I'm typing this on an artificial keyboard attached to an artificial computer, in an artifcial house in a artificial town.

They didn't just grow there by themselves, they were created by human beings using their heads and applying the skills they had artificially learnt.

And that goes for anything created by humans. Writing a book, or, in a pre-literate culture, telling a story, involves all kinds of artificially acquired skills. Yes, and there is also a srong element that comes from aspects of the storyteller or writer that weren't shaped in that kind of way, they did grow naturally.

And when it comes to singing, the same applies. There's a balance between the artificial and the natural, and different people will have that balance in different places. and different listeners have different preferences as to where the balance is struck. Peter Bellamy's singing was indeed towards the "artificial" end of that balance - it was consciously shaped, rather than instinctive. And it was, in my view, brilliant, not in spite if that but through that.

You don't complain that a tightrope walker is "artificial", though of course not everyone likes tightrope walking acts.

There is no compulsion on anybody to like a performer, however skilled they may be. But when we find we don't like something we shouldn't insist that the reason lies in the thing we dislike rather than in ourselves. If I say I don't a cup of coffee because it has sugar I am just saying that I don't like sugar in my coffee, and this coffee has sugar in it. I am not actually criticising the coffee as such.