"It's the same thing like when the old lady in Oregon starts saying, 'bling, bling.' It's like, 'I'm never saying that again.'" That's Jay-Z, describing the genesis of his "Death of Autotune" movement to Billboard. Turns out Kanye West-whose own all-autotune album, last year's 808s & Heartbreak, probably marks the highpoint in the usage of the now ubiquitous computerized voice modulation program-gave him the idea. Interesting. (And Jay's right. Please, God, make it stop.)
I am marking this day on my calendar in Sharpie. You cannot swing a dead cat on the charts without hitting au auto-tuned song (Lil' Wayne, T-Pain, etc.). I have been hoping for its demise lo these many months.
And so now the folks at Antares and the ProTools tools are going to have to find something else that sounds fresh that will subsequently be overused to the point of ubiquity and make good folks want to lance their own eardrums.
Back in the late 70's, early 80's, I'm toooo darn old and lazy to check, Neil Young made a record called "Trans," where he used a device called a vocoder on all but a couple of the songs.
I think his point was, See, dehmanizing technology won't ruin great songs; or maybe, See, dehmanizing technology bleeds the life from great songs. Or maybe he was just being his contrarian weirdassholish self.
Well: wrong, sometimes, and probably.
I don't know of this "dehmanizing" of which you speak, Karen, but I know you just deUmanized the point of your blither.
Never heard the Neil Young song, but Karen UhOh is canonized around these parts, and can make as many damn spelling errors as she pleases. :-)
So, this is, of course a great track and a great video. Still, it's a little like if Led Zeppelin had made a single in 1986 about how hair bands suck. It lowers a master to take pot shots at what is obviously a passing fad (and just as obviously crap). Also, it's just what's popular now, and griping about it just makes you sound old.
My next song will be called "Melancholy and the Infinite Tape Delay".
thing is, though, jay gave a pass to the biggest names using autotune! he said that kanye, t-pain, and lil wayne could use autotune because he approves of their melodies. so basically jay is just making fun of a bunch of second-tier rappers, and some dorky 2ge+her-looking actors who got a wendy's commercial. not such a good look to these eyes, especially since the most prominent musician to co-sign him and his move toward 'authenticity' is katy fake lesbian robo-voice perry.
in sum, i think the clear winner in this whole thing is the ghost of dave thomas.
i agree. the song pulled punches for politics. but i still think its a good one. (the beat alone...) even if it does put jay more in the role of cranky curmudgeon than we're used to seeing him, here's hoping the message helps to bring a sea change.
Who were the other two guys at the card table?
Without Autotune there would be no Autotune News. So, I am torn.
(Watch #2 if you go over to YouTube)
**This is where I would have embedded the video**
Harvey Fucking Keitel. sad. because he looks near death himself
proving once again that writing a great protest song is really hard. this track has the flow of lukewarm lava...