Poyt your hand in myeee and we’ll be joyfoy and feel goyidd.
Typed out, this looks like gobbledygook. Sing it, though, and it might sound more familiar. That’s thanks to a vocal trend that quietly took over popular music – and, 15 years after it was named, is still thriving.
A tweet by a singer named Trackdroppa in 2009 dubbed it “cursive singing”, and it might be summed up like this: a vocalist adds extra vowel sounds to syllables, creating what are known as diphthongs, and leaves out consonants at the ends of some words. The effect can range from dreamy to playful, depending on the singer. Practitioners over the years have included Amy Winehouse, Halsey, Shawn Mendes and, if my own experience is anything to go by, virtually everyone at your local open mic night.
Exact definitions vary. Jamie Lynn Hart, a singer and teacher at Berklee College of Music in Boston, describes it as a combination of vocal fry – the gravelly tone perhaps most associated with Britney Spears – plus “elongated vowels and a slight change in the letter S”. Aimee Nolte, a pianist, singer and YouTuber, associates the technique with “a clenched jaw, without making very much space in your mouth”.
It’s also been called “indie girl voice”, but there are plenty of non-indie, non-girls who do it, including Mendes, Justin Bieber and John Legend. Even Bob Dylan – not typically considered the most mellifluous vocalist – has used elements of cursive singing, according to the singer and YouTuber Yona Marie. “If there is an association with women, that ties to the case of what we know about innovation in language: it’s that women tend to be the innovators,” the linguist Bryan Gick told the CBC in November.
It isn’t quite clear how it all began. “I love to say as a teacher that it started with somebody who was probably pretty lazy in their diction, but happened to get a couple of hits under their belt,” says Cassandre McKinley, a singer and associate professor at Berklee. Other singers heard it and loved it – “and from there, things catch on like wildfire.”
Lis Lewis, a vocal coach in Los Angeles whose clients include Miguel, Rihanna and Jack Black, sees the roots of cursive singing in R&B and gospel, in which syllables are often added to words so they better fit rhythms. As for odd pronunciations, she points out that singers and even actors often develop memorable ways of saying certain words so they’ll stand out.
Pinpointing the exact origins, McKinley says, would require asking every cursive singer who their influences are. But vocal coaches and media investigations have pointed to Macy Gray, Corinne Bailey Rae and Amy Winehouse as pioneers of a sound that soon exploded internationally. Lorde helped popularize it, as did Adele early on, before her style shifted, Nolte says; then there was Halsey, Selena Gomez and more recently, Olivia Rodrigo. Tate McRae and Jessie Reyez have also been highlighted as cursive singers, while Vice has called the Australian musician Tones and I “the final boss” of the style.
Hart says that whether her students are singing in cursive or channeling Christina Aguilera (who is not known for cursive singing), it’s typically unconscious. After she posted an Instagram video parodying the trend, she says, a student commented: “Oh, my gosh, I just realized I’m guilty of doing this.”
It’s an understandable sentiment; no artist wants to feel they’re simply mimicking others. On the other hand, is “guilty” the right word?
It’s no secret that art moves through stylistic phases. Growing up listening to 90s radio, I took it for granted that all male rock frontmen just happened to have the same accent and broad baritone as Kurt Cobain: when you sing about “everything”, you pronounce it “eyavrayathaying”, and that’s all there is to it.
People emulate their heroes. Hart’s singer-songwriter students, influenced by bands like Mt Joy and the Lumineers, are often “a little lazy with their pitch” – a trend that can probably be traced back many decades to early Bob Dylan. And even when it sounds like everyone’s doing the same thing, a style may be gradually progressing; after all, Rodrigo sounds nothing like Macy Gray, even if they both use elements of cursive.
So while simply following a trend may not be the peak of creativity, it makes perfect sense to, as Lewis puts it, “grow from a trend”. When a singer listens to other musicians, “that’s their research,” Lewis says. They’ll absorb it and then break out of it, expand on it or dump it, “but that’s how art works, right?” She doesn’t see her students deliberately singing in cursive, “but I wouldn’t discourage it if it was happening”.
