WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD SINGERS GONE?

So I download the new (?) Maroon 5 single, “This Love” off of iTunes today. I first heard the song about three days ago; it was on VH1 during the one hour a week they play videos. It’s a cool song, and I knew right away there was something different about it.

About the middle of this afternoon, I figured it out. “Oh yeah, this guy is actually trying to sing the song.”

For about the last decade we pop music listeners have been stuck with three basic male vocal paradigms:

1. Ironic detachment. Think about, say, Ben Folds, who sounds like there’s supposed to be quotation marks around half the words he sings. Actually, think about Belle and Sebastian, if you know who they are; they raise the interesting question of whether it’s possible for artists to condescend to their own music.

2. Boy-band etherealism. If I need to name you any suspects, please tell me how the food was at Guantanamo Bay.
3. Snarling, bilious wailing. This was cool when Kurt Cobain was doing it. Now all you hear, in metal band after metal band, is Cookie Monster after a primal-scream therapy session.

I’m having a hard time thinking of even two paradigms for female singers; most seem to have fallen into the Britney/Christina trap of hyper-nasal melisma. (Nelly Furtado is actually the best at this.) But no matter who’s singing, the quality of vocal performance has dropped dramatically since the late 80s.

I mean, I hate Guns ‘N Roses. I hope they never finish Chinese Democracy and wind up being remembered as a two-and-a-half-hit wonder. But Axl Rose could sing. His voice was an instrument–more chainsaw than scalpel, but for G’nR, he worked.

The grunge/alternative era produced only two singers of note (heh): Eddie Vedder, who’s overrated (but sang the snot out of “Black”) and the Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan, who, in Downbeat’s terms, is a “talent deserving wider recognition.” Otherwise, quick: what did the lead singer of Bush sound like? Remember Letters to Cleo? Leah Andreone? OK, maybe Jeff Buckley.

There just aren’t any really good vocal performances out there anymore. Even in country music, usually a last-redoubt of good vocal technique, the women all sound like Faith Hill and the men all sound like Garth (who would be a great singer if he didn’t feel the need to catalog every vocal idiosyncracy of all of his heroes in every song). R&B went nasal in the early 90s and hasn’t quite come back yet. (I don’t want to hear about Macy Gray until she has another hit.)

I’m sure the lack of really memorable vocals is more due to stylistic concerns than a dearth of talent. If we look back at the late 80s and early 90s, there’s one name which, when invoked, explains exactly why no singers seem to emote well anymore.

I’m talking, of course, about Michael Bolton. Grand architect of the “how big is that kidney stone you’re trying to pass, anyway?” school of vocalizing. The backlash, both critical and popular, towards Mr. Bolton probably goes a long ways towards explaining why contemporary singers always seem to be holding back a little bit. It’s not that they don’t have it–they’re just scared to use it, lest they summon up unpleasant memories of “Love is a Wonderful Thing.”

But it’s not a crime to emote well in a song. Just because certain popular singers of the past laid on the grunts and groans with an earthmover doesn’t mean that you can’t sing like you mean the words. Elvis Costello has a great deal of artistic integrity, and he knows how to sell a song with vocal power. But he never goes over the top, unless that’s what’s called for. And that’s just one example of a singer who probably can’t sing circles around more contemporary talents–he just does, because today’s singers don’t try very hard to sound like they’re involved in the music.

Am I wrong? Who’s come along since Nirvana who can really sing?