T-Pain: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Pop performers are optimizing for something outside what hits a recording -- that is to say, in the same way that opera singers have to have some theatrical ability in addition to singing the music, pop performance these days involves a huge amount of choreographed dance. A pop singer I'll not name performed on a late night show and was a target of internet ribbing for having brought only some semi-awkward samba-like side-stepping -- though it's more than I or the karaoke singers could do! Once you start looking at the best singer-dancers rather than the best singers, you'll get closer to the real prerequisites for that genre. (And of course, "the obviously artificial sound" can be an aesthetic choice made by vocalists fully capable of recording impeccable vocals: [this video] )