Why do modern vocalists force their voices so much?

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So much of the modern vocals, but it takes away from the song and the message because most of today's singers get in the way of the song and make it all about them. The female singers are the most guilty of this. Can't they just sing the song plain and straight and let the song do the talking? Its not enjoyable because they push the voice so much to the point where it sounds affected and unnatural. And they sing loudly . All the time.
In days past, the singers had more nuance and knew which lines were to be "belted" and which ones were to be softer and when and not to emote. Now its just loud and high pitched caterwallin'.

I blame Barbra Streisand. She set the example for long, loud notes, and every pop singer seems to want to out-sing her.

Adelle's "Hello" is a rare exception.

Cant say I listen to much of that sort of modern music I stick to metal, psychedelic sort of rock, punk and other random stuff. But yeah I really dislike a lot of modern popular music, with the overbearing and obnoxious vocals. I also dislike how often that terrible auto-tune that gives vocalists voice a metallic sound to it or whatever is used i cant get the image of a furby toy from the 90's with a microphone doing the vocals when I hear songs like that.

Also though there is some symphonic metal with female vocals that sound rather opera style, I don't care much for that either, but I have heard metal with female vocals in other styles which I do enjoy.

I guess it depends on the project. I mean if the project is billed as a "solo project" and the "soloist" is only a singer, doesn't it stand to reason they would sing in a manner that focuses the attention on them?

Now if it's a band, then it seems a little self-centered. Though I am rather ignorant to the country music world world. The kind of stuff I like demands loud vocals

Some kind of Mariah Carey effect too.

I'm in the camp that says, "Try to stick to the melody " and stop trying to hit every harmonic along the way to finding the note. Oh, and it doesn't really have to be that high all the time. Great, you can shatter glass...we get it.....

A good example would be Julie Andrews: She could hit 4 octaves but only went into extreme ranges when absolutely required. She and the people recording her kept her in that sweet spot that allowed her voice to do good things. Karen Carpenter would be another good example of keeping on melody and staying within the best ranges for that voice.

There are a few others, but yeah...too much of the rest of it though.....

I've noticed that too and when people go on talent shows they seem to want to wail and screech as well.

Whitney Houstin and Mariah Carey are too blame for today's current Wailers and screechers.

Remember when Rock singers actually sang instead of screamed no matter how soft, hard or driving the music was?

It's not just female vocalists and singers, but male as well.

Most male pop singers now have the Tenor voice type, and Baritone or Bass men are rare, even though Baritone is the most common voice type for males.

This means most male singers try to wail and sound 'big' as well.

The days of calm, baritone Elvis and stuff like that is gone.

The only male singers that take it easy in the pop industry would have to be Ed Sheeran off the top of my head.

Forcing the voice is just what is fashionable these days, I think, the songs themselves are so loud and over-produced that anything other than belting wouldn't make much sense.

I don't listen to pop besides what I hear pumping out of my brother's room, and what I have had to familiarise myself with as a requirement of my job as a guitar teacher, but I have noticed in the past year or so that a lot of songs are in the same alto/tenor register, as in a lot of female songs are relatively low, while pretty much every male song is ludicrously high (eg. 'See you again'), I have come across men who can sing 'Let it go' in the original key of Ab, for example, even though most men naturally have a baritone-bass range.

Most of my favourite singers are singers from musicals such as John Owen Jones, Sarah Brightman, Michael Ball, etc. The closest singer to Pop that I really like is Art Garfunkel, I like the natural, innocent sound of his voice in songs like Kathy's song or Bridge Over Troubled Water. It is nice to listen to, without being really obnoxious like modern pop is. It also helps that I really like S&G's songs in general.

I have always been a fan of naturally beautiful voices that sound genuine and personal, I think it is probably a reason why I ended up as a classical saxophonist.

Funny. In the Nineties grunge era male rock lead singers were all clones of Eddie Vedder- who actually had a pleasing -and rather strong baritone voice. He just always sounded like he wanted to off himself. And so did all of his clones. The lyrics may have been about how "I am ecstatic about how have finally found true love" but the tone always sounded depressed. I guess that got old around the start of the 2000's. And they reinvented the idea that singers should actually express- you know- emotion. There is even a genre of rock called "emo" (with a more extreme offshoot called "screamo").

Now we have the [Chad] "Kroeger Croak". Strained tenors that hit your ear drum like an ice pick.

Yeah, I'm aware many baritones are/were notorious for sounding a little lifeless and dead. Though some, such as Frank Sinatra, made it work. And it definitely worked in Grunge.

I personally like the tenor voice sometimes, but it's so overused and annoying nowadays. Whiny and like you said strained and hitting our eardrums like icepicks. Examples include whiny, nasally Justin Bieber, abrasive Charlie Puth, whiny Sam Smith, just plain awful Jason Derulo, etc. Autotune and over-processing certainly plays a part, but even without all the machines I'd still say they suck.

But Bruno Mars for instance is definitely an okay tenor, and Michael Jackson was most certainly a good tenor/countertenor. The Weeknd as well makes it work. As does Nate Reuss of the band Fun. Owl Citie's alright.

Even Baritones are singing Falsetto to hit the tenor notes instead of singing in their natural baritone. I use to do this before realizing I don't want to further contribute to the tenor trend. I purposefully try and sing as low as possible without straining my (developing) baritone voice type.

There are lots of rock and even metal bands with clean vocals, though I myself certainly don't dislike more growly metal vocals and even the more screechy ones in black metal.

I applaud you for you decision not to contribute to the 'tenor trend' and instead work on refining your natural voice. I'm a natural baritone as well and I know how annoying it is to be a baritone whose favourite songs are all tenor songs. I have often wondered why it is that there is pretty much no such thing as baritone in today's Pop, the only possible explanation that I can come up with is that people are just following the status-quo. The ridiculous amount of unoriginality, along with overproduction, are the two big reasons why I can't stand today's Pop music. I also find it curious that this seems to be specifically a male phenomenon (I could be wrong about this as I don't actively listen to Pop, but it seems like the majority of female songs these days are alto/mezzo songs).

I'm constantly embarrassing myself in Aural class at uni; pretty much all the men are natural baritones so the Bach Chorales are always unbalanced, so anyone who can sing the tenor parts in any way at all, no matter how badly, is considered a tenor (this even included some women). I fell into this category. I really wish they could have given us some basic vocal training before they got us to do all this, just enough know-how to avoid ruining the voice and the throat. I feel so silly squeaking out my falsetto tenor when there are classically trained singers in the room.

In part it's good old showing off. Because they can, or at least they think they can. I think it's also something to do with emoting and sincerity.

On that note (!), there's that sort of soft, breathy then breaking into a nasally whine attempt at a croon that a lot of boybands have. OTT emoting and sincerity about how much they care about 'the girl'. I can't quite describe it, and I don't pay any attention to the singers or bands to provide an example. Sets my teeth on edge.

Thinking about it, there's a lot of voices/vocal styles I don't care for. I think, as with all instruments and music in general, the voice has a box (!) of tricks, and they may be deployed well or badly. I think there is a preponderance of people who have been taught some tricks (pretty much the same ones), by other or themselves, though they have not been taught when and why and how to use them.

This is 'La Di Da' by Lera Lynn (her from True Detective)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPGV0FeQF0

There's a bit just before the chorus where most singers could not resist taking the note up. And she takes it down. I like her voice anyway, the tone and the diction, but I thought that showed nice restraint, serving the feel of the song rather than 'listen to this!'.

I think it has more to do with how modern music is produced. Vocals are put front and center, and instrumentation is condensed into barely decipherable noise. Dynamic range is almost completely absent because they want to make everything LOUD, but ironically making everything loud actually makes it harder to hear the individual instruments and their nuances. When I listen to older music, it sounds nice because things actually have breathing room, and you can hear little details. But nope, modern music squashes everything together, and things like the lead vocals trample over everything else.

Sadly, excessive compression and loudness is par for the course for genres like metal, and many otherwise great songs and albums have suffered because of this. What's even worse is when they butcher older music by remastering it with these techniques.