The question posed in the thread name has intruiged me and given me cause to think and I welcome it for that reason.

I have thought of another example of differing performances to match the Belle/Cilla that I gave above.
When I first started going to folk clubs in the early 1960s and in the years after, a very popular song sung especially to guitar accompaniment by young women was The Shearings No For You. It was sung in a pretty, pretty way that made me wonder if they were even thinking about the words. It is about the most heinous crime imaginable after murder. In some ways it is worse because the victim survives and lives with the horror for the rest of her life.

In the late 1960s I was at an informal singaround, somewhere in Scotland (Aberdeen? Blairgowrie?) and the people in the room were all Scots travellers or folk revival enthusiasts. Jeannie Robertson was there and sang The Shearings No For You. Like nearly all her singing in her later years, the singing was slow and stately. I had never heard her singing it before or after and to my knowledge, she never recorded it - but the impact was immense.
Jeannie was the only person I have heard who did not repeat the first line, Taking away the lift that comes from the way the tune rises at the end of the repeated line changes the way the song is received.
She sang it with passion.
She sang it with anger.
There was a fierceness in her delivery.
She sang it in an accusatory way.
I found that I could not look at her whilst she was singing it. Other men in the room also seemed to be looking down. I think all the men were feeling a sort of gender guilt.

Unlike my previous example, it was the older woman, the tradition bearer that was getting it right this time.