I just don't believe in pushing young voices beyond their maturity level.
As someone bereft of expertise in this area, I cannot disagree with your analysis.
Every time I hear Miss Church, (or hear OF her) I feel a great concern about her, as a human being, I hope that as many as hear her, will pray God's protection over her, that the "star making machinery" does not chew her up, and spit her out.
A beautiful voice may be a terrible thing to ruin, but a soul lasts forever.
Aside from that, Miss Church illustrates a point which perhaps was not covered adequately, in the original article. Although I have only heard her over the television, with its characteristic low fidelity, I find that I am able to hear every word she sings. To my untutored (and aging) ears, her singing has a clarity and beauty which is very rare, these days.
"If the trumpet makes an uncertain sound...." If we are able to hear (actually HEAR every word) and understand the lyrics of the songs we listen to, we are able to make a judgement as to whether we should accept those words, into out "heart." I find that almost all of the singing in America, today, is unintelligible.
For at least forty years, we have as a part of popular culture, assimilated more and more messages, at a subliminal level. I do not mean "backward masking," I mean that we have let words enter our souls, which words are never passed over the filter of our rational minds. We can "hear" that someone is singing words, but most of them are unintelligible. If you take the time to READ the lyrics, they typically seem to be gibberish--English words and phrases, but without apparent meaning.
This is not only a problem with secular music. I remember once, during a church service, a woman sang a solo in what (to my untrained ear) seemed to be in the style of the Opera. The "sound" was beautiful, to me, but I could not understand a word. I asked a friend who was there, (a trained musician) to be sure that it wasn't just my ears. Neither of us could tell what any of the words were. Unless others had a better "ear" than either of us, no one was "edified."
If a solo is musically perfect, but conveys no message to the hearers, then "the trumpet makes an uncertain sound...." and no one is edified.
</END RANT>
DG