Auto-Tune: Defining the Sound of the 21st Century

by Kofi Mframa | September 19, 2024

Written for Today in Music History

Exactly twenty-seven years ago today, a singular invention was released that would reshape the sound of music in the 21st century. It was prophesied to be the death of music itself. That invention? Auto-Tune.

Auto-Tune was the brainchild of Dr. Andy Hildebrand, a mathematician, oil engineer, and classical flutist. The idea came to him when a colleague jokingly suggested he invent a machine to help her sing in tune. Hildebrand had previously developed a process to use sonar data to locate oil deposits for Exxon. He realized he could apply the same algorithmic methods to pitch correction.

On September 19, 1997, Hildebrand introduced Auto-Tune to the world.

It essentially works by detecting pitch and adjusting it to match the nearest note. Central to the software is the “Retune Speed” feature, which allows users to control how quickly a note is adjusted to the target pitch. A retune speed of 10 (the slowest) is ideal for ballads, where gradual shifts between notes are needed. A speed of 1 (the fastest) creates rapid transitions suited for upbeat songs. When used correctly, Auto-Tune preserves a singer’s natural tone, leaving the average listener none the wiser.
Just for fun, Hildebrand included a ‘zero’ setting, which altered the pitch the instant it received the signal. At this speed, the natural sound of the singer’s voice would be completely replaced by something more robotic. Surely, no one would intentionally use that setting, right?

Just a year after Auto-Tune’s release, Cher released “Believe,” the first mainstream song to use the technology.

About 36 seconds into the track, her voice morphs into something entirely new. On the lyrics “I can’t break through,” she sings with a brilliant, robotic quality. The effect continues through the pre-chorus as the melismatic notes of “so sa-a-a-ad” leap between pitches with mechanical precision. Rather than using Auto-Tune to correct vocal flaws, Cher intentionally wielded the technology to augment her voice—she had clearly set it to ‘zero.’

When the song first came out, the method behind her vocals was shrouded in mystery. The effect became known as the “Cher effect.” Some theorized it was created using a talk box. Producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling claimed the effect came from a vocoder—a deliberate lie to protect their newfound secret.
Their secrecy was understandable. Audiences weren’t particularly receptive to perceived inauthenticity. Earlier in the decade, Milli Vanilli had their Grammy Award stripped after they were exposed for lip-syncing to other singers’ voices on their records.

“Studios weren’t going out and advertising, ‘Hey we got Auto-Tune!’ Back then, the public was weary of the idea of ‘fake’ or ‘affected’ music,” Hildebrand said in a 2015 interview.

He explained that what people didn’t realize was that before Auto-Tune, sound engineers would take hundreds of takes and splice them together, essentially performing their own form of artificial pitch correction.
The secret didn’t last long. The allure of a technology that could make anyone sing in key proved irresistible. Within a year, Hildebrand had sold Auto-Tune to every major studio in the world.

“Believe” became Cher’s first No. 1 hit in 24 years, topping the charts in 23 countries.

Its success sparked a shift in dance music, which began to adopt this synthesized sound—think Daft Punk’s “One More Time.” Another European dance group, Eiffel 65 (best known for “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”) quietly laid the groundwork for how Auto-Tune would manifest itself in the late 2000s. On their 1999 song “Too Much of Heaven,” they deliberately sang in flat notes to exacerbate the technology’s effect. The song was the first instance of rapping through Auto-Tune.

That same year, Jennifer Lopez used Auto-Tune on her track “If You Had My Love." A 15-year-old from Tallahassee, who would later be known as T-Pain, became enamored by her sound.

T-Pain spent years looking for the tool Lopez used.
When he finally got his hands on Auto-Tune, T-Pain slathered it all over his debut album Rappa Ternt Sanga, which generated hits like “I’m Sprung” and “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper).” T-Pain’s vocals offered a stylish juxtaposition to his R&B and hip-hop beats, and solidified Auto-Tune as the premier music technology of the new millennium. The “Cher effect” was soon re-dubbed the "T-Pain effect."

The public loved it. Between 2005 and 2009, T-Pain accumulated 17 Top 20 hits on the Hot 100.

His rap peers followed suit, making Auto-Tune a prominent part of their own music—Snoop Dogg’s "Sensual Seduction," Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," and, of course, Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak, on which T-Pain consulted. Auto-Tune had become a modern vessel through which artists could express themselves. It allowed those who couldn’t traditionally sing (Kanye, for instance) to bring melody into their music. Auto-Tune had evolved into an instrument in its own right.

By the late 2000s, Auto-Tune had become a fixture in music, extending far beyond hip-hop.

Pop artists also found success distorting their vocals. Kesha (“Tik Tok”) and Britney Spears (“Womanizer”) both scored massive hits with Auto-Tune’s help. Even indie artists, known for their stripped-back arrangements, got in on it: Bon Iver’s “Woods,” Vampire Weekend’s “California English,” and Sufjan Stevens’ “Impossible Soul.”

However, the widespread use of Auto-Tune wasn’t always met with critical acclaim. As its popularity grew, so did sentiments that it was cheapening music as an art form. In 2009—the same year that The Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, Flo Rida, and Jay Sean all topped the charts with exaggerated Auto-Tune use—Jay-Z released “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune),” a stern denunciation of the technology. He opens the track singing the melody of Steam’s "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," floundering sharp and flat to make it abundantly clear his vocals were untouched. He even takes a direct jab at T-Pain: “Y’all n****s singing too much / Get back to rap, you T-Pain-ing too much.”

A couple months later, Christina Aguilera donned a shirt emblazoned with the phrase “AUTO TUNE IS FOR PUSSIES.” Alt-rock band Death Cab for Cutie also made their position clear at the Grammys, wearing baby blue lapel ribbons to “raise awareness against Auto-Tune abuse.” The following year, Time listed Auto-Tune among the 50 Worst Inventions. In 2013, Usher told T-Pain, “You f****d up music for real singers.” The comment sent T-Pain into a depressive spiral, but it was a summation of the public’s growing resentment. 

There’s a popular sentiment that Auto-Tune is merely a crutch for singers who can’t actually sing.

While it’s true that Auto-Tune can be used to assist those who struggle with pitch, music purists often overlook that pitch correction has basically existed since the advent of the microphone, with techniques like layering, double tracking, altering tape speed, and reverb being used to modify voices.

As Alex Pappademas wrote in The New York Times, “the argument against Auto-Tune is almost always a taste discussion masquerading as a discussion of standards.”

Purists tend to forget that Auto-Tune is often a deliberate creative choice, not a necessity. T-Pain, for instance, proved that he didn’t need Auto-Tune during his NPR Tiny Desk Concert, while singing the national anthem, and when he became the first winner of The Masked Singer.

Another critique of Auto-Tune is that it can strip music of its emotion. There’s a raw power in imperfections—think Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen—that some believe is lost when the software eliminates every flaw. But music has always been a vehicle for expression, regardless of the tools used to create it. If the music lacks emotion, it’s a reflection of the artist, not the technology. As Björk said, “If there’s no soul in the music, it’s because nobody put it there.”

Despite its detractors, Auto-Tune has remained a force in modern music.

In the late 2010s, artists like Future turned it into a signature sound, making their voices rumble and glitch over trap beats, as if a robot were grappling with its newfound sentience. Rappers like Travis Scott, Young Thug, Migos, and Lil Uzi Vert have followed suit, making Auto-Tune an essential part of their style. There’s a viral clip of Travis Scott comically falling off stage, his Auto-Tuned voice still perfectly in pitch.

Even Jay-Z, once an adamant critic, eventually found himself surrounded by it. In “APESHIT,” a 2018 collaboration with Beyoncé, she sings “I can’t believe we made it” with robotic affectation. Jay-Z probably couldn’t believe it either. 

Sub-genres like hyperpop, digipop, and glitchcore have pushed Auto-Tune to its wit’s end, amplifying the computerized vocals and pairing them with brashy, discordant, and intensely digital production.

Artists like A.G. Cook, the late SOPHIE, and 100 gecs use electronic manipulation to bend the human voice beyond recognition, creating unnatural and unnerving sounds. Auto-Tune enables their voices to snap and glitch as if they were drumbeats. Earlier this summer, on Charli XCX’s BRAT, Auto-Tune wasn’t merely an accompaniment to Charli’s electronic production, but a conduit for expressing emotion in the digital age.

Twenty-seven years after its invention, Auto-Tune has evolved into a symbol of modernity, a harbinger of a new age of recorded music.

In 1965, Bob Dylan faced immense backlash for plugging in an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival. In 1982, the UK Musician’s Union attempted to ban synthesizers. Both controversies seem trivial now, just as the Auto-Tune one has become. Today, it’s estimated that over 99% of recorded music uses Auto-Tune, literally shaping the very fabric of modern sound.

As technology continues to evolve, new innovations will disrupt music once again. Already, conversations about artificial intelligence in music are surfacing. While AI will inevitably spark its own controversies, much like Auto-Tune, those debates will fade with time. Perhaps, 27 years from now, we’ll be reflecting on how AI has reshaped the landscape of postmodern music.