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Any time on a television show when instead of dialog they have 1 1/2 to 2 minutes of music, usually sung by nobody you like or ever heard of, while they show a montage of people gazing poignantly at whatever.
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Ridiculously over-drawn out syllables, meant to be heartfelt but just plain annoying. The most recent example I’ve come across was the theater trailer for Amazing Grace, where someone was singing the titular hymn; the phrase “that saved a wretch like me”, nominally seven syllables, was sung out like:
“tha-hat sssaaved…a-uh wrretchh…li-hike::::MEEEE-HE-HE-HE-HEeee…”
I agree heartily on both counts. The TV song thing seems to be getting worse each season. And they use the same songs over and over and over. I used to love Roland Orzabal’s “Mad World” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” but these songs have been played as accompaniment to so many maudlin TV scenes that it’s hard for me to like the songs for themselves.
The drawn-out syllable thing comes from African-American gospel music, I think. At least that’s where I first noticed it. At a church service I once heard a teenage girl singing her heart out but mangling “Jesus Loves Me” so badly that “Jesus” came out as Juh-HEE-HEE-HEE-zah-HUH-HUH-HUH-suh-sah.
I think of it as more of a soul music thing – you know, the divas à la Mariah Carey pretending that they don’t know what the word “melody” means.
And yeah, I agree, it’s annoying as anything. (And I’m a vocalist.)
The musical montages are my mom’s favorite part of CSI!
A musician whose name escapes me at the moment laid the blame for the popularity of this practice, known as melisma and referred to by him as crap, on Patti LaBelle. Whether true or not, I have no idea. I just wish whoever started it, hadn’t.
“Hallelujah” should have been retired after it was used on West Wing. That was by far the most effective use of it ever. Same for “Little Drummer Boy”.
It has roots which go right back to music sung by slaves and from there back to Africa. However, I fully agree that it gets horribly abused when people think that an attempt at excessive warbling makes a good singer.
Heartily agreed on both counts!
I think this is supposed to be “hip” and “now” but just indicates that the writers were too friggin’ lazy to come up with actual dialogue or plot. The last five minutes of every Cold Case episode is wasted in this manner.
I hate it when the there’s a guitar solo and the camera pans to …the bass player or something.
Agreed. And what exactly is the point of sticking one finger in your ear while doing it?
Or it may be due at least partly to the influence of music videos.
Blame it on the Jews.
An example of a very bad Wikipedia article, I have to say. It’s almost entirely talking about one particular genre, not about the subject in general.
Which genre?
Is the essential point in dispute, that it is a technique developed over a thousand years ago?
I thought the ‘essential point’ is where it originates from, something that article doesn’t properly address (as opposed to the first notated form, which is a different matter entirely)?
Several years ago, on Easter Sunday, after church, I was eating lunch and listening to a lady who had just come back from a mission trip somewhere in the Caribbean, or Central America, or somewhere–maybe Honduras.
She complained about the music she’d heard locally, how it was SO SLOW, they could make “the” a three syllable word.
With more amusement than sympathy, we pointed out that Handel was good at that, too.
Most of us present were choir members, and the choir had sung Handel’s “Worthy is the Lamb” which ends with several pages of Amens, often strung out on runs. It’s a nice piece, although at the upper end of the difficulty range for most church choirs that I’ve sung with. It’s just that Handel’s not a big fan of the one syllable, one note school of music writing.
I hate melisma in one particular situation.
When there is a hymn based off the music for another hymn, and a two-syllable word isused in place of a melisma’d word in the other hymn, but the two-syllable word is contracted to one syllable AND melisma’d :mad: Why can’t they just sing the entire two syllables, each at different pitches?
Please note I said its popularity was blamed on Patti LaBelle, not that she originated it. 
And why is it that I think miasma would be a better word for this style of singing? 
Eh. The silly little melismas popular these days have nothing on the vocal “abuses” of the bel canto era. Personally, I like a little coloratura here and there as long as it is sung cleanly, doesn’t bend the music completely out of shape, and adds to the emotional content of the piece.
Missed the edit window, but just wanted to add this:
Florid singing has gone in and out of popularity time and time again over the centuries. During eras when it’s popular there is always the typical cadre of critics who despair that anyone will sing a melody cleanly and simply ever again. And then, sometimes under the influence of some sort of reform movement that tries to clean up singing or sometimes simply because people get tired of all the vocal decoration, simple melodic lines that are more “faithful” to the text get popular again… until some singers get bored with that and feel like being more vocally creative, and the cycle begins all over again.