The Auto-Tune Industry

A few weeks ago, I thought I would write a post about Auto-Tune. (I would not have been the first.) To paraphrase the post that never was, my argument would have been that Auto-Tune is a fitting aural gimmick for this moment in history, for the Obama generation, because it blurs the barriers between voices. Snoop Dogg sounds like Akon sounds like Blizzard Man sounds like Ellen; whether singing or rapping, white or black, talented or tone-deaf, they all sound like the same robot. Is that not the melting pot in action? Is that not change we can believe in?

I did not write the post because I didn’t think I had quite enough evidence. Now, from a wintry cabin of Wisconsin, comes my lynchpin: “Woods,” by Bon Iver.

I am not gaga over Bon Iver that way Sasha Frere-Jones is, but “Woods” really does it for me. When it’s alone or multi-tracked, I find Justin Vernon’s warbly falsetto a bit annoying. But on “Woods,” he sounds less like a big, hulking hipster and more like a big, vulnerable computer. Of course, this has everything to do with Auto-Tune. Vernon cites Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” as his inspiration (or permission) for recording “Woods” the way he did, but “Hide and Seek” actually uses a vocoder, not Auto-Tune. (It’s a technical and boring distinction, but I can get into it in the comments section if anybody wants to know.) When I listen to “Woods,” I don’t just hear quiet music for white teenagers; I also hear the influence of hundreds of mediocre R&B tracks, and that makes me very, very happy.

Here’s the larger point: until recently, it seemed like rock music and R&B/hip-hop were doomed to drift apart. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that rock music was just another genre of black music, and Carl Perkins was an interloper just like Eminem. Then the ’70s happened, and black people pretty much gave up on rock music. Since then, for the most part, black music and white music have mimicked the patterns of, well, black people and white people: the rhetoric was all about equality and hybridity; but when you looked on the ground, whether it was income inequality, de facto school segregation, or pop music, the records (get it?) showed increasing ghettoization.

There were always huge exceptions to this rule-Prince and late OutKast are the ones that leap to mind. But Prince and Andre 3000 are visionaries, the kind of musicians who have to use every available genre, and then invent new ones, in order to express themselves. To put it bluntly: you don’t have to be a genius to use Auto-Tune, and that fits into the populist ethos of hip-hop just fine. In hip-hop, economics rules; as long as the consumers want Auto-Tune, the market will be flooded with it. Artists of lesser stature than Prince (Ron Browz, anyone?) will use it as a gimmick to make some quick cash, while more talented artists such as Kanye (not to mention Bon Iver) will try on the Auto-Tune hat and churn out some nice, quirky results.

The fad will fade. Someday, and god knows I hope it’s soon, Lil Wayne will stop hiding behind his laptop and start trying again. (When I first heard Wayne do an Auto-Tuned rap verse, on the “Dey Know” remix, I thought it was brilliant. Now I’m eating my words.) But in the meantime, some important boundaries in pop will have been broken. This I Believe.