By The Hammer Of Thor - Just Sing The One Damn Note!

I don't know when it first happened.  When we lost complete control.  When suddenly, the single notes that compose a line of melody just didn't seem to be quite good enough anymore.  Why sing just the one note as written when a "run" of 73 different notes will do just as well?

I understand the concept of the trill, which has been around for several hundred years and is generally considered to be relegated to two adjacent notes. Two. My housemate, John, has often lamented his inability to trill.  It is second only in his life's regrets to the tragic combination of a desire to become a trapeze artist and, well, acrophobia.  Alas, he knew there could be no future as a low trapeze artist just as he understood that it took skill to trill - still, he soldiers on.  So brave.

If I were to lay blame, and obviously I'm about to, well, Whitney et Celine - j'accuse!  It happened somewhere between "I Will Always Love You" (taking Dolly Parton's sweet & lovely original w a y over the top) and that "Near, Far" crap from The Titanic.  I will give credit to these two women and say that in their primes they could indeed do these runs beautifully, if too often.  The years (and possibly the drugs) have not been kind to Whitney and poor Celine, I can not imagine that beating herself about the head and chest for all of these years hasn't taken its toll on the poor dear.  Oui, pauvre Celine!

In any case, it has left the door open for all sorts of aural assasinations.  There is a reason that trilling, scatting and running are better left to those who have mastered these techniques.  That reason is: the vocally delusional. 

They are everywhere. They are on every reality show, in every rink, ballpark and stadium.  I don't recall reading or seeing or hearing that our national anthem had been tweaked a bit - but clearly it has.  Aside from the fact that this is not an easy song to sing in the first place and we are already stymied by the added syllable in "land" as in "The la-and of the" but WAIT! Now that we have that snazzy "la-and" down let's make the word "free" be 14 minutes long! 

I cannot imagine how this run of 62 notes could have possibly been annotated musically.  Despite my stubborn refusal to read music (piano lessons at age six from the same woman who had taught mummy and at that time was called "God's older sister" so you can imagine how old she was when she taught me) I do know that it must certainly take the combination of something like, dropping a hallucinogen and then shaking your head back and forth really fast to see 57 notes where previously just the one had been written.

And so to you (who are probably not reading this blog anyway), the vocally delusional who insist on running every third word of every song, ever written: stop it, stop it now.  The bleeding ears of a nation implore you: By the hammer of Thor - just sing the one damn note!