ASK AN EXPERT: Why Do So Many Modern Singers Sound So Fake?
Shawn Mendes kisses you with every word he sings – purposely pushing his diphthongs into the “oi” end of the timbreal spectrum, if you want to get technical. Very annoying.
The artist k.flay affects a menacing purr as she sings about needing blood in the cut. Grandson lisps political rage into the roof of his mouth. Måneskin (above) singer Damiano David does all of the above all at the same time – mutilating his vowels beyond recognition.
Is there an epidemic of speech impediments in popular music? Have singers always been this annoying? What’s going on here?
The answers to the first two questions are … probably no.
The third question is more difficult – what’s going on?! Time to ASK AN EXPERT:
Chandelle Rimmer (right) is an Associate Professor of Music and the Section Head of Voice at MacEwan University’s Music Program. A vocal teacher and performer of impressive experience in Edmonton and area, she listened to – and analyzed – examples of all of the above and more before a recent Zoom interview. She declined to brand any of the samples as insincere.
“First, we have to break down the concept of what is considered fake,” she explains, launching a lengthy discourse on the rich history of “vocal distortions and manipulative play” that has roots in African-American folk music hundreds of years ago. For many decades, there has been two schools of thought regarding vocal training: Classical, which was considered legitimate; and everything else, which was not. This schism persisted well into the age of rock ‘n’ roll – whose biggest stars were very much into illegitimate vocal manipulations.
“When we look at African-American folk-based music, gospel, blues, it was very heightened, very expressive, highly emotive, and very much rooted in the black experience,” Rimmer says. “So we hear the elements of those sounds transferred through the entire evolution of popular music today.”
OK, so Mick Jagger sounded “black.” But was he faking it? His obvious love for African-American music came across like a homage. He does it well. It’s part of his true self.
Shawn Mendes kisses you with every word he sings
You can identify vocal eccentricities in many stars: Bob Dylan sings exaggerated vowels straight through his nose, but you believe every word; Cyndi Lauper rocks a catty Brooklyn accent, and she’s actually from Brooklyn; Tom Waits’ demonic growl is so distinctive that he successfully sued a potato chip company for a commercial that copied his voice. It’s a long list. What about British singers who don’t sound British, and vice versa? Why’s the guy from Blink-182 going, “The voice inside my ‘ED” like the male Eliza Doolittle? He’s American. Alberta country singers with Southern twang? Looking at you, Paul Brandt. Turns out he lived in Nashville for a spell, and a young man can pick up accents pretty quick if he’s immersed in them. And what about all those death metal singers who don’t sound like the Cookie Monster in normal conversation? Characters on stage, drama, theatricality, showmanship, but few call it fake.
All of these forms of singing were considered phony by many in the classically-trained establishment until “just a couple of decades ago,” according to Rimmer. Suddenly, so it seemed, many untrained or unusually affectatious singers became validated, accepted, made legitimate. So what happened a couple of decades ago? That’s right: Thanks again, Internet.
“We’re saturated with music now,” Rimmer says. “YouTube certainly has been at the forefront where anybody can get their music out there. In order for these artists to be able to carve out a truly unique sound and really get noticed, we’re hearing a lot of exaggerated, very diverse, very eclectic styles of singing.”
These include Billie Eilish. Affected. Not fake.
Ågent Zero?
Rimmer says, “To me, she’s vulnerable and authentic and real. Talking from the technical perspective, she’s affecting a lot of excessive breathiness in her sound … yet there’s something fresh and incredibly musical about what she’s doing.”
And Grandson: “He’s rounding his oral cavity, changing the acoustic space by rounding the mouth; it gives you a dark, pouty sound.”
And Damiano David and his Italian rock band on the song Redemption, changing both the syllabic accent and the vowel in the word “REE-demption.”
“He’s using the long E because it’s bright,” Rimmer says. “Choosing a brighter version of that vowel, he’s able to heighten a word and give it a whole new level that you wouldn’t normally have. It’s an artistic decision.”
There’s the notion of an “Agent Zero” when it comes to overly affected vocals in modern pop – a single pining pioneer who gave all who followed permission to ham it up. Local journalist Jeremy Loome fingers Björk, who popularized her exotic Icelandic accent (and her own odd vocal technique) all across North America in the 1990s – a sound “identical to the affectation that young singers adopt now. They all sound slightly fatigued and Scandinavian.”
A recent extreme example Professor Rimmer brings up is Tones and I (aka Australian singer Toni Watson, right), whose song Dance Monkey is rendered in such pungently affected baby talk as to justify sensible adult drivers to crash their cars while desperately trying to change the station. It’s a huge hit – and about as fake as fake gets. Or is it?
As a professional vocal teacher, Rimmer is concerned about style, choice of technique, and suspicions of musical dishonesty, but most importantly about teaching healthy vocal practices. The rest is up to her students.
“I don’t think you become a singer purposely letting technique drive your decisions,” she says. “You want do it because you want to communicate. Training is just meant to liberate you, so when you go to sing, your voice is free of barriers, and you are the freest and most expressive person you can be.”
In the end, while Professor Rimmer won’t out the obvious fakes – and even validates using Auto-Tune if an artist so wishes – she agreed in certain cases that a given artist was “not” fake. And that’s as close as we get. In the end these judgments are “subjective,” she says.
“Some of these singers might not fit in the box of how we might view contemporary popular music, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
