Vowel Breaking: Vocal Affectation and Self-Made Individuality
In today’s pop music industry, pop singers can rise to international superstardom. Superstars like Beyonce and Taylor Swift are not only Platinum-Selling musicians, they’re international moguls. They head major corporations, boast millions of fans all over the world, and have amassed hundreds of millions of dollar fortunes. Adele released her most recent album, 25, and sold over 8 million copies worldwide, in a market conquered by streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. (Still rooting for you, Tidal!) The insurmountable successes of pop stars like these have started a wave of aspiring singers, hoping to achieve the same level of success.
Add to that the “everyone gets a trophy” lifestyle under which the Millennials that comprise this wave of Pop-Diva-Hopeful’s and you’ve got a pretty saturated market of talent (term used loosely, here). To round out this recipe, add a heaping serving of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Vine and your talent, however ‘special’ it may be, is now broadcast to the world. The end result of this concoction produces the most saturated market of singers in our world’s existence. than ever before.
With this saturated market, being a good singer doesn’t cut it anymore. It isn’t even enough to be a talented singer and a pretty face; those are a dime a dozen in the eyes of today’s talent agencies and record labels. Instead, to ‘make it’ in today’s industry and amass the coveted level of global Superstardom, one must be unique and fill a niche in the market that hasn’t yet been filled. While we’re here, it would be morally folly of me to fail to recognize the major victory here: the industry with arguably the most powerful influence on its impressionable global audiences is now sending a message that rewards individuality. However, we can’t celebrate for too long, as this seemingly positive message has begun to backfire, causing this wave of young hopefuls to change their sound or image to carve out their own niche in the pop market. Behold the latest trend in music: vowel breaking and the rise of the “Indie Pop Voice.”
Vowel breaking, sometimes referred to as diphthongization or a vowel fracture, is the process of changing a monophthong into a diphthong or a triphthong. In layman's terms, vowel breaking is process of turning a simple word or syllable into a complex, morphed sound with multiple syllables. If you’re still not with me, try this exercise -- say the word “boy” really slowly to yourself. You should feel the air creating the sound to move from the back of your throat to the front of your mouth as your lips and tongue perform the vocal gymnastics required to make a diphthong.
This trend of vowel breaking has been seen in the indie music scene over the past decade or so, indicating the singers with an alternative style. However, over the past year or so, vowel breaking has thrust itself into the pop music scene. Take Selena Gomez’s hit single, “Good For You” as an example. Notice anything strange about the way Gomez sings the hook?
The melody is very simple. Most female singers can easily phonate in that range. Because it's so simple, Gomez gives the hook its sultry vibe by breaking the vowel in “good” of “good for you” from a simple monophthong (the open “U” vowel”) into the diphthong sounding like “guoid.” In fact, it is the way Gomez sings this hook and breaks her vowel that has given this single its edge and helped re-define her post-Disney image as a big girl in the pop market.
In short, Selena Gomez’s vowel breaking in her hit single “Good For You” shows that being good isn’t guioid enough. Artists have to be unique and have an individual sound that can be easily identified as that artist’s singular style.
Good isn't GUIOID enough.
Other examples of vowel breaking in pop music can be seen in newer artists, especially those who have crossed over from the indie music scene. Young pop singer-songwriter, Shawn Mendez using vowel breaking in his hit single “Stitches,” morphing the monophthong in the word “touch” sung in the second verse to something sounding like “tuh-eech” lasting for three separate notes.
Another major culprit of vowel breaking is the artist known as Halsey, who has recently crossed over into the pop music industry from her previous indie style. A perfect example of her use of vowel breaking can be heard in this live cover of Justin Bieber's “Love Yourself.”
Halsey uses vowel breaking on nearly every word she sings, changing “like” to a very dramatic “law-eeek” and “much” to “maw-eeech.” In Halsey’s case, the usage of vowel breaking is really used to create her entire identity as a singer. This case is especially peculiar. As Siu-Lan Tan, a psychologist and music researcher at Kalamazoo College, explains, this vocal affectation is derives from no known dialect in the world. Therefore, we see with Halsey, who uses vowel breaking in her vocal lines to pronounce every word completely differently than is typically pronounced in her native dialect, that this process is a deliberate choice by artists to create their own unique identity as a singer in the hopes of standing out. Siu-Lan Tan discusses this conundrum when explaining the dropped “r” in most cases of vowel breaking in pop music: ““R’s can cut a vowel short, so often singers will soften or omit the ‘r’ in the middle of a word to get a longer vowel and give it more of a singing quality. That’s one reason why some U.S. bands sound British when they sing. Many British accents are non-rhotic, which means r’s are always omitted after a vowel.” It is a fascinating trend because this new, widely-popular vocal style is not seen in any country or region’s dialect. In a sense, this pop stars are creating an entirely new vocal dialect that is spreading like wildfire across the world.
From a Linguist(ical) Standpoint
That this new vocal dialect has become so popular is no new concept according to studies reported in the New York Times. In an article written by Douglas Quenqua, linguists explain that that young women serving as incubators of vocal trends for the culture at large has longstanding roots in linguistics. Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania expands upon this trend, explaining, “It’s generally pretty well known that if you identify a sound change in progress, then young people will be leading old people, and women tend to be maybe half a generation ahead of males on average.” While some linguists suggest that women are more sensitive to social interactions causing them to adopt subtle vocal cues in attempts to make their conversation partner more comfortable through a vocal trend like “upspeak.” This trend is the process of inflecting one’s voice upward at the end of a declarative sentence, making that statement sound like a question. Other lingusts say women use language to assert their power in a culture that has historically taught them to make themselves small. Another theory explains that it is that very societal concept of teaching women to make themselves small that causes women to use upspeak because the vocal pitch raising indicates uncertainty. In other words, because women are taught to shrink themselves, they speak with ‘upspeak’ as a way to not definitively assert themselves or to ask for permission or approval from their statement. Other linguists, however, believe that theory to be false, citing that men have been reported in numerous studies to use upspeak as often, and at times more often than women. Regardless of the reason why, every linguist in the New York Times article agrees that women serve as vocal trendsetters for the remainder of society. All of this is said to further explain the reasoning behind how young pop stars like Selena Gomez and Halsey have started this major vocal trend and created a widely-used but entirely unique vocal dialect.
From a Musical Standpoint
To counter its peculiarity in the linguistics world, the usage of vowel breaking by pop singers is entirely intuitive from a musical standpoint. To use Selena Gomez’s “Good For You” as an example, the sound created by the open “U” vowel of the word “good” is formed in the back of a singer’s throat, and therefore, becomes a hard vowel to create resonance with. In the case of “Good For You” the melody sits in a comfortable middle range for Gomez and doesn’t require much vocal agility; therefore, the tune isn’t difficult to sing. In fact, the melody sits in a comfortable speaking range for most women, including that of Selena Gomez, so it is the vowel breaking that makes Gomez’s performance of this simple melody so intriguing and appealing the ears of mass audiences. Without vowel breaking, the open “U” vowel can get trapped in the back of a singer’s throat and cause that word to get lost. Examining the diagram to the right, one can see that singers take the rounded, open vowels from the back of their throats to the front, causing both resonance and an interesting combination of typical vowel sounds. The process of altering vowel shapes and sounds by singers has a long history; however, the recent trend of vowel breaking transforms this vocal technique into an even more dramatic process that creates an entirely new sound.
So what?
Vowel breaking is a vocal trend that is considered to be derived from a number of linguistic and musical reasonings. However, one thing that can be concluded from this trend is that it overtly rejects and goes against clean and classical aesthetics. In most classical music training scenarios, there is a clear ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to produce a healthy and ‘good’ vocal sound. However, in today’s saturated singer market, being good and singing ‘correctly’ doesn’t allow singers to stand out. Unlike in the classical music industry where singers attempt to stand out by showcasing the ‘best’ example of the ‘correct’ way of singing , singers aspiring to forge careers in the pop world instead have taken to showcase something that is entirely unique to their vocal identity, neglecting what is considered ‘correct’ altogether. Pop singers of today’s music world take a note from Andy Warhol’s belief that all press is good press, trying to become different because though it may be polarizing to their audiences, the fact that it is different causes a conversation. In a market this saturated, new styles are celebrated because they are different. A new artist with a new style becomes the flavor of the week, fueling easy stories for media outlets to satisfy their fickle audiences. In a sense, the trend of vowel breaking shows that even artists in mass markets must be marketed with a niche focus. Let us hope that this trend continues to open doors for artists with genuine individuality and does not only cause young audiences to believe that they must change themselves to popular.