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A comment on Born to be cool: The life and music of Chet Baker.

Re:Born to be cool: The life and music of Chet Baker by default-kramer on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @09:14PM (#29261329)
Nice read, I had never heard of Chet Baker before. I wonder if his style* is at all responsible for the current trend of the depressed-sounding pop singer. Billie Eilish comes to mind, but there are plenty of them. It's like someone dragged them out of bed into the studio against their will, so their passive-aggressive response is to record the lowest-effort vocal performance possible.

* "His singing was softer still, often lingering just above a whisper."

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Re:Born to be cool: The life and music of Chet Baker by daverol on Thursday November 18, 2021 @01:31AM (#29262594)
In 1986 he was playing in London: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/aug/17/john-cl...

In 1953 he looked and sounded like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcRXIOvMxdc

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Re:Born to be cool: The life and music of Chet Baker by mhh__ on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @09:31PM (#29261418)
I don't see that connection at all. I wouldn't call it low effort as much as just the pendulum swinging back against the studio-darling popstars of the 2000s through to the 20teens

Also remember that Chet stopped recording probably 40 years ago at least now.

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Re:Born to be cool: The life and music of Chet Baker by goto11 on Thursday November 18, 2021 @07:28AM (#29264653)
The invention of the microphone is responsible for that. Before the microphone, singers had to be loud to be heard over the instruments and audience. With the invention of the microphone, it was possible to sing in a much quieter voice and still get heard. Singers who took advantage of this to sing in a quieter and more intimate style was called "crooners". The style became very popular when radio became mainstream.

Of course a lot of people hated the style (as always when something new came along) and thought is effeminate and ridiculous compared to the manliness of a trained opera singer like Enrico Caruso.

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Re:Born to be cool: The life and music of Chet Baker by jacquesm on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @09:22PM (#29261363)
> I had never heard of Chet Baker before

That line really got me.

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LUt4X0vwb0

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Re:Born to be cool: The life and music of Chet Baker by sk5t on Thursday November 18, 2021 @01:42AM (#29262684)
Chet Baker did not invent the torch song. Does "Is That All There Is?" do anything for ya?
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