You're Wrong if You Think Auto-Tune is a Replacement for Talent, So Shut Up

Like water, self-administered copulation, and the advent of toilet paper, music is one of life’s saving graces. But you know what’s apparently not great about music? Auto-Tune. Half the comment sections on the Internet pontificate that its existence is a scourge on today’s music. There are Facebook groups protesting the tool, T-shirts that read “Auto-Tune blinds us from the truth”, and articles investigating its negative impact on the music industry. Vitriolic reactions to Kanye West and Paul McCartney's recent collaboration focused heavily on the vocoded vocals. There are high profile skeptics too, including: Jay Z, who claimed Auto-Tune was turning the "recession" into the "great depression" on a song called "Death of Auto-Tune", Nirvana, Pixies and Slint producer Steve Albini who, in an article for the A.V Club, said it was "depressing" that the "production gimmick" allowed artists to "hide the fact that they were bad singers". Even Death Cab for Cutie got involved, in one of the most LOLORIFIC moments in history, when they wore baby blue ribbons on their lapels to the Grammys to whine about Auto-Tune's proliferation in music. The tool is treated like it’s a conspiracy – as though the major label overlords are on a mission to infiltrate popular culture and dumb down the next generation - not a tool to create better music.

I really don’t understand the hate. I mean, Auto-Tune’s been around for decades.

Cher introduced the sound on her smash-hit single “Believe” in 1998

; a song which has been a mainstay on wedding party playlists, daytime radio, and the human race’s mind without consent for years. Legends like 2Pac (

"California Love"

), Michael Jackson (

"PYT"

) and Daft Punk (

everything

) have all embraced digital vocal effects. But for some reason there are still ass-hats out there who believe it’s sacrilege for an artist to add effects to their voice.

The common belief is that Auto-Tune’s some sort of power-up. That it’s an add-on, transitioning an otherwise redundant construct of bones with a lack of vocal chords into a planet-dominating superstar. The tool’s main purpose, after-all, is for pitch-correcting imperfect vocal tracks. But used correctly, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Listen to Len’s “Steal my Sunshine”

and tell me it would be better with vocals that sound as charred as you imagine the band member’s insides to look. The coolest line in pop music history sits within that song - the couplet "I was lying on the bench slide in the park across the street, L-A-T-E-ARE that week" is so smooth Len were unfortunately never able to repeat its success. It was the sweet-rounded edges of Auto-Tune that made it sound like heaven.

I get that, while it’s easy to gloss over Len and other one-hit wonders successes, some people disagree with Auto-Tune being used by faceless, damp pancakes to better their career and reach fame. I, too, wish Paris Hilton had never released four singles and I am also struggling to get over the existence of Olly Murs. But the hate for Auto-Tune isn’t reserved for bargain bin pop-stars, it’s targeted at some of music’s most innovative artists – like Lil Wayne, T-Pain and Kanye West. This has always struck me as strange. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that Lil Wayne

isn’t coming up with more metaphors and similes than an English language text book

because he’s put his voice through a pro-tool - the talent for that comes from his brain. And Kanye West’s grandiose masterpieces aren’t born exclusively from the computer, they’re created by him. As

Polica singer Channy Leaneagh alluded to the Telegraph in 2012

, Auto-Tune is just the brush some artists choose to paint with.

T-Pain is testament to Channy’s comment that Auto-Tune is not a replacement for harmony, melody, or the ability to write hooks. Look at this video of him singing “Buy U A Drank” with an unfiltered voice. Isn’t it amazing? Doesn’t it sound like he can sing?

Yet, there’s still a belief that artists who use Auto-Tune are devoid of talent. When Kanye West was announced as a headliner at Glastonbury earlier this week, a change.org petition appeared asking the Eavis family to cancel the rapper’s slot and “get a rock band” instead. Supporters of the petition say “watching paint dry would be more entertaining than his auto-tuned bullshit” and by signing, believe they’ve taken “a stand for real music”. But what, exactly, is real music?

Auto-Tune is defined as something that isn’t “real” because it’s created using a computer. So, using that logic, music created pre-computer-era can be defined as real music – roots artists like Woody Guthrie, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters – not the bands of today. Because, as it stands, everyone from Metallica to Radiohead use a computer to better their music – employing everything from click-tracks, to samples, to space-age filters. Are these guys lesser artists because of it? Not according to history. Yet for some reason, despite the fact both are writing, creating, and recording their own music, bands like Radiohead are termed as “real music” and Auto-Tune artists like T-Pain aren’t. The latter is looked down on.

It shouldn’t be this way. In some ways, Auto-Tune is way more reflective of contemporary pop-culture than the millions of pop singers who sing perfectly, but choose to use that to channel ancient soul music and bastardise genres of the past. Auto-Tune is hi-tech, sincere yet impersonal, and expresses vast emotion through digital filters – kinda like a guitar pedal for your voice. But it can’t just be used by anyone. Unless you’re talented enough to write songs, I guarantee you’ll sound like an oxygen-deprived robot, rather than a radio-friendly single.

X-Factor, now in its twelfth season, is proof that a great voice is not the calling card of a complex and creative mind. And when you consider the amount of technology, software, and techniques involved in modern music, “Real Music” is a one-dimensional concept and, especially elitist, when it excludes the use of Auto-Tune but allows guitar pedals and looping wizardry. The fart-breathing handgallops, the douchenuggets who subscribe to the idea of “real music” and won’t consider Kanye West or T-Pain talented artists, should disown every piece of music in their collection that isn’t a mono-recording, bootleg, or symphony – music recorded without the use of computer-aided technology. But they won’t. These four-limbed bidets are the world’s biggest hypocrites and I wish they would all group together and fuck off to some abandoned theme park where they can listen to Real Music forever and never bother the rest of the world with their backward thinking again.

You can find Ryan Bassil on Twitter: @RyanBassil