5 Best Auto-Tunes

By Paul J on February 11th, 2010

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I love the new era of R&B. Every singer, regardless of whether or not they have any singing ability, sounds like a male Cher on her 1998 “Believe” track. And it’s all thanks to Auto-Tune.

For those not familiar, Auto-Tune is an audio plug-in that shifts a performer’s singing to the nearest note, correcting any mistakes and, in some cases, adding melody where there wasn’t any before. I have a friend who works at a recording studio and tells me that, for some pop artists who will remain nameless, the engineers just have them SAY the lyrics, then add the melody in post.

It’s not authentic. It’s not fair. Maybe it’s not even right. But goddamn. Everything just sounds so goddamn GOOD. It’s the same reason I love McDonald’s.

But the best thing to come out of this era is what ELSE you can do with Auto-Tune. It doesn’t have to be limited to talent-impaired pop stars — Auto-Tune can be applied to anything, if you have the right software and a little creativity. And the Internets have taken to it, in no small way. So without further ado, I give you the five best misapplications of Auto-Tunes.

Baby Crying Auto-Tune

Like I said, you can do ANYTHING with this.

MLK: “I Have a Dream” Auto-Tune

Sacrilegious? Whatever, it gets more kids to listen to the speech. It’s also a pretty kick-ass beat.

Auto-Tuned Cats

Deeply disturbing; deeply awesome.

Auto-Tune the News

These guys were some of the originators of this meme. There are now something like eight of these Auto-Tune the News videos, which have received close to 20 million views on YouTube.

Slap-Chop Remix

This is my personal favorite. The song is awesome.

Can T-Pain actually sing? Maybe. Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter, because we’re in the era of Auto-Tune.

Oh, and by the way, T-Pain’s Auto-Tuning now even has an iPhone App.