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This was my initial impression based on a limited sample of artists/songs, but then I found the following article.
Quote:
according to data from Pandora’s Music Genome Project, the largest human analysis of music ever undertaken that assigns 450 different musical attributes from genre to mood to instruments. Looking at data for vocal delivery, breathy vocals have been on the rise for the past four years, since streaming started to overtake album sales and digital downloads as the most popular way to consume music.
Breathy vocalists certainly existed pre-streaming — Julie London in the ’50s and ’60s, Janet Jackson in the ’80s and ’90s — but up until 2015, songs in this style were in a small minority. The graph above shows that about 14 percent of songs in 2018 featured vocals that were what Pandora analysts would consider very light and breathy. In the 60s and 70s, hushed vocals were present in just 1 to 2 percent of songs, while they accounted for 2 to 4 percent in the 80s and 90s. The increase is even more dramatic when you zoom in on the top 10 percent of songs on Pandora: So far in 2019, nearly 23 percent of these songs have what Pandora music analysts consider hushed and breathy vocals, compared with 3 to 5 percent from the 80s until 2015.
Looking at the trend on a genre level, R&B artists have been the biggest champions of breathy vocals. So far this year, nearly 30 percent of R&B songs analyzed on Pandora scored high in light and breathy vocals, up from 6.75 percent in 2014 and 22 percent in 2018. Pop follows, with 21 percent in 2018, followed by rap with 19 percent. The only genre that has not seen a notable increase in hushed vocals is country, which has also seen the lowest average scores over all time. Hushed vocals have historically accounted for 1 to 2 percent of songs in country, and only reached 4 percent in 2018.
I think there is a clear distinction between a weak musical era and a weak popular musical era.
What is popular or what makes the Grammy's is not an accurate representation of the quality of music from an era. It simply is a reflection of the poor taste or choices of the population from music in that era.
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