Yes, I'm sure singing styles in pop are subject to fashion and change across the decades. The only change I've particularly noticed, though, is this:
In the sixties, a "good" pop singer was expected to deliver the words of the song and keep their breathing to themselves. Even The Beatles, introducing the remarkable-at-the-time non-word, "Yeah" in 1963, were careful to ennunciate it clearly.
But by the eighties I noticed that some artists were no longer hiding the sound of their breathing. For example, Enya with her sultry exhalations and Michael Jackson with his huffing and puffing made a virtue out of sounds that would've been considered unprofessional a generation earlier. They made sexy the kind of sighing and blowing that previously had only turned up on those creepy heavy-breathing stalker moments in horror movies.
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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953
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