Why do singers rarely enunciate their words? “Here’s my theory: Superficiality sells. Witness Charlotte Church and Andrea Bocelli, who sing in their respective native languages but with a single vocal emotion – girlish innocence in the former, Byronic longing in the latter. Forget shifting moods; Bocelli’s linguistic commitment is so absent he sometimes seems to be singing phonetically. I’m seeing the phenomenon everywhere. Commercial classical radio plays only the smoothest performances of the smoothest pieces; opera singers are all but banned. In the composing world, the backlash to modernism seems to be music that sounds nice and means little.” – Philadelphia Inquirer