Switched on Pop - Your cursive singing is tearing this family apart!

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Recently while scrolling twitter we saw a clip from American Idol of judge Katy Perry admonishing an auditioner on the show to “Enunciate!” The video went viral because of Perry’s incensed reaction, but also because the contestant’s performance of Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie” offered a crystalline example of a popular style of singing that has produced reactions of love and—like for Perry—hate.  It’s a style that features elongated vowels, clipped consonants, and runaway phrasing associated with contemporary singers like Halsey, Jorja Smith, and Shawn Mendes, and like many things in the 21st century it got its name from a tweet—specifically by the user @trackdroppa who boasted in 2009, “Voice so smooth it’s like i’m singing in cursive” In this episode we speak to vocal coaches and journalists to to ask: Where did this cursive style come from? What are the vocal techniques used to create this sound? And why does cursive singing create so much backlash? Songs Discussed Shawn Mendes - Stitches Zooey Deschanel, M. Ward - Winnie the Pooh Mick Jagger - Strange Game Selena Gomez, A$AP Rocky - Good For You Frank Zappa, Moon Zappa - Valley Girl Mark Ronson, Amy Winehouse - Valerie benny blanco, Halsey, Khalid - Eastside  Jorja Smith - Teenage Fantasy Tones And I - Dance Monkey Sia - Cheap Thrills Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On Blink-182 - All The Small Things SZA - Kill Bill More Ashaala Shanae https://www.themahi.com/founder Jumi Akinfenwa https://www.vice.com/en/contributor/jumi-akinfenwa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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involver for susentia. Welcome to Switched on Pop I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie recently, I was scrolling through Ye old Twitter searching for some dank memes to entertain myself.

When I came across a clip from 2020 of the show American Idol that captured a very tense interaction between the judge, Katie Perry, and one of the auditioners. Well, sometimes I go out by myself. Slow down. And I look and press the water. Say all the words. Don't cut the words off. Since you've been around, and my bodies and amiss your ginger.

Annunciate the words. Anunciate the words, Charlie. It's very combative. I feel like this clip went viral because of that combative interaction. Yeah. But also because in that short clip, we get a crystalline example of a popular style of singing that has produced reactions of love,

but also, like Katie Perry here, hate. Anunciate the words. A style that features elongated vowels, clipped consonants, and run on phrasing. It's a style associated with contemporary singers like Halsey. Georgia Smith. And get upset when you didn't text back. And Sean Mendez.

It got a martron to a flame. Oh, you led me in, I couldn't sense the pain. It got its name from a 2009 tweet by the user TrackDrappa saying, quote, Voice so smooth, it's like I'm singing in cursive. Okay, Charlie, so that is what we're talking about here. Curseve singing. Are you familiar with this vocal phenomenon? I am. It's something I've never fully understood because it feels like people are singing in another English dialect that doesn't exist. I find it compelling and it like it requires me to listen more closely. Like, why do your A sound like eyes? I also know that it has received a good amount of derision. I feel like sometimes people negatively call this indie girl voice, also gender it. So yeah, I'm vaguely familiar with the topic, but I definitely don't really understand why it's happening.

exactly what it is. You said like clipped consonants and elongated vowels. So yeah, I feel like I could use an education of what's happening with this cursive singing trend. Charlie, we will take you to cursive singing school in this episode, Fear Not. Okay. So today I want to ask, where did this cursive style come from? What are the vocal techniques used to create this sound? And why does cursive singing create so much of that backlash that you were talking about, Charlie? Okay. Take me to beginning. Where does it start? Well, it starts with the singer whose song we heard being covered in that American Idol clip. Who is that, Chuck? Amy Winehouse? Indeed. That's Amy Winehouse singing Valerie from 2007 on the Mark Ronson album version. And that song is now Canonic, right? Oh, yeah. I mean,

that it was recorded in the style of a 1960s pop hit. I think has helped solidify it as one of those songs that will fit into like a wedding band set or background music or it might even just blend in with like oldies radio at this point. And of course, I think part of it is Amy Winehouse's great performance, but also the tragedy that she left the world so soon. Part of Amy Winehouse's legacy is that retro sound that you were just talking about. but perhaps less heralded is her vocal technique. And the way she starts this song is very striking. It's both totally in command. Every pitch is exactly where it's supposed to be.

But when it comes to the phrasing and the enunciation, she intentionally leaves some of the words kind of open. She massages the vowels. She gives every syllable its own little, character and personality. Water. It's like, why sing one syllable when you could say three? And it turns out in the mid-2000s

in the UK, Amy Winehouse isn't the only singer experimenting with this vocal approach, which, to be clear, at this point doesn't have a name. It's just kind of this thing that's starting to bubble up. You can hear it on a track from a year earlier by Karene Bailey, Ray. Put your records on. Not quite as dramatic as Amy Winehouse maybe, but using a similar approach, bending vowels, leaving off consonants at the end of words.

And when you hear those two singers back to back, I think you can hear how they're both maybe channeling even older styles, jazz singing especially. Oh, yeah. Amy Winehouse, very heavily influenced by singers like Billy Holiday. I can hear the exact same bending of vowels, the compressed and somewhat nasally quality of the vocal. Every phoneme becomes an opportunity for a creative interpretation. While the style evolved in the UK in the mid-2000s,

it didn't really take off on the pop charts until the mid-2010s. That's when song, like Selena Gomez's Good for You started rocketing up the charts. I say I got to touch so good, so good we can never want to leave. So don't. So don't. I recognize this sound. That feels like a Julia Michaels co-write who is another one of those songwriters and artists

who takes a lot of creative license with the curse of nils. of their voice. We can hear this cursive singing sound in the way Selena Gomez pronounces the titular phrase here, Good for you. There's like an extra I or Y in the good. Goid. Goyid. It's kind of sounds like a street urchin in Brooklyn at the turn of the century. Goet, hey, good for you. Moira, it's moira on me. And you mentioned creative license. That's definitely at play here.

Yeah. I mean, could you tell me what Selena Gomez is singing exactly in this line, Charles? Do it up like my eyes. Do it up like, I have no idea what she's singing right there. Wow. I'm impressed you got that far. Doing it up like Midas, Charlie, right? The golden touch.

Midas. Yeah. That's a very literary reference. It's bizarre. A very literary reference that is almost impossible. to decipher, which is part of the point of this cursive singing, right? I have to hear that again.

Do you say like Moitus? What does she say? I'm 14 carat. I'm 14 carrot. Doing it up like Midas. Okay, okay. I got it. I'm 14 carrot doing it up like Midas.

But what's also bizarre is the syllabic reference. Midas? Instead of Midas. It's strange. She's putting her own cursive imprint on these. lyrics, right? So it's as much about the content of the words as it is the way she's delivering

them. Something that's also true of a vocalist who had some big hits around this time, Sia uses cursive singing on a lot of tracks, and you can hear it on a 2,016 hit like Cheap Thrills. Yeah, she sings all of her eyes like O-I-G-H-T. Instead of singing night, she sings like Noit. the eyes are a oi noit yeah again we're back to the the street urchin from early 1900s brooklyn noit noy so this cursive sound has now sort of migrated from this retro soul british scene to these world beating pop smashes and we've offered kind of our own amateur interpretation of what these singers are doing yeah but i feel like in order to truly break down this sound we need to ask a vocal expert how these singers are achieving this. So I asked our producer, colleague, Rihanna, to call up a pro. My name is Shayla Chenay. I am the CEO and founder of Vocal Wall Street. I am an expert celebrity vocal health, performance pedagogy, and voice monetization coach. Vocal Wall Street, this is perfect because cursive singing is all about putting your imprint on it.

And Vocal Wall Street sounds like, how do you get those checks that you? you can sign. Charlie, it might surprise you that this is the first thing Aeschela told us. Cursive singing is like a child having a tantrum and not really forming their words correctly. Okay, so we need to train to be like a child throwing a tantrum. Charlie, if you need help tapping into your inner child, Achaela broke this technique down for us a little further. There's something in cursive singing, what we call dip songization. So it's like really prolonging the vowel and bending it.

So things like flood in cursus singing, you'll say things like Floyd, Floyd. Or time, they'll say things like, I'm going back in time. Like imitating like an angry chow's pronunciation. Okay, diphthongization. Wow, what a great word, first of all. This has nothing to do with the Cisco song whatsoever. No. No, nothing to do with the thong song.

This is a diphthong as in a vowel that's kind of between two vowels. So it's not A or E, it's A, and it's not O or O, it's O. Or like in the Cia case, instead of I or O, it's ooi. Noi. Noi. So that's what a diphtong is. And what is Shail is telling us is that you have to actually use this practice of diphthongization, turning a single vowel into one of these multiple vowels.

Ah, like, naitslione. Night Sloan. Oh, God. That's going to give me nightmares. That's your producer tag. So I thought we could take this lesson from Aeschela and apply it to one of the songs that we just listened to earlier. Maybe Stitches by Sean Mendez. Okay.

I heard onto a flame Oh, you led me in, I couldn't sense the pain. I heard a little bit of a couldn't, instead of couldn't. Coedent, yeah. I feel like there was an opportunity to do some kisses and stitches, which just creates a new rhyming sound that might add some character. But then again, it could sacrifice intelligibility. Some people think he does do a cursive version of the word stitches, actually.

I'll be me. Steeches. But you're not, you're not hearing it, it's my sense. It's a little more subtle. It's not steaches. It's like, stiches. It's like a move from like an

e to an uh sound. I think it's also worth pointing out the way he pronounces the word moth, which doesn't have that ending consonant that you expect. Just like a moth drawn to a flame. Oh, there is no moth.

It's mott. Mott. It says, Ma turned. Mott turned. And has basically stitched those two words together. Moth and turned becomes Mott turned. What you're describing is another hallmark of the cursive singing technique according to Aeschela.

It's this sense of having sentences kind of run on, eliminating punctuation marks. It's like the word itself, cursive. That's when you write words without picking up your pen. so the letters are literally connected and they bleed into one another, right? I don't know about you, but I remember that I had to learn how to write in cursive in elementary school. And if you look at a lot of my early handwriting, I basically can't read it because I feel like cursive, the handwriting style, has gone completely out of vogue. And I wonder if people listening to this style vocal 20 years in the future will be like, people in the 2010s did not. speak like they do today. I have no idea what they are singing. It's all interconnected, interwoven,

and the words just blend together. I can't predict what future generations will think of cursive singing, but I know in the here and now that this style provokes some strong emotions. So now that we have a better understanding of where cursive singing came from and how it works, When we come back after a short break, I want to unpack the cursive singing backlash. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has heard of well? The incredible system of Pago of Shopify

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Okay, Charles, we've been breaking down the history and the technique behind cursive singing. And I feel like we've been honoring these singers. But not everyone has such a rosy view of this style. I want to take you to the dark depths. of vocal Reddit. Oh, no. Where a 2019 thread from a self-described opera singer has poses this question. You can just say Reddit.

You don't have to say the dark depths of Reddit. Redundant. Here's the title of the thread. How Not to Sing with that, quote, indie girl voice. And the post goes on to critique, quote, that grading, mulling kitten sound that is all the rage and is about hearing oneself over everything else, end quote. Kitten mulling? Yeah, you know.

So there's a telltale phrase here that you actually mentioned at the very beginning of the episode. Another name for cursive singing, indie girl voice. Which is strange because it doesn't feel very indie in that if it's coming from like Amy Winehouse and through large acts like Selena Gomez and Sia, the indie feels, pejorative as does the girl. It's just like pejorative, pejorative. You don't like it. I get it. It's not just quote, indie girls that use this voice. I mean, we were just listening to Sean Mendez give us a dictionary example, but it does seem like the backlash of the sound is mainly directed at women singers. Yeah. And certainly some of the biggest hits using this voice have been sung by women. Take the 2019 track.

Dance Monkey by Tones and I. I'd rather not, but if we have to. That's nothing to with the voice. Just not my song. Instead of saying time, we get doim. Now, Rianna also interviewed the music journalist Jumi Aken Fenua, who has written the definitive article about the evolution of cursive singing, and she considers this song the epitome of the sound.

I think that's like the citizen cane of cursive singing. Like, I think it's like, the best example of it. I agree. This is the most ornate, most scripted cursive. This style is almost more like calligraphy. It is so hyper-styled.

You'd have to train very hard to sing just like dance monkey. I love that description. The Citizen Kane of cursive singing. In her 2020 article for Vice about the history of the sound, Jimmy calls it the final boss of cursive singing.

which I also love. And this does feel like maybe the peak of this sound. Like, where else can you go from Tones and Eyes Dance Monkey? But even though Dance Monkey was a massive dance pop hit, for Jumi, the sound actually has roots in another tradition adjacent to pop, that indie sound we've been talking about. I think the actual sound stems a lot from indie girl voice. So there was a vine in 2015. by a user called Krish. And he's saying, welcome to my kitchen.

They have bananas and avocados, but it's all elongated. Welcome to my kitchen. We have bananas in avocado. And this indie girl voice that may have been coined in 2015. For Jumi, this actually has roots in an earlier decade and in a very specific place. It depends a lot from the California vows. shift. There's a linguistic theory that stems from 1980s. When you think of like the Valley Girl accent, so you combine that with jazz styling as well as your own vocal style. It

sort of amalgamines into this coercive singing that we've dubbed it. The Great California Vowal Shift, of course. The California Vowal Shift of the 1980s. Now, even if you're not familiar with this linguistic concept, Charles, perhaps you are familiar with the figure. of the Valley Girl. And I think the sine qua non of the Valley Girl accent would be Frank Zappa's 1982 track

Valley Girl, featuring his daughter Moon Unit Zappa as the eponymous Valley Girl in question. Totally. Totally, right. That same diphtonization that Aeschela

was identifying in 2010's cursive singing, we're now hearing in the Valley Girl accent of the 1980s. So there's the California vowel shift, but where do we get this indie influence that we were talking about? Well, the Valley Girl vocal style

wends its way into another unexpected subgenre. Curse of singing is really exaggerated, but emulating how a lot of indie singers and a lot of people in more pop-punk and emo styles at the time, like you think of, found glory in Blink 18. They have this sort of Californian dialect, but is almost like exaggerated. Yes, Blink 1282.

I feel like all the smeltyings, right? I'm totally exaggerating it, but the way that he sings small things, there's something very particular about the way he says the word things. I hear it, Charles. I wouldn't describe this as cursive singing necessarily, but I think it shares some of those attributes. And I can hear, per what Jumi is saying, like how it filters through this California vowel shift,

Valley Girl Sound of the 80s, into these California emo bands of the 2000s, becoming this indie girl persona, that then becomes associated with this cursive singing style. So do you think the backlash is that everyone just likes to hate on California where everyone's having a better time basking in the sun like yourself, my L.A. friend. That may be a part of it, that West Coast jealousy, but I think it's more part of a larger trend in society. Whenever young women who are always the innovators of vocal style and language

create a new sound, whether it's the Valley Girl of the 1980s or the cursive singing of the 2000s, there's always a resistance to it, right? There's the sense that this is not the proper way to speak because these people are not serious members of society. And this represents some kind of degradation of the standards of language. Right. I feel like we did an extensive analysis of the backlash to the Britney Spears vocal fry as a shin of pop music. And again, a gendered critique of a style of speech, which actually isn't necessarily gendered. All sorts of folks use this kind of singing. But yeah, the grammar policing, the speech policing, any change?

It's just like, you know, old man across the street yelling at you kind of vibes. Shaking his fists these days. Get off my linguistic lawn kind of thing. Yeah, I hear you, Charles. I think a really important part of the story of the sound is what you just said, how innovations in language go from something that is seen as other to just becoming part of the fabric of the way we talk and the way we sing. And that's why I would argue, even if tones and I,

dance monkey represented the apex of cursive singing, and maybe we're not going to hear that particular vocal style is much on the top of the charts. I would say it's just kind of baked into the way we make music now. And I have a few examples I want to end with that might illustrate this trend. Okay. So the first is from a classic children's story that I watch with my two and a half year old all the time. I'm talking, of course, about Winnie the Pooh, which was updated about 10 years ago. And the theme song was sung by Zoe de Chanel. And Charlie, I was watching this with my kid

and I was like, wait, are they cursive singing Winnie the Pooh right now? Deep of Christopher's childhood day. And to be the most cursive part of that performance is the way she sings,

Naeberhood. I didn't know that Christopher Robin lived in a Niebuhrhood. It's like, wait, Winnie, what happened to you? You've been cursified. And it does make a bit more of a classic because you had connected this style back to Billy Holiday and it feels like

Zoe Deschanel's vocal is summoning that sound as much as something which is also, you know, 10 years ago, very popular. I love that because once you start to think of cursive singing as not only this contemporary 21st century phenomenon, you start to hear it in some really unexpected places. And when I was watching a show that I think you might be familiar with called Slow Horses. And I say that because it's clearly a show for dads. This is this MI6 spy thriller. Yeah, I'm into it. With a theme song by none other than Mick Jagger.

It's totally right to me that the lead singer of the Rolling Stones is using this vocal style because he's also responsible for a, radical shift in the way that people sang, you know, half a century ago. When the British invasion happened, part of what was so appealing was the British accents, the many different accents coming from throughout the United Kingdom that put a new spin on the sound of American rock and roll. The Rowling Stones. Yeah, exactly. I mean, even the Beatles liver puddly an accent is kind of doing that diphthongization work now that I think about it. Here comes the Sian. The, no, no, please, never again.

The point here, Chuck, is that cursive singing may appear to be this brief modern vocal phenomena that kind of has come and went, but I think this style isn't going anywhere. From Winnie the Pooh to Mick Jagger, cursive singing is something that

is going to stick around. While it might not have the same citizen cane quality of tones and eyes dance monkey, it's going to appear in some unexpected places. Like when you listen to the pop charts right now, you might hear an artist we've talked about recently, Siza, someone who we celebrated for her endless melodies and also a little bit of cursive singing in there as well, which might support this melodic approach. It's not as acute as some of the other artists we've listened to, but I think when you listen to a track like Kill Bill, the traces of it are there.

Oh, how she sings here? Absolutely. Rather than being the dominant style, I feel like she uses cursive singing just at the moments that it's needed to elongate the word here, to add a little bit of flavor here or there. And so cursive singing doesn't really feel like a trend, but rather just one of the tools in the performer's tool belt that's been there since like the beginning of pop music and ebbs and fades in terms of the extent to which it's being used. And there are so many great examples of cursive singing that we weren't able to address in this episode. So if you're listening and you

have a favorite cursive singing moment, find us on Twitter or Instagram at Switched on Pop and tell us your favorite diphthongizations, elongated vowels and clipped consonants from pop history. Switched on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, edited by Art Chung, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, community management by Abby Barr. Our executive producer is Nashat Kerwa.

Remember for the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. You can find more episodes at switchedonpop.com, and we are on social media everywhere at Switched on Pop. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. and until then, thanks for listening.