Last week, Alexander Smith discussed preference of vocals, suggesting that “listeners prefer vocalists of the gender they want to sleep with.” Perhaps this has merit — I do, in fact, own many more songs sung by highly emotional men, from Joy Division’s Ian Curtis to TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebumpe, than I do from women.

But really, like Smith hopes, it is more than just a vocalist’s gender that makes or breaks a song for me — soul, realism, authenticity, sincerity, and passion are all key factors, to name a few. Whatever you’d like to call it, it’s that X-factor that puts the human back into the song. It’s not the gender, race, or age of vocalists that turns me on; it’s the personalities they manage to convey through their singing styles and the tones of their voices.

As Smith mentioned, there are many “love it or hate it” vocalists out there. I hate Kate Bush, for one. Her shrill, warbly vocals, to me, are not only aurally displeasing, but emotionally irritating, too. Through her songs, I get the sense that her character is far too dramatic, pretentiously artsy, and overall just too much for me. On the other hand, Björk’s vocals are just as dramatic (if not more so) and yet seem stronger, sturdier, and more confident than Bush’s. Björk is a woman who knows what she wants and says what she means — even if it is in broken English. I appreciate those qualities in a vocalist as I do in a friend, and I am thus a fan of her vocals. I don’t particularly want to sleep with either one of these women, but I can see why their vocals might appeal to people.

Perhaps the personality in vocals is the problem I, and many others, have with a lot of pop music. The singer, in these cases, is not a part of the heart of the song, but instead another glossy pitch-perfect instrument. Much of the time, I don’t get the impression that, upon meeting these pop singers, I would be at all inclined to get to know them. I’ll admit, though, that I’ve fallen prey to such great pop songs like Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Cassie’s “Me & U,” and the entirety of Justin Timberlake’s album FutureSex/LoveSounds. To me, all of these singers manage to elevate the mechanized beats with some sort of genuine emotion in their voices. In “LoveStoned,” Justin just sounds so damn serious that he truly lives up to the song’s name, although perhaps that’s just because I wouldn’t mind sleeping with him.

How can one sense an authentic personality through vocal delivery, though? Beats me. How do you know if you’re in love? You could probably break it down scientifically into the speed of your heart or dilation of your pupils, but that dissection of something so human takes the joy out of it.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about music is examining the properties that endear an artist to a specific listener. I know I prefer bands that put emphasis on drums and bass, while a friend of mine has distilled her “perfect formula” for listening down to something like: syncopated beat, handclaps, British male singing.

No area of music is more difficult for people to understand their preferences in than vocals. Much has been written about Bob Dylan’s love-it-or-hate-it voice, but that’s just the beginning. A different friend of mine and I have had a long-standing debate on the subject.

It started with an artist named Max Tundra, who asked his vocally untrained sister to sing on a few tracks of his album Mastered by a Guy at the Exchange. Her voice is technically terrible, I’m sure, but I really enjoy it, while some of my friends can’t stand listening to it, calling it “breathy and grating.” Then there was Joy Division, the vocalist for which I find forced and straining, but some of my friends find natural and powerful.

The confusion about vocals doesn’t start and end with my friends, though. Witness critically acclaimed but technically horrendous Slint and Sonic Youth. Or, one person might love old Kate Bush records, the next despises them. More recently there are bands like Battles (who “sound like robots”), Joanna Newsom (who alternately receives glowing praise and comments that she “sounds like a frog” from reviewers), or the Knife (heavily accented and indescribable). The list goes on, full of conflict with little explanation but personal preference.

Then there are artists who do non-traditional things with vocals. Bogdan Raczynski pitches his voice way, way up and sounds sort of like a children’s special gone wrong. Experimental German group Can’s Damo Suzuki blabbers about nothing, repeats words incessantly, and even just burbles vague sounds — yet fits the music surrounding him perfectly. Halfway through Naked City’s “Leng Tch’e” the guitars drop out and an utterly bloodcurdling scream comes in, lasting for 15 minutes. I was actually frightened when I heard it the first time. Would it have been possible to get this effect with words or singing? Would it have been possible with instruments only?

We have a large vocabulary of terms that we use to describe instrumental parts, yet I’m not aware of any technical terminology like this for vocal parts. Is there any? Or are we just doomed to the cliché observation that in popular music, listeners prefer vocalists of the gender they want to sleep with? This correlation is borne out when I think back over discussions I’ve had in the past, but I have to believe there’s more to it than that.

Disquiet (www.disquiet.com)
Disquiet is an excellent blog devoted to ambient and electronic music, as well as the artists behind the sound. It’s a great site to visit for free MP3s from netlabels, record labels who release their music on the Internet. The site is run by Marc Weidenbaum, who writes quite well and devotes equal attention to well known musicians such as Brian Eno and lesser known ones such as Polina Voronova, a Russian ambient artist who many discovered purely through Disquiet.

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog (www.blog.wfmu.org)
WFMU is one of the country’s best freeform radio stations; it is also the oldest. The station’s blog is updated often and contains some of the weirdest music-related stuff you’ll find on the Internet: MP3 downloads of super-rare recordings, as well as various obscure remixes and releases from a variety of genres. For example, one recent entry was an MP3 showdown between two different bands that released albums imitating Beatles material.

The Hype Machine (www.hypem.com)
The Hype Machine isn’t really a blog; it scans many other music blogs and presents links to their songs in a nicely organized fashion. On top of that, the site allows users to listen via an in-browser player, no download required. The Hype Machine is the pulse of the Internet’s electro-mashup-dance-remix obsession — just click on the link labeled “popular” at the top of the page, and the site will treat you to a sampling of what every hipster has on repeat as they update their MySpace.

RCRD LBL (www.rcrdlbl.com)
RCRD LBL is a relative newcomer to the MP3 blog scene, but it’s quickly established itself as favorite for many a surfer. One of the reasons for this is the site’s close connections to a lot of excellent labels (as the name might suggest). A variety of labels contribute music to RCRD LBL, making it a great place to find lots of high quality music. The site provides a genre of music more rock than Disquiet, less dance that Hype Machine, and less obscure than WFMU’s Blog.

UbuWeb (www.ubu.com)
UbuWeb is different from all of the above in that it covers a lot more than just music. The site is a collection of all sorts of experimental art, music, writing, and poetry. It’s definitely worth a visit, as it contains some amazing archived recordings of famous experimental pieces alongside more contemporary sound that’s unlike anything most other websites have to offer. UbuWeb has a section called 365 Days Project, where a new MP3 is posted every day along with a short description.