Too much melisma these days

For years now, I haven't been able to put my finger on exactly what it is that I don't like about so many pop singers in the past few decades.

But now I know the reason. It's melisma.

According to Wikipedia, melisma, "commonly known as vocal runs or simply runs...is the technique of changing the note (pitch) of a single syllable of text while it is being sung."

When it's not done right, melisma is just an act of vocally showing off to no good effect.

Francis Davis put the issue in perspective last year with an essay in The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Singing Epidemic." Davis wrote:

The new singers don't necessarily all sound alike, but they tend to resemble one another in mistaking vocal calisthenics for improvisation. Mariah Carey [pictured above], Christina Aguilera, and the hopefuls on American Idol are ruining pop singing with their overuse of melisma, a style of ornamentation that Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, and other soul singers brought with them from gospel in the 1950s and 1960s. For the great soul singers, holding on to a syllable and stretching it out over several notes was a way of suggesting that something had grabbed them and wouldn't let go; whether it was the Holy Ghost or lust depended on the song. Carey and the others are just showing off their pipes, even though they have much less to flaunt. The jazz version of this is riffing like a horn, and although this is supposedly the mark of the jazz singer, it's a problem, because delivering lyrics requires making literal as well as musical sense.

Probably the worst offender of our time with respect to melisma is Whitney Houston, whose singing I rarely hear anymore, for which I am thankful.