Everyone knows that Taylor Swift can’t sing. The teen star might hold the zeitgeist in her pink satin clutch, but she’s regularly criticised for her live vocal performances, which tend toward wild notes and shortness of breath. It’s nothing new for a young female singer to take slaps for her lack of chops. What’s different about Swift is that her vocal problems actually play into her strengths.

Swift’s little voice drives adults crazy—especially country-music lovers, who decry her as inauthentic—but for the daughters and mothers who are her target audience, it shows she’s as real as they are, with room to grow.

Swift’s case contrasts with that of another young, huge-selling female musician. Leona Lewis, whose second album, Echo, was released last week, had the most popular single of 2008 with Bleeding Love. A gorgeous 23-year-old Londoner, Lewis has a voice like the young Whitney Houston’s—massive and sleek, athletic yet ethereal. But Lewis has a problem too. Her critics perceive her as hollow—all voice and no personality.

The female stars who have come to dominate pop in the past decade all express some aspect of that tension between the Perfect Personality and Perfect Voice. We can go back to the end of the last decade to understand how this particular story has played out. The year 1999 saw the debuts of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and the release of The Writing’s on the Wall, the breakthrough album for Beyonce, then the primary member of Destiny’s Child.

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