Popular music changes all the time, but there's been one constant element in virtually everything released over the past two decades: Auto-Tune is everywhere. What started as a simple audio processing tool in the 1990s has become the dominant force in music. Artists are training to sing with Auto-Tune; songs sound like Auto-Tune. Whether you like it or not, Auto-Tune is everywhere. And to be clear, most people like it.
In this episode of The Vergecastthe second installment of our series on the future of music, music journalist and Pop ignition Co-host Charlie Harding tells us the story of Auto-Tune. (Divulgation: Pop Ignition is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, as is The Vergecast.) It starts, of all places, in the oil and gas industry. These are artists like Cher and T-painIt spreads like wildfire throughout the music business and quickly becomes so ubiquitous that you're probably more likely to notice when Auto-Tune isn't used than when it is.
We're more than two decades into the Auto-Tune era, and Charlie argues that all the reaction and frustration with Auto-Tune is overrated and misguided. Perhaps, after all this time, we should think of Auto-Tune not as a way to mask our shortcomings as musicians, but simply as another instrument to play. And as the music-making process becomes increasingly digitalized and perfectable, the change that Auto-Tune brought about isn't going anywhere.
As we move into what will be the “ai era” of music, we also look for clues in the history of Auto-Tune that point to what will come next. We talked about the distinctive sound that comes from tools like Suno and Udio, how artists will use and abuse ai, and whether we should care about what it all means. We haven't found the “Believe” of the ai musical era yet, but it's probably coming.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
We also asked Charlie for his thoughts on the Ultimate Auto-Tune and Vocal Processing Playlist. Here are some of their suggestions, first from the days before Auto-Tune:
And then, some canonical Auto-Tune hits, in no particular order:
