Soul vs Technique

[datura800.livejournal.com]

I hope he won't mind me quoting him, but I read an interesting assertion in Alex's review of the new Mariah album (today's Guardian):

"Carey's voice has been mocked, bizarrely, as being a triumph of technique over soul - an argument that fails to comprehend that technique and soul are intertwined, that technique primarily exists as a means to convey emotion".

I thought this would be a good discussion to have here - it's a point I quite strongly disagree with (generally, not specifically with relation to Mariah), but I'll wait to see if anyone is interested in commenting before launching into it.

Comments

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

We Belong Together - one of the things I like about this is she uses quite a lot of control in the early parts of the song before belting it out later on, which goes contrary to this misconception that all she does is oversing.

Whereas I hate Emotions - at the end of the song she just appears to be doing scales to show how high she can sing (except it's so high it just sounds like shreaking to me)