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In Reply to: RE: Does the "younger crowd" know or care? posted by ghost of olddude55 on January 21, 2021 at 16:00:08
I grew up in the 1980s where the hits came from Madonna, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and the rock/pop bands like Roxette, The Outfield, Def Leppard, and the rockers of the time were AC/DC, Aerosmith, Motley Crue, Poison, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath.Lady Gaga's Fame Monster pop album was a massive hit and I would post of those pop songs up against any pop songs I was listening to in the 1980s.
I suppose it all depends on what song you are comparing to what song. Even the Beatles have a slew of dopey songs with dopey lyrics.
How does one look at a song? Autotune is a pitch fixer - a relatively minor fix in my opinion.
Bad Romance was a huge pop hit and the video still manages to hold up 12 years later.
Tony Bennett has influenced changing her career to get away from pop and to improve her longevity in the industry.
But Bad Romance is as good a pop song as any pop songs I heard from the 1980s starlets. It will be in the club scene for decades just as Madonna's Holiday still pounds the dance floors 40 years later!
Edits: 01/21/21Follow Ups:
Not because the "younger crowd" demands Autotuned vocals anymore than we demanded overdubbing when we were the younger crowd.
I read an interview with producer/musician Steve Albini in which Albini claimed that it's the artists who want Autotune. He said he's heard singers lay down a vocal track that's so great and soulful that it could make grown men weep, and after hearing it played back, they ask for Autotune, which in his opinion and mine, ruins the vocals.
Lady Gaga has a great voice and doesn't need any help from software. She's famous enough and powerful enough to dictate how her records are produced, nobody can force her to make a record a certain way. So why process great vocals?
I know Autotune is supposed to just be pitch correction but it can be heard in the vocals.
The problem is not that there is evil in the world, the problem is that there is good. Because otherwise, who would care?
When artists start out and under various contracts, they have little say in what is done (doctored) to their music. As he notes in the article below specifically with regards to autotune.Two pretty good female singers in Canada were screwed over by their "agents" or whatever they're called to the point where one basically semi-retired after a huge hit debut album and the other pretty much the same - the two artists were Alannah Myles (smash hit song Black Velvet) and the other Amanda Marshall where virtually every track on the album charted in several countries.
Lady Gaga notes that Tony Bennett had an influence. In a bit of irony - her duet with Bennett - some reviews noted that autotune probably would have helped ... HIM sound better. My issue with their duet album was largely song choice. Her voice is more than capable enough to sing pretty much everything short of Opera but that's sort of a specialized well off the mainstream kind of thing.
I agree with you - I wish her stuff wasn't autotuned simply because with autotune she will be deemed "lesser" as a singer in the eyes of some. But in the end, no matter what you do you can't please everyone.
Still, there are other tricks more egregious than auto-tune which have been around for decades.
"Myth: Autotune can make a bad singer sound good
Although the term carries connotations of magically transforming awful singers into divas, "Autotune" is nothing more than simple pitch correction. If an artist is somewhat off on a note — if that A-sharp just didn't ring unequivocally — it can be tweaked to make it clear and consistent. If a producer wants to play around with the melody of a song, he can alter the pitch even further.../...
If you want to make a bad singer sound tolerable, then adding reverb, echo effect, vocal layering, and endless harmonies is your best bet. Terrible tone will still be terrible, regardless of whether that note is an F or a G. (Witness Heidi Montag's "Superficial": nothing can cover the fact that she simply is not a very good singer.)" https://thetruthaboutgaga.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/the-autotune-myth/
One of the replies in the link above compares autotune to photoshop - I would say air-brushing. Too much makes a woman look almost cartoonish. A little bit applied can make a woman look fantastic and if you don't do any - well I hope you're turned on by zits. I graduated in 1992 and the photographers could take out our blemishes.
As a reply in the above replies noted "Autotuned" increasingly means "Music I don't like."
When Gaga first came out people hated her because they thought she was trans. Conspiracy theories all over the place and she was asked about it by a reporter back then. Still, those conspiracies stick with people and a lot of people held an "ick-factor" view of her (which tells me more about them than her).
The other issue is that artists are using autotune and other electronic effects deliberately for effect - Cher's "I Believe" was the first term I heard it heavily to force a robotic effect. That futuristic Kraftwerk kind of thing. And the artist T-pain heavily uses autotune because he just loves the sound of it. And surprisingly he can actually sing as well. Interview on Auto-tune with T-Pain so you can hear him without Auto-tune https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjt7Sn7x-Y0Music changes - it's not all going to be the mumble, mumble, shout, mumble mumble, shout, of Bob Dylan.
Gaga on autotune -
Edits: 01/22/21
It's the artists that demand Autotune, not producers or record companies.
Here's another example: Kacey Musgraves. Her voice isn't powerful but it's sweet. Her first album was a major hit and put her on the map, and the vocals were not Autotuned.
Her most recent album? Heavy use of Autotune.
Her record company didn't demand the use of Autotune when Musgraves was an unknown, it sure as hell isn't demanding it now.
It's like the Bob Clearmountain sound in the 1980s. Clearmountain mixed an album for Bruce Springsteen and everybody else wanted the Clearmountain sound (which to my ears is overly thin and bright).
The problem is not that there is evil in the world, the problem is that there is good. Because otherwise, who would care?
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