A kung fu fighter in a disco

Oh I certainly wouldn't question that technique and soul ARE intertwined (taking soul as 'conveying emotion' rather than soul music) but I think that where the point falls for me is that tecnique at some point became an end in itself, not a means of conveying emotion well. Mariah is a prime example of this, as are the reams of singers you hear on 'X-Factor/American Idol' who are brilliant singers but could be singing the phone book.

I think of people like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen - I don't think anyone could claim that these people are technically great singers, but they are undoubtedly great singers. I recall Q Magazine making the same point in their review of Madonna's ballad collection, 'Something To Remember', saying something along the lines of 'this collection demonstrates that while she is by no means a great singer, she is undoubtedly a great singer'. Except not as clumsily as that.

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awesomewells.livejournal.com

Also there's a difference between technique to convey emotion and technique to go "hey look at what I can do".

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mariah isn't conveying emotion to YOU bcz you're not listening to (or perhaps "for") the way she conveys emotion

mariah's a very funny and joyous singer -- a lot of her strength is sheer athletic exuberance, and yes, the subtleties are easily missed if you're not especially literate in this whole tradition, which white rockthink certainly isn't: also i don't think her singing is much to do with passion (in the old-fashioned sense, which derives from the word "to suffer")

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I don't buy that at all - I can think of plenty of singers in that 'tradition' (and I even think that argument is a bit of a crock, because Mariah has moved largely away from traditional soul/gospel and now operates mainly in hip-hop/pop/disco) who engage me. I never listen to a Mariah song and feel moved by her vocals. I don't think that's a problem on my part.

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sorry that isn't meant to be as aggressive as it comes across -- "white"* rockthink is an interesting and important aesthetic, but it's not the only one ever, and obviously it's not possible to be "literate" in every tradition... what i'm getting at is that something like matt's line ("there's a difference between technique to convey emotion and technique to go "hey look at what I can do") is orthodox rockthink which just doesn't apply (uncomplicatedly) to other strands of the american semi-pop tradition

*(i shouldn't have used that word really)

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But - though he hates those singers - Lex isn't saying "you need technique to express emotion", he's saying you can't separate technique and emotion, and that technique is a vehicle for emotion. I think Dylan is a bit of a red herring (and lots of people would deny he's a great singer - I've seen the "he's a great SONGWRITER but not a great singer" argument a billion times, though I totally disagree.)

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i.e. Lex might believe that the relationship between technique and emotion goes one way, but he's not actually SAYING that - abjuring technique for emotional effect (which is the post-Dylan norm) is still relating technique and emotion.

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Yeah but I disagree that you 'can't separate technique and emotion' because, as I said above, i think this has already happened. All of these reality tv shows value technique over anything else, and none of the other singers I mention would ever get past the first auditions.

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There's nothing BUT emotion on reality TV shows! The primary emotion is "pick me pick me" vs "oh my god what if he doesnt" - it's not hugely surprising that in those high pressure circumstances other emotion gets driven out of the song! And the singers who do come through from those shows have generally shown that given the right material they'll give very affecting performances.

I do think that the *kind* of technique the judges rate and the singers aspire to is a pretty rote aesthetic choice at this stage - the problem isn't so much that they value technique more, it's that the technical options they've taken are very hard and take concentration for untrained singers in full glare of the public eye to get right. But the "Dylan wouldn't win the X Factor" argument is still a red herring - if there had been "Indie Idol" or "Folk Idol" would you be saying "well Mariah wouldn't get past the auditions?"

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Well the emotion you refer to initially is nothing to do with the song, and I think you generally have a conveyer belt of people aping people like Mariah - ie I am going to over-sing this song because I think that is impressive. And I don't think they generally do have a good track record of producing affecting performers, which is why most of them swiftly fade out of view. Where someone like Leona is interesting is that she is obviously a technically brilliant singer, but in many performances she was relatively restrained (the 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' one comes to mind) which I think is commendable. Being able to sing in 3 octaves doesn't mean you have to do that in every line.

Let's not say 'Dylan wouldn't win the X Factor', but 'Madonna wouldn't win the X Factor'. Undeniably an artist in the pop vein that show mainly operates in, undoubtedly someone who has become a legendary performer, but her technically weak voice would see her out of the first round I'm sure.

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i think the mariah-imiation conveyor belt is a real problem with those shows -- because they're trapped into a really BAD idea of what emotional expressivity is (curiously enough i think the idea is closer to the rockthink/romantic idea,than the mariah-idea, and as a result there's a bad expressive mismatch, which is a disaster for supernervous wanna-please kids in front of bad-faith judges)

another key element about who wins these shows: malleable people

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Can you really separate Mariah from this 'rockthink' that you keep speaking of though? It's a kind of credablity which she has herself pursued (ie she's been determined to be seen as a talented songwriter and not just a performer) and, as I said, she operates more in pop/hip-hop these days where I think these notions of what is credible have a much stronger hold.

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no, it's absolutely the dominant way of thinking about yrself as a popular charting artist -- you really only escape it when you fold back to passed-by forms or new and rising form, when it begins to be in conflict with the issue of "is what i'm doing real proper bebop?" or whatever --- i'd be astonished if she escaped it thinking rockthinkily a lot of the time except insofaras she trusts her technique: it creates a counterweight to choices, and because she's genuinely so inside it (cf also celine dion) (though i actually think dion is more out there in terms of "not getting the dominant way of thinking") the counterweight has heft, which it obviously doesn't with imitators

you can't separate the issue of technique from the issue of musicality-as-expression -- what i'm objecting to is the easyread version of what technique is and isn't (as sean says, virtuosity might be a better word, except i think it has the "empty technique" gene in-built these days) combined with the easyread version of how expressivity works (or should work) in music...

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I know it's nothing to do with the song! It's a problem of the format - I'm just saying that it's fairer to say "the performers fall back on technique because they're in an incredibly stressful competitive situation which scrambles their emotional radar" than "they value technique over emotion".

I do recognise the effect you're talking about though - I just take most of the performers on good faith - "I want to sing like Whitney/Mariah/Celine because that is how emotional singers sing" not "Haha I know real emotion sounds nothing like this but I'm going to sing like it anyway". So I'd rephrase it as "separating technique from intelligence" rather than "from emotion".

For example, the embarassing pantomime of rock'n'roll noises someone like Bobby Gillespie keeps making in songs - all those "whooos" and "oh yeahs" and stuff: that's an example of technique gone awry too, but not because of a lack of emotion - Bobby G means it, maan - just because he's not thought through how to make the technique appropriate to his voice or songs or performance. I think the X Factor wannabes are doing the same kind of thing.

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But you make two separate points there - firstly you argue that they 'fall back on technique' because they are nervous, then you say that they are aping those singers because they believe that's how emotional singers sing. I don't think the two are neatly compatible, and I think the latter is far more the case. But that opens up a whole other argument anyway, because most of the kids on these shows don't actually seem to have been exposed to much music beyond those kinds of artists so you have to wonder what they even think 'emotion' is in terms of music (ie their standard will be 'My Heart Will Go On' rather than 'Strange Fruit')

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I think they are compatible - the reason technique works as a fallback is that they believe it to be the best way of conveying emotion (even if their nerves then stop them thinking through the song as coherently as they'd like)

The point about the music they like and listen to is a very good one too.

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