So true. I would go one stage further and say that it is virtually impossible to tell whether something "has feeling" or "has no feeling".
I saw a really funny scene in this kids' programme
the other day called "Victorious". In it, a new principal takes over the performing arts school around which the action centres. She bowls in saying that all the students have to re~audition and one of the bolshie students asks her who the hell she is and what does she know about performing. So the principal belts out, live I might add, this incredible verse, full of gospelly melismas and dynamic control of her voice. It really is breathtaking ! She does it effortlessly and as I've seen it a few times, it occurred to me that she could have done that with her eyes closed for take after take. And they probably all would've sounded amazing. And she may have been bored. But she has chops.
What we often hear on songs, be it vocals or instruments, and call feeling is actually chops, the reality of being so well rehearsed and versed in how to convey something musical that it can be produced on demand. The artist performing could be performing by rote and thinking about the potatoes growing in their garden for all we know. When it is an undeniable fact that so many well known vocal and instrument parts have been cobbled together from numerous takes by skilful
engineering, I sometimes chuckle to myself when I hear people talk about the immense feeling in the song. Art Garfunkle sounds drenched in feeling on "Bridge over troubled water". But that is a very 'put together' vocal track.
Shouting or melismas or extended looooonnnnggggg notes are no guarantee of feeling. And sometimes, what are perceived to be dead, laconic performances indeed did have plenty of feeling.
When it comes down to it, feeling may well turn out to be more prevalent on the side of the listener than the performer.......