I am an unabashed music fan. I remember discovering pop AM radio in the early 70′s and quickly graduating to FM album rock. The day I bought my first album – Queen’s “A Night At The Opera” – was a game changer.
Although I’m definitely a rocker, I’m open-minded enough to appreciate the best of all genres. After all, while trends have come and gone, good music is always good music – you can sit me down with some big speakers and a copy of “Straight Outta Compton” and I’m a happy boy.
To me, the one thing that separates good music from the rest is talent. If you have skills, whether as a singer or a player or a producer, you’ll produce good music. There’s an honest to good music that can’t be faked.
Which brings me to Auto-Tune. A software plug-in used to smooth out the rough spots in otherwise good performances, it was the music industry’s dirty little secret until it was abused on Cher’s “Believe” in 1988 and became all the rage. As producers recognized the power of the tool, they realized it could not only be used to distort a good vocal performance but also to make palatable an otherwise-unlistenable one.
There are lots of examples of Auto-Tune cleaning up the performances of attractive but untalented Pop-Tarts (see Spears, Britney or Simpson, Ashlee), but nothing comes close to this. I have no idea who Lisa Gail is, and nothing indicates that this was done as some kind of joke, so I can only assume it’s a vanity performance paid for by a loving (or henpecked) husband. Be warned … you’re gonna want to poke chopsticks in your ears before the end of the first minute …
They say guns don’t kill people; people do. In this case, though, Auto-Tune is the gun and good taste is the victim …
