Times Autotune Was Actually Awesome

There was once a time—a time that may still be running its course—that Auto-Tune was, to keep things honest, a joke. It's radio's safety net, squeaky clean and heartless. It is the pitch-corrector that took over Top 40 pop like piranhas spotting a juicy Richard Dreyfuss.

Auto-Tune was created to mask human error. A singer could cover up their off-key notes by digitally bending the pitch to the closest true semitone, shaving off the wobbly periphery of the human voice. You know, that part where the soul is. But when Cher made all that money with the Auto-Tuned "Believe" in 1998, the software exploded for good (for now), and became a mainstay of the mainstream producer's utility belt.

For the first stage of its existence, Auto-Tune was just makeup, a sheen pasted over recording artists to give their plastic identities a little more gloss. Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Bieber—it's simply become a part of that culture. But when T-Pain got famous, it was by being unabashedly honest about using Auto-Tune, turning it into one more knob on the DJ's mixer. Kanye West's 808's and Heartbreaks was like an essay on the software, and though he moved on to other things afterwards, that album started the discussion: is it possible to make this robot feel?

What follows are songs that have helped Auto-Tune grow beyond a tool to make bad singers sound good. In most cases, musicians have simply torn off the mask and put the effect in full view. It's kind of moving towards the vocoder in that sense—musicians have used vocoders since the '70s, but it's much more of an independent instrument, never claiming to be a human voice. Now that we've had some time to ruminate on what Auto-Tune is and what it can be, artists like James Blake and Bon Iver are dipping their toes in waters that may give this corporate monstrosity a bit of a fresh start.

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2. Kanye West - "808's & Heartbreak"

Kanye West's heavy use of Auto-Tune and a Roland TR-808 drum machine throughout 2008's 808s and Heartbreaks made for a sound so simple and straightforward, so stripped down and detached from Kanye's previous work. It was a brazen buck to industry standards, a heartbroken open letter that's one of the few albums to find success for both songwriting and a conceptual execution.

The 8-bit beats and synths are a complete departure from all his previous sample-heavy production work, and the voice is so distorted (improved, sometimes) by Auto-Tune that another artist entirely emerges from the smoke. The Awl has a great article that goes deep into Auto-Tune as a manifestation of loneliness and sadness via 808's, but the best quote might come from Rolling Stone's Judy Rosen: "Kanye's digitized vocals are the sound of a man so stupefied by grief, he's become less than human."

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3. Young Jeezy ft. Kanye West - "Put It On (Remix)"

Kanye West abandoned all the norms on this one. His verse on "Put On" is autotuned, this is the major precursor to 808s & Heartbreak, rambling and intensely introspective, even for Kanye. He jumps from the loss of his mother to questioning his religion to name-dropping Russell Simmons' nieces in a matter of bars, never standing still for more than a second and remaining furious throughout it. It's absurdly long for a guest verse on a rap track, and not what you'd expect from a lead single for an album, but Kanye remains absolutely transfixing on it, stealing the show from Young Jeezy. The robotic tinge he gave his voice was a different take on Autotune then had been popularized at that point; it sounded otherworldly and aggressive, but somehow all the more human for it.

4. Daft Punk - "One More Time"

Post-Cher's "Believe," there weren't a lot of truly epic Auto-Tune-utilizing jams in the dance music realm. That distinction fell upon the androids of Daft Punk, who took (recently-deceased) Jersey house legend Romanthony's vocals to new heights with this technology. As the story goes, Romanthony sent the vocals to Daft Punk, yet there was no intention of applying Auto-Tune to his vocals at first. The androids felt the funk in Romanthony's vocals would benefit the track more if they threw heavy Auto-Tune edits and compressions to his voice, and everyone was satisfied. With the huge backing track, along with the overall vibe of their album Discovery, the Auto-Tune adds an odd brightness and beauty to the act of celebration that this track embodies.

Interestingly enough, there is an "unplugged" version of "One More Time" featuring Romanthony's untouched vocals and a guitar, "before the robots take over." It's raw and beautiful, and evokes a different vibe entirely to what "One More Time" ended up being.

5. Lil Wayne ft. Gucci Mane - "We Be Steady Mobbin'"

One of the many masks Lil Wayne has worn in his career goes by the name T-Wayne, the Auto-Tuned version of Dwayne Carter that produced some of his best work. "We Be Steady Mobbin'" came around right when Lil Wayne was about to start a one-year jail sentence, but you really couldn't tell from the music. Just another little detour before the tour Young Money tour bus starts up again.

6. James Blake - "I Mind"

James Blake took the evolution of Auto-Tune into its third stage by forgoing words completely in "I Mind." He bends his own voice up and down the sonic spectrum, distorting the notes rather than shepherding them into the "right" tone. Blake is a major proponent of Auto-Tune as an independent component rather than a fixer.

When his debut album was first released, Blake said, "I think we'll look back on Auto-Tune as an effect. Sometimes it's just the only way that you can achieve a certain sound. I can sing, but I like to treat my vocals anyway. I can't distort my voice without the use of a distortion unit, but that doesn't mean I'm doing something unnatural."

7. T-Pain - "Calm The Fuck Down"

The Godfather of Auto-Tune takes a moment of respite from his non-stop lifestyle of sipping exotic liqueurs and hanging out on boats to "Calm The Fuck Down." But he doesn't leave the Auto-Tune behind, making an acoustic ballad worthy of all the tiger-head rugs in the world.

"Calm The Fuck Down" is important because it's a direct referent for T-Pain's immortal Freaknik, the holy Auto-Tuned spirit T-Pain brought to Adult Swim. If it means watching the whole Freaknik movie to find "Save You," the animated equivalent of "Calm The Fuck Down," it will be time well-spent. You're welcome.

8. Hot Chip - "I Feel Better"

Hot Chip may be having some fun at Auto-Tune's expense here, but it's still a nice little piece of songwriting. I mean, The Lonely Island didn't get an album out just because they were funny. You gotta be able to get people moving, make beats that work for the jokes to hit.

What Hot Chip does well here is provide a contrast. One verse is heavily Auto-Tuned, the next is void of effect. At least it sounds that way. Who's to say what's what anymore? Not my chair, not my problem. Oh yeah, and this video is fucking insane.

9. Bon Iver - "Woods"

"Woods" signaled the moment when Auto-Tune began to expand beyond its use as a corrective device or rap gimmick. Bon Iver is not someone we'd include on our short list of people who need some vocal assistance, so when he laid it out in the open on "Woods," it was a move that unintentionally justified what T-Pain had been doing all along, laying Auto-Tune out in the open for its unique sound.

Auto-Tune became an instrument in and of itself in "Woods," and Justin Vernon further flexed its muscle by making a seven-layer cake of harmonies, building the sound as the refrain came again and again, stronger each time. This was also the track that ended up bringing about the oddly brilliant collaborations between Vernon and Kanye West. 'Ye sampled "Woods" for his "Lost In The World," and didn't end up changing much of Vernon's original writing—he just changed a eulogy into a halftime show.

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10. Future - "Turn On The Lights"

Future picked up where T-Pain left off, using Auto-Tune to create a character/caricature that was semi-robotic and lived a life too perfect to belong to a human. "Turn On The Lights" is case in point, air-brushed euphoria with an hourglass body, an ode to the perfect woman. "A hood girl... and a good girl." But it's. The same. Girl.

However you might feel about Future and pop music, it's songs like this that remind me that the music industry machine can still tap into the part of our brains that wants to wiggle. It might be a formula, but it's not dangerous or detrimental or even hard to listen to. Quite the opposite. Every now and then, it's healthy to sit back and let it all wash over you.

11. Pusha T ft. Future - "Pain"

When Kanye West started screaming about culture vultures and how little fucks he gives and Ferris Bueller, it was generally understood that 'Ye had gone off the rails a little bit and was just kinda rambling. But when he howled that "everything is Pusha T," he might have just been talking to himself.

A good chunk of Kanye's discography appears in various forms on Pusha T's My Name Is My Name. It's been described as Westian, and there's no song that fits that description better than "Pain." Future plays the part of 808s Kanye on an Auto-Tuned chorus while Yeezus Kanye growls "New Slaves" in reverse on the beat.

To Pusha's credit, he's able to take a song (album?) with Kanye's stamp all over it and make it his own. His delivery and wordplay might be better suited to Kanye's beats than 'Ye himself. The menace never gives way to exasperation, and the G.O.O.D. Music empire expands just a little more.

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So we've gotten through that awkward stage. Auto-Tune came to be in the late '90s. Cher's "Believe" is going to turn 15 this summer, just past the awkward adolescence and embarrassment that defined its early years. The pimple scars and sweaty palms of abuse at the hands of pop music still make teenage Auto-Tune cringe... but they're memories now.

Teenage Auto-Tune isn't afraid to get a little weird, to let its freak flag fly. Teenage Auto-Tune is proud of what it is, and won't be stuck hiding behind pitch correction all the time anymore. Because in the end, this effect is just that, an effect like the thousands of others that define the recording process: distortion, vocoders, reverb—they all serve the same master by altering that original soundwave.

Music-lovers will not let Auto-Tune replace the human voice. Nothing will be able to do that. But it's here and now, so we might as well find some multi-purpose for Auto-Tune. Like comedy. That's where the Gregory Brothers found it. Antoine, if you would—tell these good people what happened:

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