There are all sorts of proofs out there... proof by induction, proof by contradiction, direct proof, etc... but I hereby posit a new type: proof by "well at least I don't agree with MerelyTourist."
Yes but many of those pop adjacent songs especially the popular ones pull from other genre's remember "City Pop Shark" or how about Recently. Cali's doing a cover of Otonoke because she's can do both rapping and pop singing she's one of the few actually prepped for Otonoke to be on everyone's mind and whip out a quick cover while the interest is fresh.
[edited to add because I don't know how to insert more quotes while editing a post] Suppose i should have mentioned specifically I mean more modern training. I love Classical but geezuz Christ for training singers it's way behind the times and a great way to do permanent damage to your voice .
I'll grant that having a wide base is definitely helpful but I legitimately don't know, does Cali have more voice training than Lumi/Clara? Obviously she learned to rap at some point but I don't listen to that genre at all, so from an outsider's perspective it doesn't seem like it would necessitate any more training than other types of music.
This might be where my misunderstanding came from, when I read that someone is "trained" musically I automatically interpret that as "classically trained." Again though if we're talking about any general vocal training I would have to assume people that want to sing seriously (in the case of the debated example, Lumi or Clara) would probably be in lessons of some sort.
Doesn't matter, every genre require same general training if you want to be good. There are many insanely difficult pop songs and insanely technical pop singers.
There are definitely pop singers that have extensive training and can use that to elevate their music, but I absolutely disagree that things are genre independent. The average person off the street will be able to sing some genres
significantly better than others on average. Accordingly, I would put more faith in a randomly selected opera singer (of a quality where they are able to do it for their livelihood) to be able to sing any random pop song, than I would a randomly selected pop singer (again, of quality where they do it for their livelihood) to be able to sing a random opera song. It's just like how there are people who are trained to play classical piano, cello, or whatever instrument you'd like to pick that use their background to elevate pop-style music, but there are plenty of people who play those instruments in pop groups with no training. There's no way I'd trust a pop-only pianist to play a Rachmaninoff or a Bach concerto, but I'd absolutely bet a classically trained pianist could play the piano part to any pop song.
Notable exception for jazz here, jazz (at least the instrumentals) tends to be it's own beast.