard the style before. The CJ's were virtually alone at the time in using it.
Then about a year ago I watched an iPhone ad entitled Parenthood. The combination of cloying video and a little girl voice singing in the background nauseated me. My first thought was that Steve Jobs was going to rise from his grave and rip off the head of Tim Cook.
And finally, at the start of this Christmas season Dick's Sporting Goods started running an ad featuring a cover of the Beatles From Me to You.
The second and third links are perfectly serviceable examples of the style (although I don’t hate them since I am one of the only dissenters on this thread). I am at a loss to understand, however, where you are getting the idea that the Cowboy Junkies cover fits.
