Blogocentric Formulations

Auto-Tune Atrocity

"Blog Harbor from The Talent Pond"  PROMPT (DAY 17): Moment of truth time. If someone were to put your entire music collection on random, what would be the most mortifying song to come up? In other words, of all the songs you own, which one is the most embarrassing to admit to? C'mon... fess up!

Yes, I purchased this song on iTunes. Yes, I'm one of the 119 million people who have viewed the YouTube music video. No, I am by no means proud of it. Actually I own two versions of this song; the original and the cover from the cast of Glee. Which is actually an interesting existential question, if you think about it. Is it worse to buy a terrible song? Or a terrible song covered by someone else? I mean, I suppose the Glee kids at least have decent voices...

The best part of this song (and video) is that it's produced by ARK Music Factory, a label created by Clarence Jey and Patrice Wilson (the latter of whom also features in the song but insisted on not being credited) which is clearly in the "I'll produce any album you want as long as we get our fee" music space. What I love more than anything is that this is - by far - the biggest hit these two guys have ever had and I'm pretty sure it was completely unintentional. Not that it's stopped them from subsequently claiming to be geniuses and taking other people's money...

While I do grudgingly admit it's a little catchy, this song abuses Auto-Tune like it's going out of style. Auto-Tune was "originally intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned despite originally being slightly off-pitch" (Wikipedia). Or, you know, apparently it can be used to engineer a terrible voice within an inch of its life until a robotic, overly-processed version meets the bare minimum of what could be technically considered music. Using Auto-Tune in this manner is like using the drive assist feature a lot of cars have these days and, rather than correcting for minor curvatures in a relatively straight road, expecting your car to drive you around town while you run errands. That's not how it's supposed to be used, and it's going to result in a wreck!

And yet I still bought the song. Twice. And at least a dozen of the video's views are mine, if not more. So who's the real idiot here?