After Apple used this kind of singer for several of their ads, I started referring to the style as iWaif.
I wonder if this was partly inspired by Sade (remember her?) - she made a career out of that flat breathy style. Here’s a characteristic example
This commercial makes me want to put a bullet in my brain.
No. I’m sorry, but Sade has nothing whatever to do with the subject of this thread. Tangent’s submission just below yours is an excellent example, though. Compare and contrast to see the difference.
The idea behind this “waif” style is that you picture someone being reticent, hesitant, quirky. Maybe she is even twirling her finger in her hair and kind of looking up and away from the crowd or something like that. She is partially “talk-singing” and will kind of trail off at times like she’s not sure of where she’s going. The sound is underproduced, minimalist, like she made the song up off the top of her head as she was sitting at the coffee shop. A confident, assertive singer and dancer like Sade, with a big backing band that delivers a lushly produced sound, is just not conjuring up that sort of image of all.
And I like both styles, FTR, although I like Sade more. I still listen to her all the time, so I didn’t have to “remember” her.
I’ll agree that Sade projects more confidence and the music is nothing like a lot of the “waif” examples. But I think they have a lot in common too - in both cases the singer projects the image of being basically a bored, distant, breathy fashion model (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
I’ve never before had reason to register for comments on the Straight Dope, but after a search this morning for “annoying wispy singing trend”, I found my people, first hit on Google.
I just quit my own band because of this, and of course so did everyone else immediately thereafter. My two female singers kept sinking down into the muck of “cute porn” in many of our songs, while I kept trying to pry Grace Slick out of them, so they could be heard over my acoustic guitar. We had some great covers, some nice music, which I tried to insist be stepped up in our own style, like with “volume?”
I failed so miserably I shot my own band in the head.
I’m going to call it “Wispy Waify Wastoid”. Does anyone remember the thrift store quality paintings of cartoonish depressed alley cats? “Awww, they’re sooo cuuute”. Sad, mumbling, cutesy, stoners they are… I seriously began to wonder if they were showing up for practices, (WHEN they showed up), after sucking down balloons of nitrous oxide.
I grew up with Progressive Rock, my vocal range and volume (AND CLARITY!) close to Greg Lake’s. They kept telling me I was singing too loud. We never even had mics.
Thank you for giving me this place to vent.
Welcome, Andy. This ought to be renamed the SDMB Recruitment Thread.
This makes a perfect parody of every single Joanna Newsom song ever. She is the very embodiment of the woman-who-sounds-like-a-pigeon-toed-waif-glancing-up-through-her-bangs-like-Princess-Diana.
Be warned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzD3x-mXvnI
This is exactly the image I get when I hear the wispy waify girls:
That’s completely obnoxious but not only much for waifiness but because every note she sings seems to have random duration, volume and tonal inflection.
Holy crap. What was that? Yeah, that goes beyond the wispy waif indie style to so intentionally quirky and annoying that I can’t understand how anyone can enjoy that style of singing.
I clicked on it an my cat went weird. Weirder. He bit my ear. I turned it off.
I couldn’t tell you. I was very curious to click on this one because so many of the previous songs, I’ve ended up either finding passably decent, or good enough to actively add them to one of my Apple Music playlists. So I thought “this one’s either going to be the best yet, or just too far”. The guitar sounded promising, but then…no. Too far, even for this fan of the waif style.
That wasn’t guitar…
Oops. I guess it won’t shock anyone to hear that I do not play any musical instruments and never have.
She’s definitely nicer to look at than to listen to.
She’s a bit precious, to be sure. Her stuff has gotten a tad more accessible, but yeah, she is still a hippy-dippy harpist with a waify voice.
She’s married to Andy Samberg of SNL and Brooklyn 999.
Aha.
I was convinced this was Zooey Deschanel (the girl who sings in ELF) doing an awful parody of herself. This is the type of “singing” that your elementary school teacher is supposed to nip in the bud, telling your parents that you have no business ever joining any chorus or choir.