Five people who ruined pop music singing

updated 2:26 p.m. ET July 20, 2009 David Bowie Robert E. Klein / APSure, he could sound like John Lennon on one album and Luther Vandross on the next. But that was the problem with David Bowie — in his heyday he seemed more of a theatrical chameleon who tried on personas than an impassioned rock singer. Bowie’s restless experimentalism allowed him to pull off being coolly distant and affected. Sadly, others copped his affectations without his intelligent approach. For a while in the 1980s, it seemed as if nearly every singer drew more from Bowie’s European theater tradition of singing than the tradition of rock singing itself (which came from R&B and gospel sources). Those who succumbed…

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