It depends on the recording of Billie that one listens to as some of her recordings are very uneven and recognized as inferior by her fans,

It’s practically all her later recordings.  Her early recordings from the 1930s are actually quite listenable, even then you can hear hints of her particular style of singing which got more and more pronouced as she got older,  I would say it became an affectation.  Most people hear her later recordings where the affectation had taken hold, and  I also think that her singing seriously deteriorated as the booze and drug took effect, but still, apparently many enjoyed her wobbly way of singing.  Personally I don’t enjoyed her singing style, but I recognized it’s how she chose to sing.  

Same thing with P2, I don’t enjoy his style of singing, by the way everything gets flatten out, and so has a tendency to become a dreary angsty dirge.  But similarly I do recognize it as a way of singing I have heard many times before.

I know (based on past posts) that technical proficiency is not enough, I am just stating an example of one example where most technical =/= best contestant, just to point that some winners may not be the best on one aspect, but is still holds a standard in that particular criteria that even staying on that competent level would be enough if excels much on other criteria but if a contestant lacks the “competent standard” on a criteria (like P^2s pitch or Pia’s stage presence) they must do their best to improve on it.

http://www.mjsbigblog.com/mariah-carey-i-wont-be-judging-and-more-american-idol-judges-quotables.htm#comment-654508426

“At any rate, since you have decided to attack me personally during this
discussion and I have not returned the same behavior, I will not discuss
this issue with you any further”

And you are STILL not understanding my point.

I am simply arguing for a basic  level of competency, but as you say, a singer requires so much more than that basic requirement to be considered outstanding and a “star”, and that seems to involve non-singing aspects too, like perceived persona, physical appearance, stage presence, etc. It’s a formula that can’t be written down like a recipe that is followed.

True enough. If there were such a formula in someone’s possession, they would be coining money…not gambling on the viability of their artist roster, although the dream of coining money may drive the creation of a lot of the acts the public is presented with.

Still, minimum basic requirements work for me. Able to sing on key, live, is a minimum. Stylistic choices within that level of ability are a matter of widely varied personal preference. But I am only a member of the buying public, and I have often found that bottom line isn’t shared by the Industry Suits – who may have a different ‘bottom line’ in mind. Heh.

It isn’t even necessary to dip into the relatively recent auto-tuned pool for examples, way before those tools were available, the Pop industry was pushing acts who had only a nebulous affinity for pitch…and they got the same reaction. There was a fellow out of South Philly in the 50′s named Fabian Forte – who had no range to speak of and plenty of pitch problems – but his Label made him into a Teen Idol with carefully chosen songs.- even though he wasn’t any good at singing…because he was photogenic and ‘cute’. 

He was a contemporary of Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell, who ‘could’ sing. The Label, Chancellor Records, wanted to capitalize on that buzz – and it worked, he was their Cash Cow, for a bit. His music career pretty much was over at eighteen; Fabian bought out his contract….and he described it as being a puppet in a three year nightmare.

Ironically, he turned out to be a reasonably good actor, and during the payola scandal of the 1960s, Fabian testified before Congress that his recordings had been doctored electronically to “significantly improve his voice.”

Nothing new under the sun, I guess…the toys just get better…and people’s taste will always vary.

But the difference between ability and stylistic choices, where the artist ‘could’ sing a melody, on key, but chooses not to…this still makes up that bottom line, for me.

He was on Bandstand, where everyone lip synched – and had a few songs in movies, (North to Alaska – w/ John Wayne) but he always lip synched appearances.

It was all about the cute – even with electronic help, he didn’t sound very good.