Adam Mazmanian’s review of Kelly Clarkson’s new album describes well the distinct vocal style that “American Idol” promotes:
“American Idol” judges value raw power and commitment to selling a song as well as vocal talent. Winning performances tend to be intense and powerful, with contestants swinging for the fences on every song. This domineering, melismatic style wasn’t invented by “American Idol” but is a fixture of the system that dominated music before the ascendancy of the singer-songwriter in the 1960s. It tends to produce voices that are dexterous, loud, capable of credibly assaying songs across a range of genres — and also voices that are hard to place in time: neither conspicuously contemporary nor conspicuously retro.
I agree that this is not necessarily a positive influence on popular music, encouraging bombast, excessive coloratura, and overproduction. Of course, the “singer-songwriter” style has cliches of its own: a thin sound, a whiny and angst-ridden tone, minimalism. And am I right in detecting the decline of the band, except as background musicians to a star, the absence of true musical collaborations in which the whole is greater than its parts, as we saw, for example with the Beatles (romantic Paul; cynical John; goofy Ringo; mystical George)?
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